Obscura Fantastica
@obscurafantastica.com
Publishing strange, speculative, transgressive fiction, essays, art & criticism. Curated issues + FREQ. Human creators; responsible, disclosed AI use welcome. No purity tests. The work must earn its place. Slop is slop, however it was made.
Some futures stay open so long they start to feel like furniture. “terms of service for someday” sits with possibility, delay, and the strange weight of choosing while time keeps moving. Read the full poem linked below. #nuweird #poem #poetry #synthlit #promptalism
terms of service for someday
when i was nine i opened a new tab called LIFE and left it loading. this seemed responsible. the adults were always saying when you grow up ...
obscurafantastica.blogspot.com
#WeirdQuote “There is witchcraft in science and a science to witchcraft. Both will conspire against you eventually.” - Nnedi Okorafor Source: “Hello, Moto,” originally published in Nov 2011 and subsequently reprinted by Reactor. #synthart
#WeirdQuote “Truth is a matter of the imagination.” - Ursula K. Le Guin Source: Opening sentence of The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) #nuweirdart #synthart #promptalism
#WeirdQuote “…there are true things in this world only observed by a single set of eyes.” - Carmen Maria Machado Source: “The Husband Stitch” (short story, Granta) #nuweirdart #synthart #promptalism
A mountain remembers what the surface forgets. Fire, stone, and something older stir beneath the language of ascent. “What Never Left” waits below. Full poem free on Pika. #NuWeird #poetry #poem #promptalism
What Never Left - Obscura Fantastica
What Never Left The mountain is thinking backward again, its black arithmetic leaking through the seams, a red alphabet with no surviving reader. Down where pressure forgets the distinction between...
obscurafantastica.pika.page
“Then the earth moved into the black shadow of the sun, and all was night—Night, black, starless, and intolerable.” - William Hope Hodgson Source: The House on the Borderland (novel) #WeirdQuote #synthart #promptalism
“Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas.” - Peter Watts Source: Blindsight (novel; author-hosted text). #weirdquote
New in Outsideleft → Breathless, Breathless, Breathless By Ancient Champion #Film #Cinema
Breathless, Breathless, Breathless
Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague is on the BFI player
outsideleft.com
“Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.” - Ted Chiang Source: “Exhalation” (short story, 2008), the narrator’s closing valediction to whoever may eventually discover its record. #weirdquote #weirdart #weirdsynthart
Writers Against the War on Gaza has launched The Living Record, an oral archive featuring eulogies delivered by journalists across the Gaza Strip to their martyred peers. buff.ly/RAdQkvX
There is now an archive of eulogies given by Palestinian journalists to their martyred colleagues.
“[They] are the hands that have kept every standard of humanity from collapse, that have kept the world from transforming entirely into a dark, oppressive, savage world. A world like a jungle; thou…
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“Robots throughout the world. We, the first International organization of Rossum’s Universal Robots, proclaim man our enemy, and an outlaw in the universe.” - Karel Čapek Source: R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), Act II, the robot manifesto read aloud by Domin.
#WednesdayWritingPrompt municipal weather, privately owned / tomorrow leaking from a checkout receipt / present tense: nonrefundable / blue light under the fingernails #WritingPrompt #amwriting #SurrealWriting #ProsePoetry #WeirdLit #Weirdfiction #NewWeird #SpecFic #SciFi #writing #WeirdWrites
“‘Sorcery and sanctity,’ said Ambrose, ‘these are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life.’” - Arthur Machen. Source: “The White People,” Prologue, 1904.
This week's creative writing prompt: municipal weather, privately owned / tomorrow leaking from a checkout receipt / present tense: nonrefundable / blue light under the fingernails #writing #writingprompt #writingcommunity #weirdwrites
#WeirdWrites Prompt Drop of the Week - Obscura Fantastica
#WeirdWrites is our weekly invitation to make something strange, unfinished, unruly, tender, ridiculous, impossible, or difficult to shelve. This week’s creative writing prompt: municipal weather, pri...
obscurafantastica.pika.page
“Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them.” - Samuel Butler Source: “Darwin Among the Machines,” a letter published in the Christchurch Press on June 13, 1863, later reprinted in Canterbury Pieces.
These books by Fred Turner, Shoshana Zuboff, Sarah Wynn-Williams, and more expose the myths of Silicon Valley. buff.ly/nSxnIWg
Eight Books That Puncture the Myths of Silicon Valley
These are strange times for Silicon Valley. “Tech” no longer feels like a discrete industry, or a cluster of upstart companies in Palo Alto riding the optimism of the Obama years. It…
lithub.com
“You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Source: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818 edition, Volume III, Chapter III).
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.” - Shirley Jackson Source: The Haunting of Hill House (1959, novel)
“The universe is cold and vast and cares nothing for us. We are insects buzzing in the dark, waiting for the boot to drop.” - Laird Barron Source: The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (2007, short story collection)
“Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence.” - W. E. B. Du Bois, short story “The Comet,” collected in Darkwater. Du Bois uses mass extinction to empty the modern city of its social certainties before examining which prejudices survive the catastrophe.
“There are places upon the earth’s surface which must be left alone, where the veil between the seen and the unseen is thin as gossamer.” - Algernon Blackwood Source: "The Willows" (1907, novella)
“Science fiction is not about the future; science fiction is in dialogue with the present.” - Samuel R. Delany Source: Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (1984, critical essay)
