Graham Sleight

@grahamsleight.bsky.social

373 Followers 254 Following

In the bureau, typewriters quiet Confetti falls from every window Throwing hats up in the air A city perfect in every detail He/him

Sea Grapes BY DEREK WALCOTI That sail which leans on light, tired of islands, a schooner beating up the Caribbean for home, could be Odysseus, home-bound on the Aegean; that father and husband's longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name in every gull's outcry. This brings nobody peace. The ancient war between obsession and responsibility will never finish and has been the same for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since Troy sighed its last flame, and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the conclusions of exhausted surf. The classics can console. But not enough.
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OLD STREET
Friday, 10 July 2026 20:00 EDT 01:00 BST next day • Very Good Dogs In Speculative Fiction Salon C-D, Duration: 60 mins Andrea Hairston Caitlin Rozakis Graham Sleight (moderator) Melissa Caruso Let's celebrate the many very good dogs in speculative fiction, and the roles they play: companion, conscience, comic relief, and hero. Which authors need more training, which are Best in Show, and what does it take these days to get rated a fourteen-out-of-ten?
Saturday, 11 July 2026 14:00 EDT 19:00 BST • The Sword of the Lyctor Create - Collaborate, Duration: 60 mins Graham Sleight Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series has provoked much discussion, both online and here at Readercon. There are still many unanswered questions, though; in this solo talk, critic Graham Sleight will try to address some of them. What might happen in Alecto the Ninth? How many Homestuck references is too many? Is Muir critiquing The Book of the New Sun? Expect spoilers for the series so far, wild speculations, and, of course, dad- jokes.
A copy of The Recollections by Christopher Priest
Go every Saturday to the hot bath where you will see naked men.
LADY CROOM: You surely do not supply an hermitage without a hermit? NOAKES: Indeed, madam -- LADY CROOM: Come, come, Mr Noakes. If I am promised a fountain I expect it to come with water. What hermits do you have? NOAKES: I have no hermits, my lady. LADY CROOM: Not one? I am speechless. NOAKES: I am sure a hermit can be found. One could advertise. LADY CROOM: Advertise? NOAKES: In the newspapers. LADY CROOM: But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom one can have complete confidence.
1. AMB. The sight is dismal, And our affairs from England come too late. The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd, That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Where should we have our thanks?
A BBC news story: “Curacao become smallest nation to qualify for World Cup”
“We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards." - Tim Berners-Lee, "Information Management: A Proposal" “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H P Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
Podcast titled “Dem Paralysis & McConnell’s Twilight Era”
24 October 1785 The Tooth-Ach so very bad all night and the same this Morn' that I sent for John Reeves the Farrier who lives at the Hart and often draws Teeth for People, to draw one for me. He returned with my Man about i 1 o'clock this Morning and he pulled it out for me the first Pull, but it was a monstrous Crash and more so, it being one of the Eye Teeth, it had but one Fang but that was very long. I gave Johnny Reeves for drawing it O. 2. 6. A great pain in the Jaw Bone continued all Day and Night but nothing so bad as the Tooth Ach. The Reverend James Woodforde
A podcast app showing an episode on Jean-Paul Sartre: 'Being and Nothingness' as “Not Found”
The ABC/538 election forecast page, saying: As of July 21 at 2 p.m. Eastern, President Joe Biden has suspended his campaign for the 2024 Democratic Party nomination for president. We will publish an election forecast including the new presumptive Democratic nominee, when such nominee is announced.” And then, in big red letters, “Forecast suspended”.
In books as well as T.V., series tend to decay after their templates satisfactorily establish who’s who and what’s what. I wonder if the very early ‘‘Adept’s Gambit’’ was not the last of -the Fafhrd-Mouser stories in which something really happened humanly, that is, in which somebody actually changed.
Another pastiche, youthfully energetic and rather appealing, is Steven Utley’s and Howard Waldrop’s ‘“Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole,”’ which gives Frankenstein’s creature further adventures and a beautiful, blind lady to fall in love with. Without the charm of the borrowings, however (Lovecraft, Henley, Poe, Melville, Symmes, (Mary) Shelley, Edgar Rice Bur- roughs and doubtless others I miss- ed), the story would not make it, and although it’s genuinely enjoy- able to watch the Malaprop Kids excitedly rummaging through The Classics, somebody should’ve warned them against putting ‘‘erst- while’’ and ‘‘displacement activity’’ in the same sentence (except in straight parody) and that ‘‘arcing’’ and ‘‘stomped’’ are not words. There are other screamers, my favorite being ‘‘willing to cope with the basin’s large predators on a moment-to-moment basis.”’ There is also an Expository Lump on p. 91 that should’ve been given to the brontosaur (on p. 82) to eat.
"There's something wrong," said Millicent. "There's something very wrong with almost every-thing." They ploughed back through the coarse grass to the brick path up to the porch. The owls seemed indeed to have retired once more to their carnivorous bothies.
A listing for a 2010-published Year’s Best SFF anthology, claiming the book is in Middle English.
Lyric from “Guilty as Sin”: Drowning in the Blue Nile He sent me "Downtown Lights" I hadn't heard it in a while
POETRY FOUNDATION Spring and Fall BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS to a young child Márgarét, áre you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
A screenshot of the full text of the Nature Medicine commentary "After millions of preventable deaths, climate change must be treated like a health emergency." (The full text doesn't fit in the alt text, I'm sorry)
Scrambled eggs, cheese, and arugula on ciabatta.
'An odd thing, life, Jeeves.' Very odd, sir.' You never know where you are with it, do you? To take a simple instance, I little thought half an hour ago that I would be sitting here in carefree pyjamas, watching you pack for the getaway. A very different future seemed to confront me.”
The first page of P G Wodehouse’s “Uncle Fred Flits By”.
NYT Spelling Bee denying that Airwolf is a word.
The Community fire/pizza meme
Chauncey Gardner from Being There
A picture of Air Force One with the caption “(Freedom Noises)”
A BBC news headline: “Free blood pressure checks in barber shops”
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Elon Musk’s Douglas Adams fandom described and criticised
Today’s NYT “Spelling bee” contest, refusing to recognise the word Affine.
An invitation from “X”, formerly known as Twitter, to celebrate my anniversary on their platform.
Arthur Dent saying, “This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
significant moments in the history of the University of Oxford: 1248: royal charter granted 1598- Bodley reestablishes the University Library 1866: non-Anglicans allowed to take degrees 1920: women allowed to take degrees 2018: readers allowed to take coffee into the Bodleian
Cover of Lord of Thunder by Andre Norton, featuring a giant cat & a spaceship
Guardian correction stating that the number of atoms in the sun is 10^57, not 1057
Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch
Chris Morris, The Day Today
Book extract describing an evening in 1930 when the BBC decided there was “no news”
Current me, befuddled.
Young me, looking intolerable.
A clear Covid test