Scarlet Ferret - Special Edition Ebooks 🇵🇸

Have you pre-ordered your Special Edition ebook of A Very Fermi Christmas yet? 🎄🪐💥

Heads up: this website also "reviews" publishers, writer-beware-style. Lists big reliable publishers as safe, warns about many known scams, and then... Lists a few scam presses as "safe and reliable". Couched in professional language with buzzwords about transparent contracts and payment schedules.

Oof!

So, hypothetically, how much would a book plug need to directly insult Bryan Johnson to get included in this email blast?

Meta hit with its BIGGEST FINE EVER → A fine bigger than some countries GDP! 🤯 A judge in New Mexico has ordered Zuck's Meta to pay $25 BILLION after a trial found it had lied to the public about how user data was handled. It's great to see that New Mexico is holding Big Tech accountable. 👏

This is the essential point! If we expect someone to 'do the work' of reading and reviewing a book, we should expect them to be paid properly for that work. And this goes for so much other underpaid work out there.

Incidentally (and only somewhat self-servingly) an exception is @vallescurarule.bsky.social's epic and in-depth review of Fermi's Wake in this March's issue of Interzone. Aside from what he says about my work (he likes it) it really shows what a book review *can* be. interzone.press/iz-304/

I think at least part of this comes down to stagnant/declining per word rates, and that reading is a time and labour intensive activity. Reading an entire novel for a piece of work that might not pay more than £150 is not a sustainable business.

A book deal with Penguin Random House, the world's largest book publisher, was a dream for two Palestinian authors who had spent the last two years working on a book detailing Palestinian history. 🇵🇸 #BooksOnPalestine

remember when Elon took over Twitter and was having the engineers document how many lines of code they were writing as if more was better and not a sign they were not very good at coding

Oh no 😭 One of the last members of the USS Enterprise has left. RIP Walter Marvin Koenig (1936-2026) Star Trek, Babylon 5, Moontrap, The Starlost, The Questor Tapes, Futurama... What a career in sci-fi. I will miss Pavel Chekov. Again 😞

Just installed my 26-year-old copy of Word on a new desktop. I will never pay subscription fees for software I already paid for. I will go live in a shack in the woods first.

I’m a guest and I’m saaaaaur stoked 🤩

Star Trek, Babylon 5, that crazy fantastic film, Moontrap. An amazing career. RIP Walter Koenig.

I wrote a little guide to my books here (which includes links to all the CORRECT versions to purchase): tomcox.substack.com/p/a-brief-gu...

‪A lot of people think I’m joking when I say we need to traumatize children with movies again, but NO I 100% mean it.‬

Find more Goodreads alternatives here! 💜

I don't believe us Goodreads alternatives should be competing with each other. A healthy ecosystem of many alternatives is better for everyone. That's why I love @pagebound.bsky.social's approach here. Building a sustainable and enjoyable reading site💜.

I think what he means is that we'll ignore other real technical developments we should support, totally misunderstand this one, throw millions of £s at it to try and make it "a thing", and then end up with one 'AI Business Hub' in Barrow, just before embarrassingly forgetting about the whole lot.

Posting one SFF book cover every day until I get tired. Day 5: A TIME OF OMENS by Katharine Kerr (1992) Cover Illustration: Geoff Taylor

I got my public library card today, so it's official: I'm a civilian. Most of what I read are ebooks, so of course, I signed up for my public library's Libby account and I turned off searches for AI content, here's how you can, too: www.reddit.com/r/books/s/gA...

seems like "on the orders of a nazi every major news outlet on the planet hounded an innocent man to death because he's black" should be one of the biggest stories of the year

YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED BY THE GOD PLUTONIUM

This year, we are calling on communities all over the world to picket their local Apple Stores on the next iPhone launch day. It's time to let the new CEO, John Ternus, know that the world has had enough of companies prioritizing profits over people.

Apple's Against Apartheid is organizing global protests tomorrow (10/23/26) in support of their campaign against Apple's role in + complicity with child & forced labor in Africa & apartheid in the Middle East Check out the locations; try to attend if you can: applesagainstapartheid.com#get-involved

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c1j...

Well, that's just showing off! 🥹

… Social media continued!

With all the changes happening with META, I want to make sure people can still find me and follow my work, sharing here to so people have options…

The @cosmiclighthouse.co.uk #Murderbot graphic novel is a work of love for the subject matter, with @marthawells.com herself as consultant. www.kickstarter.com/projects/cos...

That cover has a low sperm whale count.

all the trouble of making a nice edition of my boy and then you put the wrong kind of whale on it?? like how many more whale facts did you need him to put in this thing

Hamza Yousef on Sky just now has been asked if Israel has the right to exist. He pointed out that in all his years of TV interviews and, despite the tens and tens of thousands of Palestinian people being murdered, he has never been asked whether Palestinians have the right to exist.

🥁🥁-tsch!

Remembering the 116 Children and 28 Adults who tragically perished in the Aberfan Disaster 60yrs ago today. 109 children and 5 teachers died at the local school when it took the brunt of one of the 7 ‘spoil tips’ collapsing & burying all in its path.

Aberfan, 60 mlynedd wedyn: ‘Y sefydliadau pwerus sy’n edrych ar ôl eu buddiannau eu hunain’ Chwe degawd wedi trychineb Aberfan, mae meddyg yn cwestiynu’r diffyg atebolrwydd a grym sefydliadau dros bobol gyffredin #gwleidyddiaeth ✍️ Llinos Dafydd

"The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It [cannot] anticipat[e] any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with." — Ada Lovelace, 1843

I hate this narrative that planetary vandalism will "dismay environmental campaigners" I'm an environmental campaigner because I want to stand up for the millions of other species we share our home with Campaigners aren't doing it for themselves - we're a voice for the voiceless

TOM JONES in 1970. (check out the tiled motif — you can take the boy out of Wales but… 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿)

Sticking to my aim of a monthly round-up of my romance reading, as an effort against the dwindling number of review spaces.

"Almost 9m people.. are at risk of needing a food bank.. that includes 2.9m children.. 1 in 5 people saying there household has run out of food & couldn't afford to buy more.." As one food bank user explains: "The gap between what we earn & what we need is ever increasing" #GMB