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Happy New Year everyone, and welcome, new subscribers!

In today’s newsletter:

• Complex Chinese edition of HUMANS

• New essay: Can the archive make a monster of a historian?

• Next event: Linnean Society, London, Thursday 5th March, 6pm

• Best essays of 2025 listing for…a Star Trek essay!

Humans: A Monstrous History in Chinese!

I’m delighted that the first of the international editions of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY is out today, from Gusa Publishing (Taiwan)! The book is available everywhere except mainland China. If you know anyone who might like the book, please do share the news with them (and stay tuned to learn when further translations and editions are out in the world, as and when I get the green light to share information).

I’m excited that every edition will have its own cover, designed for the moment and the market in question. (I shall have zero say, fyi, although I did have a say in the original, also magnificent, cover).

I looked at the complex Chinese cover and thought, woah, Michelangelo meets Murderbot! Those of you who have dipped into the original of the book would probably agree that the range of moods and material is at least as wide as the Michelangelo-to-Murderbot universe.

“Can an archive make a monster of a historian?” - a new essay

As some of you know, my PhD is in the fields of Renaissance studies and history of science. I trained at, ahem, a pretty traditional institution. To be sure, I was the proverbial rebel teenager roaring into the building on a motorcycle (as it were) and disagreeing with half the things my advisors said. At the same time, I did throw my brain and tears into ticking the mimsy-pimsy boxes, acquired some sick skillz, and came out of the ordeal still alive.

I was a curator at the British Library Map Library for much of that time, going half-time to fit in the PhD half-time. As the years rolled by I came to appreciate both the traditional parts of my training (Renaissance Latin; iconography; map curator stuff) and the choices I made, from the start, to ask questions and make connections between maps, science, and monsters that were the opposite of what the curators and historians around me assumed would be the case.

My two-book journey through monsters and monster-making are the subject of an essay in Contingent Magazine on how an archive can make a monster out of a historian.

Book event in London, Thursday March 5th

I’ll be speaking at the Linnean Society in London on Thursday March 5th at 6pm! There will be a book signing and reception afterwards. And if you have some time to spare beforehand you might wander into their current exhibition on Wonder. You’ll need to register in order to attend.

Essay featured in Reactor Magazine’s 'Best articles…”

In smol publication news, I was thrilled that my essay on Star Trek: TNG’s Borg Collective double episode appeared on Reactor’s list of some of its best articles on movies, TV and pop culture. For someone with a PhD from somewhere prim and proper, just getting published in Reactor - with words on a show that built my bones and my soul - was precious.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for a subscriber-only special issue soon (it won’t be on the public web archive).