Fiona Moore πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦
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drfionamoore.bsky.social
Fiona Moore πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦
@drfionamoore.bsky.social

BSFA Award winning SFF author represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency. Anthropologist who wandered into a business school. Author of Management Lessons from Game of Thrones (2022).

www.fiona-moore.com

www.adoctorofmanythings.com .. more

Fiona Moore is a Canadian academic, writer and critic based in London (UK). She is best known for writing works of TV criticism, short fiction, stage and audio plays, and academic texts on the anthropology of business and organisations. Her research work has been described by Professor Roger Goodman at the University of Oxford's Nissan Institute as "engaging head-on with the growing and increasingly complex literature on transnationalism and globalisation and relating it constructively to key ideas in symbolic anthropology." A graduate of the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford, she is Chair of Business Anthropology at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Shorter Fiction, and in 2023 she won the BSFA Award for Short Non-Fiction. .. more

Business 31%
Communication & Media Studies 20%
Pinned
Updated my calling card again.

Adequacy of bike locks doesn't matter, if a thief's determined, they'll get through it. It's more having one at all that matters. So not going to lock-shame anyone.

New on my blog: the last of my holiday stories, Misrule. It's got a Morag and Seamus vibe, but filtered through folk horror: adoctorofmanythings.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/s...
Stories for the Holidays: Misrule
Twelfth Night is traditionally the end of the holidays, so let’s celebrate with the last of the Stories for the Holidays: Misrule. This is a story that’s getting more pertinent by the m…
adoctorofmanythings.wordpress.com

"Greetings! I come as a representative of the Planet Earth to extend the hand of friendship and to warn you not to waste your money on watching Avatar: Fire And Ash."

Exactly. And cars weren't actually better than carriages-- I have a folder full of contemporary jokes about how awful Model Ts were. Slow, always breaking down, dreadful suspension.

Also, for what it's worth, five years ago I would have said that hybrid- and video-conferencing were becoming normative and would dominate the sector in the future. But now, most people have reverted back to in-person events, except in cases where they have to use video for practical reasons.

They're being adopted only because they've been inserted into almost every programme that people use daily, and again, that wasn't inevitable. That was a deliberate choice by manufacturers, and also is the result of a number of other things that weren't inevitable, e.g. the MS Office near-monopoly.

We do. Plus we've had 75+ years of a teleological narrative about the inevitability of technological change, which means people usually just accept the soundbites without thinking about them.

Coda: It also occurs to me to say that carriage drivers have *never* entirely gone out of business. If you don't believe me, go to Oktoberfest, or Central Park in tourist season, or attend a sulky or gig race. The funeral home near me does horse-drawn hearses. So there. 6/5.

If you're saying the invention of AI is like the invention of cars, then 1) you're saying it's not, actually, inevitable, 2) it's not actually a game-changer, and 3) it's not actually going to put the people out of work that you think it will.

...the car was invented, not a lot of owners drove them. What they'd do, is hire someone else to drive them. Usually... *people who drove horse-drawn vehicles*. So there wasn't mass unemployment of carriage drivers, just a shift in what they were driving. My point as regards AI is that 5/x

...even with cars becoming cheaper, more common, and more aggressively pushed, animal-drawn vehicles were still common sights on urban streets at least till my mother's childhood in the 1950s (she remembered bread wagons and milk wagons), so there was still work for drivers. And also, when 4/x

...advertising, lobbying, controlling prices and sometimes actively going after public transport companies, with and without collusion of governments, to make sure more people bought their products. And neither the assembly line, nor the campaigning, are inevitable. Second: 3/x

First: Because for quite a long time after cars were invented, they weren't particularly common. The game-changer wasn't cars, it was the assembly line, which allowed for mass production and therefore more widespread ownership. Relatedly, of course, the companies with the assembly lines 2/x

As someone who writes about the car industry, I've been feeling more and more bothered by the tendency to argue for the supposed inevitability of AI by comparing it to cars. Like "the car was invented and carriage drivers went out of business". Because no, that's wrong on two counts: 1/x
I find the idea that technology β€œevolves” via some sort of passive internal force of history extremely pernicious. The idea that things simply improve rather than very specific choices and efforts being made in targeted areas that then require new infrastructures to maintain is really dangerous.

I did wonder.
If you’re doing #Veganuary this month, or even just aiming to eat less meat, you might try plant-based alternatives. How are these made and how does chemistry improve their appearance and flavour?

This edition of #PeriodicGraphics in @cenmag.bsky.social has the answers: cen.acs.org/food/food-sc...

Reposted by Fiona Moore

If you’re doing #Veganuary this month, or even just aiming to eat less meat, you might try plant-based alternatives. How are these made and how does chemistry improve their appearance and flavour?

This edition of #PeriodicGraphics in @cenmag.bsky.social has the answers: cen.acs.org/food/food-sc...
I find the idea that technology β€œevolves” via some sort of passive internal force of history extremely pernicious. The idea that things simply improve rather than very specific choices and efforts being made in targeted areas that then require new infrastructures to maintain is really dangerous.

Reposted by Fiona Moore

Wolves good.

Not a movie or show, just, like, the animal. Wolves.

They're pretty cool.

If you're in London, why not visit the Black Lodge?

whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...
Buy cinema tickets for Step into the Black Lodge | BFI Southbank
whatson.bfi.org.uk

Reposted by Fiona Moore

We're calling for submissions to the Black Archive from disabled authors and authors of colour, who we know have been underrepresented in the range.

Please spread this as widely as you can, as we want it to reach as many eligible authors as possible. Thank you.

obversebooks.co.uk/blackarchive...

On the etymology of the word "Trek" in "Star Trek", and why it matters.

For New Years', a piece of flash fiction inspired by my senior cat, about a tortie who is a very special old lady: trashcatlit.com/the-omega-cat/
The Omega Cat
Fiona Moore β€œWhat’s an anti-vax movement?” The little girl reached out to stroke the small tortoiseshell cat sitting on the man’s lap in the armchair by the fire. β€œGently, Lucilla, gently,” the man…
trashcatlit.com

Reposted by Fiona Moore

A new year and we've a new issue of fabulous feline flash for you.
So, go outside and come in again. Demand snacks. Scratch the carpet. Then get your paws on this link:
trashcatlit.com/feline-flash...
Devour, savour, ask for more.
Trash Cat let the cats in the bin and it's smashing 🦝
Feline Flash Pop-Up
For this Pop-Up, writers were asked to make cats the centre of a flash fiction. These twenty contributors really hit the brief with excellent feline POV, great voice and a joyful mixture of humour,…
trashcatlit.com
Tracking, and indeed dragging, the word "trek": latestartrek.substack.com/p/on-the-wor...
On the Word β€˜Trek’
Trek: Strange New Words
latestartrek.substack.com

Godzilla, but make it Homeric!

Also the whole point of the story in the 1001 Nights is that the genie could, indeed should, be put back inside the bottle.

Fourth Wing.
What book is Aragorn reading? Wrong answers only.

Reposted by Fiona Moore

At the request of one of my substack subscribers, I have reposted this: profadamroberts.substack.com/p/godziliad
Godziliad
Epica Gojira
profadamroberts.substack.com

Erin's arguments do not convince me as regards her core thesis.

Also, the people who say "But these days AI is in all the spellcheckers and the search engines" do know that you can switch *off* the AI in the spellcheckers and the search engines, yes?

Reposted by Fiona Moore

I think the thing that pisses me off most about that article by the lady with the insufferable face on why indie publishers/authors MUST use AI for the 'non-creative' tasks is that I'm an author currently in a state of deep depression and overwhelm, and you know what I use instead of AI? COMMUNITY.