Hallo friends and welcome, new subscribers!

In today’s newsletter:

• Event and byline news and recordings

• HUMANS: A Monstrous History in paperback (17 March)

• Historical fiction recommendations (and reflections on reading too many books at once)

• Two great podcasts

Event and byline news and recordings

In-person: Linnean Society (London), Thurs 5th March, 6—8pm (lecture, q & a, book sales [with a discount!] & signing, reception). Tickets here.

Recording: My webinar from the ‘Critical Perspectives on “AI” in Education’ series is on their YouTube channel. I talked about how education should reduce the distance between students and the world around them, not to introduce additional filters. I debunk the myth that one can treat LLM-based genAI like a smart assistant who has just graduated from college and can be trained to do certain things. In fact, it’s better understood as an industrial spy and saboteur.

Byline: My latest LA Times op-ed has been syndicated and in news outlets in four other states. If the LAT link takes you to a paywall (happens to some folks) you should be able to access the whole essay (complete with an alternative, Bad Bunny, cover image) via The Seattle Times and the Yakima Herald (Washington).

Weird Pride Day: I was part of a panel conversation, Monstrous Pride. It will go live on YouTube on Wednesday, 4th March. There’s more about the celebration, its history, and earlier recordings on the Weird Pride Day website.

HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY is out in paperback this month!

HUMANS will be out in paperback from the University of California Press on March 17th! Use the discount code UCPSAVE30 at the checkout to get 30% off almost all UCP books when ordering directly from the press or from their UK-based distributor, Wiley. More instructions are on my website (directly below the book cover). Some free excerpts and spinoff essays are also on my website.

The book is available to pre-order wherever books are sold. If you’re planning on buying it - for yourself, for someone else, for your present drawer - it would be fantastic if you were to pre-order it. Pre-orders show the press and retailers that there’s interest in a book. That encourages the press to direct marketing and publicity efforts towards it, and retailers to stock it.

Historical novels out this month (one per eye…)

The world is on fire, billionaires have broken the media, education, and almost everything else, and the loser who amassed (note verb choice) his dragon hoard by first directing a wrecking-ball at the publishing industry has now shuttered the Books section of the Washington Post. Word-of-mouth as a means of keeping books and the arts alive has never been more important.

If you can tell two people this week about books, arts, or culture you’re enjoying, you will have made the world a better place. Here are some novels I’m enjoying:

Anna Caig, The Wise Witch of Orkney - just out this week

L. C. Winter, Spider, Spider - out 5th March

Eoghan Walls, Field Notes from an Extinction - out 3rd March

I’m THAT PERSON who is simultaneously reading three novels. Hey, if this were the nineteenth century we would reading other things while awaiting the latest instalment of a Dickens novel in a newspaper, right?

But this is too much of a good thing. As my friend (and historian of medieval maps and monsters) Asa Mittman put it to me last week, “Always be closing.” This comes from the 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross, about four real estate agents who come up against a motivational trainer. The trainer’s key mantra, “always be closing”, refers to always being in motion towards closing a sale.

This was Asa’s advice to my observation that so much of the world today triggers a potential monster-related story that I have ideas (and rantings) half-drafted all over my computer, but relatively few of them get pitched much less written up and out in the world.

I’m thinking about how this sentiment can be adapted to manage my propensity to start shiny things before finishing other shiny things: begin a thing at a moment when I can give it the time and attention it deserves, in a way that the experience will stay with me or that something that matters will go out into the world.

Podcasts

For current affairs with hilarity, you try the UK-based podcast Oh God, What Now?, on the usual podcast channels and YouTube. The interview with Cory Doctorow on his book, Enshittification, is a must-listen for educators and, really, anyone who uses the internet.

For writing and the creative life, I’ve been loving the London Writers’ Salon podcast. The LWS is a treasure-house of community and resources, including the free Writers’ Hour zooms four times a day.