Eddie Philips

Writing science fiction comedy. First novel done, second in progress. Here for the books, the genre, and the conversation.

Coming next August from Tor, my new novel about a roadtrip across many worlds: Sunlit Uplands. Available for preorder now, and this is the beautiful cover

Comedy and mystery are the same trick run at different speeds. Both work by deciding how long to keep the reader a step behind, and both fall apart the moment they let you get ahead.

Around 300 authors have brought individual copyright claims against Meta over allegations that it copied their books and used them to train its AI models without permission. 👇

Magazines have quietly worked out that a submissions window open for a single week pulls in more than a permanently open door ever did. Nothing concentrates the mind like being able to see the end of the thing.

Have you heard? Charles R. Saunders' two Dossouye books, Sword & Soul with a woman hero--which have been unavailable since his death--are getting a second life. For an intro to the books, here are Bill Ward's reviews at Black Gate: www.blackgate.com/fiction-revi... www.blackgate.com/2012/07/09/d...

ICYMI: The Society of Authors (SoA) launched a global, ethical AI charter at the Creators Emergency Summit in London on 13th October, aimed at “defining how generative AI services should be deployed to help protect and support human creators”. 👇

Wishing Alan Garner a very, very happy 92nd birthday.

October does something to a reading list. The clocks haven't even gone back yet and I'm already reaching for the books that take the dark seriously.

One more cover reveal! Here is the very cool UK cover for my novel THE FIST OF MEMORY which comes out in just about 2 weeks! Its great to see these characters that have lived in my head for so long finally illustrated and real and making their way to your bookshelves as we speak.

We're now 95% funded with 61 hours & $2300 left to go! This is Kickstarter, so it's all-or-nothing, meaning if we don't reach $50K the campaign doesn't fund. So if you've been thinking about backing, now's the time—and if you already have backed (thank you!), please spread the word! bit.ly/LS-NM-26

Our subscription drive is closing in on its goal. So far, as part of our 20th anniversary celebrations, we've managed to give everyone but our authors a raise. We're only 20 subscriptions away upping author pay from 14 to 15 cents/word. clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/

The second book in a series is a different problem from the first. The first has to earn its world; the second has to make the case that the world was worth coming back to. Quietly the harder of the two.

And the full list of winners can be found on our blog: britishfantasysociety.org/who-won-the-...

We promised you regular new reviews of older SFF - and here’s the first of many! Paul March-Russell on 1956’s Tiger! Tiger! (or The Stars My Destination, depending who you ask) by Alfred Bester: a picaresque, a revenge tragedy, a quest, a romance. Edited, of course, by @kateem.bsky.social.

Most of a plot is bookkeeping: who knows what, and when they found it out. Get the ledger wrong and no amount of atmosphere will cover for it.

Meet Alabi, who's just left home and is about to discover the resistance. THE CITY OF FACTORIES, @naomieselojor.bsky.social's debut steampunk novella sent in an alternative Nigeria, is out in SIX DAYS. Direct pre-orders come with a cover art card: ⚙ links.ruadanbooks.com/TCOF #BookSky #TBR

The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai" today, our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...

My interview in the new issue of @orionsbeltmagazine.bsky.social is now free-to-read! I talk about my story "Brainstem Disco, 2191," how I write flash vs. poetry, and thinking in multiple languages. www.orions-belt.net/archives/int...

A weekend ritual on here: someone asks what everyone's reading, and a hundred answers come back, not one of them selling a thing. Easy to forget that's what the place is for.

"These are the first shoots of a future folklore emerging from an urban Britain that might look soulless and secular but under the surface remains very strange indeed, rippled with weird undercurrents." @garetherees.bsky.social

It all started on this day. Thank you for a wonderful twenty years.

A new magazine issue going live is one of the few things in this field that arrives as good news rather than a deadline. A whole contents page of people who finished the thing they said they would.

Going live, October 1.

Singer Wins 2026 Sturgeon Award locusmag.com/2026/09...

I really liked the long central section of this; a great character portrait in a grounded near future France. But there's also a short framing story that I didn't think was necessary. locusmag.com/review/the-h...

I keep noticing that a mystery and a joke are built the same way: withhold one crucial thing, and the moment you hand it over everything the reader assumed rearranges itself. The only real difference is whether they gasp or laugh.

Karen Haber reviews URSULA K. LE GUIN’S BOOK OF CATS by Ursula K. Le Guin: “... this new bijou-sized volume celebrating the writer’s deep engagement with cats throughout her life is a delight that should interest readers”

"Vanya and the Dog Witch" @walterwriter.bsky.social, BCS #447 "As the tale unfolds through its traditional three attempts, we realize the true importance of Vanya’s dog stories, and the true nature of the witch’s magic. Recommended" @mariahaskins.com Locus beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/vany...

There's a particular pleasure in a second-hand book that falls open at someone else's favourite page. You inherit a stranger's attention, whether you asked for it or not.

Vanessa Fogg reviews new work by @genni.bsky.social: “CRIMSON IN QUIETUS depicts love and rela-tionships in a variety of forms, and depicts platonic love as not lesser than romantic.”

The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Riders of Rohan". Specifically, Éomer, the first of several characters who seem to have been designed to echo Boromir, and to reflect on his strengths and weaknesses. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-...

Kaleidotrope re-opens to fiction and poetry submissions for the last time this year in about a month (October 18-24). Will you be ready? Will any of us? kaleidotrope.net/guidelines/

Most of writing comedy is withholding the fact that it's comedy. A line only lands if the reader was still taking you at your word half a second before it did. Tip your hand early and there's nothing left to give way.

See @NussbaumAbigail’s review of A TRADE OF BLOOD by Robert Jackson Bennett: “Bennett’s focus is also on the way that grotesque, even monstrous technologies are deployed for mundane ends.”

China Miéville is back. And so are the dead. 💀 The Rouse is a 1,264-page epic of grief, war, ghosts and necromancy spanning the twentieth century. Fourteen years after his last solo novel, Miéville returns with something enormous, strange and unmistakably his own. gnofhorror.com/the-rouse-by...

Returning to a draft after time away is a strange sort of audit. Some of it reads like a stranger's confident guesswork; some was clearly written on a good day you can't reconstruct. Most of the work is telling the two apart before you reach for the red pen.

Goodnight from the last tram to Ashcourt’s terminus, where Nell Carlin’s shade is furious to find she can’t get off like the other passengers. Goodnight from Freya Braddock, inadvertently discovering the power of summoning through Fuzzy-Felt design. Goodnight from Hookland

Fair correction. Give him a Bugs to lecture and he'll happily hold forth as a super genius; it's only the Roadrunner that reduces him to silence and the mail-order catalogue. Says something about the company.

A book someone has clearly read twice has a quiet to it you can feel before you open it. The spine has stopped pretending to be new, which is usually when I like them best.

Could *you* handle caregiving for six rambunctious, destructive little drakelings? Another good story from @translunartl.bsky.social, this one from @gwenckatz.bsky.social (Love the names, Gwen!) translunartravelerslounge.com/2026/08/15/d...

Ents on the move www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

Apropos to a WorldCon convo: I’d say that the most fashion inaccurate issue I see in historical fantasies or genre fantasy is a lack of hats. Not wearing hats is a very new thing. Hats were essential wear outdoors for a looooooong time. And we have collectively erased them.

The short story and novelette Hugos both came out of Clarkesworld this year, and Neil Clarke took best short form editor along with them. Easy to forget how much of the field's best work still runs through the small magazines. Good to be reminded.

IT'S ROBOT DAY! My new novelette “Ladd’s Robot Repair” is free to read today in Lightspeed! A fiercely independent scavver boy. An overprotective robot butler. Mutant children, signal-beasts, and the end of the world. This was an absolute joy to write. I hope you enjoy it!

Odd how comfortably comedy and dread share a room. Both depend on the reader knowing a little more than the character does, and both come down to when you finally let them in on it. Getting the two to take turns is most of the job at the moment.

The second part of @thehubble101.bsky.social's review of 2026's Hugo Award for Best Novel shortlist is now up at Strange Horizons, featuring The Incandescent, Shroud, and Death of the Author. How are the books? What are they about? Which will win? And most importantly ... what does it all *mean*?

Now it can be told! The sequel to AUTOMATIC NOODLE is coming next fall ... get ready for NOODLE UNION! (Also note that my editor Stephanie Stein has a way with dad jokes.)