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Ridley Park
@ridleypark.bsky.social
52 followers 51 following 70 posts
Speculative Fiction Author. http://RidleyPark.blog
Hemo Sapiens: Awakening • Propensity • Sustenance • Temporal Babel
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ridleypark.bsky.social
Writing isn’t a 100-metre dash—but it’s being treated like one. Why does the hint of AI get the craft accused of crime? 👉 ridleypark.blog/2025/11/12/c...
#WritingLife #AI #AuthorLife #AmWriting #Blog #Philosophy #Psychology #Art #Creativity #Books #Society #Madness #technology #robots
November 13, 2025 at 3:33 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/08/w...

#books #amwriting #editing #fiction #indyauthor #cowboys #starwars
Working with an Editor
Working with an editor shouldn’t be scary. Unless, of course, you frighten easily. Let’s begin with the great paranoia of writers everywhere: They’ll steal my idea! Relax. No one’s skulking through…
ridleypark.blog
November 9, 2025 at 2:50 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
🎥Propensity now has a book trailer. Check it out. 🎬
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0w...

#Propensity #RidleyPark #BookTrailer #SpeculativeFiction #Philosophy #PostmodernFiction #Amwriting #fiction #amreading
Propensity Trailer 1
YouTube video by Ridley Park
www.youtube.com
November 8, 2025 at 7:35 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Gave away 100 copies of Sustenance. Got 4 reviews.
One was a glorious 1-star hate read. The rest? Lost in the digital abyss. Still, I’d rather have a bad review than no readers.
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/06/r...
#Writing #Books #IndieAuthor #Readers #Fiction #WritingLife #IndieAuthor #AmWriting #blog
Rave Reviews
“I’d rather get reviews than sales.” “I’d rather get reviews than sales.” Yes, I actually said that. Possibly whilst caffeinated. I was chatting with a mate about book sales, and …
ridleypark.blog
November 7, 2025 at 2:46 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
In this post, I question the idea of making an audiobook. One size does not fit all.

👉 ridleypark.blog/.../02/shoul...

#books #fictionbooks #audiobooks #blogpost #amwriting #listening #fiction #Listen
November 2, 2025 at 7:49 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
In Simulacra (Ch 26 of Propensity), the copy replaces the real. A scene written as script, a morality performed for a camera no one controls.
ridleypark.blog/2025/11/01/s...
#LiteraryFiction #Simulacra #RidleyPark #Baudrillard #SpeculativeFiction #Books #AmWriting #Script #Manuscript #Fiction #crows
Simulacra – When the Camera Becomes the Conscience
“The room smells like a tin of low tide.” That’s the first line of Chapter 26, ‘Simulacra’, in Propensity. A small, airless room. A flickering light. Three teenagers – Teddy, Lena, Jama…
ridleypark.blog
November 1, 2025 at 11:18 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
A pair of Aces

philosophics.blog/2025/10/31/p...

#books #printing #publishing #amwriting #enlightenment #propensity #proof #fiction #nonfiction #philosophy #blogs #bookclub #paperback #clothbound #fancy
Propensity of the Illusion of Light
I just received two proof copies in the post this afternoon. Propensity I created a “Book Club Edition” of Propensity, a Ridley Park book of fiction primarily for the European market – …
philosophics.blog
October 31, 2025 at 9:11 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
New post: On accidental kinship with Stanisław Lem and the limits of originality.

Turns out my 'unique' story about alien consciousness and dual suns? Lem did it in 1961. Before the moon landing.

So what now?

ridleypark.blog/2025/10/22/o...

#WritingCommunity #SpecFic #Solaris #AmWriting
On Accidental Kinship and the Limits of Originality
I don’t read sci-fi. It rarely resonates with me. I’ve read many classics, but I don’t get the hype. As a speculative fiction author, I sometimes operate in an adjacent space – cl…
ridleypark.blog
October 22, 2025 at 4:35 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Sharing a review of my novel, Propensity, on my blog. Check it out. 👀📚 Leave your own review on Amazon or Goodreads – or comment on my blog. I'm not picky.

ridleypark.blog/2025/10/19/r...

#books #amwriting #AmWritingFiction #amreading #bookreview #bookreviewerswanted #blog
Review: Propensity
A stranger read Propensity—and understood it. That alone makes the review worth sharing. What follows is her take, my thoughts, and a small reminder that readers, like experiments, never behave as …
ridleypark.blog
October 19, 2025 at 4:55 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
I recommend Zamyatin's We. Written in 1921, it's a precursor to dystopian classics such as 1984 and Brave New World – better, at least relative to the depth of its political narrative.

ridleypark.blog/2025/10/15/r...

#books #classics #reading #AmReading #novels #dystopian #fiction #Literature
Reaching the Finish Line with Zamyatin, Le Guin, and Foucault Still in My Head
The book ends, as these things always do, with a sigh and a stack of annotated pages. I’ve just closed the cover on Zamyatin’s We, and, like a cigarette slipped into the afterword, there sat Ursula…
ridleypark.blog
October 15, 2025 at 3:47 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Stop quoting Orwell memes. Forget 1984 and Brave New World. The real mirror of our times is Zamyatin’s We: a world where we happily surrender ourselves to the algorithm.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/17/t...

#Dystopia #Orwell #CriticalTheory #Books #booksuggestions #Philosophy #Surveillance
The Wrong Dystopias: Why ‘We’ May Be the Book for Now
Every time the news cycle coughs up another surveillance scandal, someone posts an Orwell meme. When pharmaceutical companies peddle happy pills, a Huxley meme pops up. 1984 and Brave New World hav…
ridleypark.blog
September 17, 2025 at 6:11 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Octavia Butler’s Lilith in Dawn is meant as radical, but she ends up repeating archetypes of Western femininity. Judith Butler would see her as pure performativity.

My reflection → philosophics.blog/2025/09/08/b...

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #OctaviaButler #JudithButler #Postmodernism #AmReading
women looking in mirror with fractured reflections
September 11, 2025 at 4:08 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Aliens don’t breathe, but authors live off reviews. 💜
Thank you for reading Sustenance and sharing your words.

📝 New post: ridleypark.blog/2025/09/09/t...

#IndieAuthor #SciFiBooks #SpecFic #LiterarySciFi #WeirdLit #AlienFiction #BookTwitter #BookReview #KindleUnlimited #KindleBook #SciFi #Iowa
September 9, 2025 at 9:46 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
👽 Literary sci-fi meets cornfields and confusion.
Sustenance explores alien encounters, human projection, and awkward rural intimacy—with a healthy dose of crop-circle weirdness.
📕 Out now in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9VGH8FP

#SpecFic #SciFi #IndieAuthor #WeirdFiction
September 8, 2025 at 5:52 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
What’s with the violet aliens on the cover of Sustenance? Midwest barns. Crop circles. American Gothic.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/08/w...

📚 Kindle edition is FREE
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9BDWKFD

#kindlebooks #SciFiBooks #bookcoverdesign #Books #America #IndieAuthors #coverart #KindleUnlimited
What’s With the Violet Aliens?
🛸 A Closer Look at the Cover of Sustenance 👽 People ask me: What’s with the aliens on the front cover of Sustenance? Fair enough. Let’s talk about it. Sustenance is set in Iowa – real, dusty, soybe…
ridleypark.blog
September 8, 2025 at 4:40 AM
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Sartre: “Inaction is a choice.”
Zinn: “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
Butler’s alien: “You committed mass suicide.”
Maybe agency is just a Modernist myth we don’t actually need.
👉 philosophics.blog/2025/09/07/o...

#Philosophy #Postmodernism #Agency #ScienceFiction #Books #AmReading
On Agency, Suicide, and the Moving Train
Octavia Butler’s Dawn opens with aliens who claim humanity “committed mass suicide.” But who really tips the apple cart of history? Sartre, Zinn, and the Stabilisers, Survivors, and Sycophants all …
philosophics.blog
September 7, 2025 at 8:58 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
🚨 Free for 2 days! 🚨
My novella Sustenance – small-town Iowa meets the uncanny – is free on Kindle Sept 7–8. Always free with KU, but free for everyone with this promo. 📚
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9PTK9N2

#FreeBook #KindleFree #SpecFic #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #BookTwitter #AmReading #Book #Books
Sustenance
Amazon.com: Sustenance: 9798284521380: Park, Ridley: Books
www.amazon.com
September 6, 2025 at 4:00 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
⭐⭐⭐ I finished Anna Kavan’s Ice. tl;dr: I gave it a 3 of 5 stars. Fuller review on blog or Goodreads.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i...

#AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog #BookReview #Book #Review #Books
Ice by Anna Kavan – Five Chapters In
Five chapters down, and Anna Kavan’s Ice is already proving itself to be less a novel than a feverish novelette-length hallucination. It hits differently than the sprawling sagas I’ve been chewing …
ridleypark.blog
September 4, 2025 at 6:53 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Five chapters into Anna Kavan’s Ice, and it’s less spree than seizure. A frozen hallucination where compulsion outpaces logic—dive in.
ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i...

#AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog
Ice by Anna Kavan – Five Chapters In
Five chapters down, and Anna Kavan’s Ice is already proving itself to be less a novel than a feverish novelette-length hallucination. It hits differently than the sprawling sagas I’ve been chewing …
ridleypark.blog
September 3, 2025 at 4:40 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Facebook: deleted.
Ridley: collateral damage.
The bots won’t be missed. I may re-establish a Ridley-only presence, but for now, we’re free of the machine.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/02/d...

#Facebook #Meta #Bots #Kafkaesque #AmWriting #Writing #SocialMedia #BlogPost #Bollox #Blogging #AuthorLife
Done with Facebook
I’ve shut down my personal Facebook account. Inevitably, that dragged the Ridley Park page into the digital abyss with it. Collateral damage in the war against nonsense. Why? Because I’ve grown tir…
ridleypark.blog
September 2, 2025 at 9:10 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
I don’t wish to be branded an AI apologist. Some say AI art lacks feelings. I don’t need hubris to validate my art.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/02/t...

#AIArt #Philosophy #Art #GenerativeAI #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Creativity #Innovation #Technology #CriticalThinking #Writing #AmWriting
The Veneer of Human Exceptionalism in Art
I don’t want to develop a reputation as an AI apologist – but I also don’t buy the myth that human art is fuelled by some mystical essence unavailable to machines. As a writer, artist, and musician…
ridleypark.blog
September 2, 2025 at 4:31 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
I’ve finally completed the so-called dystopia canon – Orwell, Atwood, Burgess, Huxley… and now Gattaca. Sharp premise; rigid script. 👍Completion achieved. 👎Satisfaction minimal.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/01/g...

#Critique #ScienceFiction #Writing #amwriting #SciFi #movie #Review #movieReview
Gattaca (1997): Completing the List, But at What Cost?
Completing the dystopia list should feel triumphant, but Gattaca made it a chore. The premise is clever enough – genetic determinism as social caste — but the script is wholly deterministic itself,…
ridleypark.blog
September 2, 2025 at 1:48 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Never took creative writing at uni—finance swallowed that dream. What I got instead: feminist critiques, penguins, and a final essay signed “My name is not David Grace.”

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/01/r...

#WritingCommunity #AuthorLife #LitCrit #Philosophy #AmWriting #English #Writing #nostalgia
Ridley at Uni
I never studied creative writing at university—economics and finance swallowed my schedule whole. With only a few electives to spare, I chose philosophy instead. Still, I managed a couple of critic…
ridleypark.blog
September 1, 2025 at 5:46 PM
ridleypark.bsky.social
This is not a political post. The Venn in this diagram feels viscerally correct, but the unions don't work.

ridleypark.blog/2025/08/31/n...

#Dystopia #Philosophy #Satire #Orwell #Atwood #Huxley #Burgess #TheMatrix #Gattaca #Brazil #SoylentGreen #AnimalFarm #Fahrenheit451 #BraveNewWorld #RidleyPark
The Dystopia Venn: Four Circles of Absolute Nonsense
The Dystopia Venn meme has been cluttering up my feeds, four smug circles pretending to classify Orwell, Atwood, Burgess and the rest into some grand unifying theory of nightmare futures. It works …
ridleypark.blog
September 1, 2025 at 2:40 AM
ridleypark.bsky.social
Editing isn’t always polish; it’s surgery. Spent today untangling a misplaced pregnancy in Needle’s Edge and stitching the timeline back together.
ridleypark.blog/2025/08/30/n...

#WritingCommunity #AmEditing #Fiction #Editing #AmWriting #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #Writing #Books #FictionWriting
Needle’s Edge: Pregnancy Continuity
Editing is often pitched as polishing, but sometimes it’s surgery. Today, I’ve been elbows-deep in untangling the timeline of a misplaced pregnancy in Needle’s Edge, resetting dates, pruning contra…
ridleypark.blog
August 30, 2025 at 11:28 PM