sean guynes
@guynes.bsky.social
critic and cultural historian of fantasy, horror, sf + senior acquiring editor, @leverpress.bsky.social + associate editor of sf, @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social + read more: seanguynes.com
Coming Monday, a double-hitter:
(1) My 10k word essay reflecting on Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005).
(2) An episode of @mealofthorns.bsky.social that I guested on to talk about Kostova's really rather mediocre novel. Sorry to have made @casella.bsky.social read this 700-page monstrosity.
(1) My 10k word essay reflecting on Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005).
(2) An episode of @mealofthorns.bsky.social that I guested on to talk about Kostova's really rather mediocre novel. Sorry to have made @casella.bsky.social read this 700-page monstrosity.
November 16, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Coming Monday, a double-hitter:
(1) My 10k word essay reflecting on Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005).
(2) An episode of @mealofthorns.bsky.social that I guested on to talk about Kostova's really rather mediocre novel. Sorry to have made @casella.bsky.social read this 700-page monstrosity.
(1) My 10k word essay reflecting on Elizabeth Kostova's THE HISTORIAN (2005).
(2) An episode of @mealofthorns.bsky.social that I guested on to talk about Kostova's really rather mediocre novel. Sorry to have made @casella.bsky.social read this 700-page monstrosity.
Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn is probably the best novel I've read this year. It's amazing.
Up next in my Ballantine Adult Fantasy reading series is his first novel, A Fine and Private Place. It's not a very good novel. It's mostly shallow reflections on death. Trite as hell. Essay out v. soon!
Up next in my Ballantine Adult Fantasy reading series is his first novel, A Fine and Private Place. It's not a very good novel. It's mostly shallow reflections on death. Trite as hell. Essay out v. soon!
November 3, 2025 at 12:47 AM
Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn is probably the best novel I've read this year. It's amazing.
Up next in my Ballantine Adult Fantasy reading series is his first novel, A Fine and Private Place. It's not a very good novel. It's mostly shallow reflections on death. Trite as hell. Essay out v. soon!
Up next in my Ballantine Adult Fantasy reading series is his first novel, A Fine and Private Place. It's not a very good novel. It's mostly shallow reflections on death. Trite as hell. Essay out v. soon!
This note on an Albanian verb is hilarious:
October 30, 2025 at 4:49 PM
This note on an Albanian verb is hilarious:
Very excited for this upcoming title publishing later next year from @leverpress.bsky.social. It's a digital ethnography of the Otherkin community! (And the cover is glorious.) Proctor has some amazing things to say about the digital mediation of identity, belonging, queerness, and (non-)humanness.
October 30, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Very excited for this upcoming title publishing later next year from @leverpress.bsky.social. It's a digital ethnography of the Otherkin community! (And the cover is glorious.) Proctor has some amazing things to say about the digital mediation of identity, belonging, queerness, and (non-)humanness.
Just finished Thomas Burnett Swann's third novel, MOONDUST (1968), which is about the Biblical Battle of Jericho and also about a society of evil fennecs who enslaved a fairy-like race of mothpeople. It's probably Swann's second weirdest story. Review essay to come shortly!
October 28, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Just finished Thomas Burnett Swann's third novel, MOONDUST (1968), which is about the Biblical Battle of Jericho and also about a society of evil fennecs who enslaved a fairy-like race of mothpeople. It's probably Swann's second weirdest story. Review essay to come shortly!
I see the priest was familiar with the stepback cover art for Robert Wilson's Crooked Tree (1980)
October 21, 2025 at 7:21 PM
I see the priest was familiar with the stepback cover art for Robert Wilson's Crooked Tree (1980)
"These are rural pursuits"
October 21, 2025 at 4:48 PM
"These are rural pursuits"
Wow. A "dystopian Handmaid's Tale." Finally!
October 20, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Wow. A "dystopian Handmaid's Tale." Finally!
Two of Riddell's (short) haunted house novels are collected in this edition by The British Library in their long-running Tales of the Weird series:
October 8, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Two of Riddell's (short) haunted house novels are collected in this edition by The British Library in their long-running Tales of the Weird series:
It's really something when an author writes a 125-page novel that sucks for 100 pages, has you doubting your admiration for the author, but ends with 25 pages of the most achingly beautiful prose about love, loss, longing, and fate.
But that's Swann's THE WEIRWOODS (1967). Essay later this week.
But that's Swann's THE WEIRWOODS (1967). Essay later this week.
October 6, 2025 at 5:19 PM
It's really something when an author writes a 125-page novel that sucks for 100 pages, has you doubting your admiration for the author, but ends with 25 pages of the most achingly beautiful prose about love, loss, longing, and fate.
But that's Swann's THE WEIRWOODS (1967). Essay later this week.
But that's Swann's THE WEIRWOODS (1967). Essay later this week.
Book cover reveal teaser: One of the books I've got in production at Lever Press is about digital Otherkin communities and discourses of humanness. The cover is shaping up to be really awesome, drawing on the metaphor of the jellyfish/medusa, and remixing Ernst Haeckel's illustration:
October 6, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Book cover reveal teaser: One of the books I've got in production at Lever Press is about digital Otherkin communities and discourses of humanness. The cover is shaping up to be really awesome, drawing on the metaphor of the jellyfish/medusa, and remixing Ernst Haeckel's illustration:
Recently read this wonderful, important, and beautifully painted children's nonfiction book out later this month by @pmpress.bsky.social. It's the history of Quaker dwarf Benjamin Lay (1682–1759), an abolitionist who was so fervent in his activism he was kicked out by Quakers.
October 2, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Recently read this wonderful, important, and beautifully painted children's nonfiction book out later this month by @pmpress.bsky.social. It's the history of Quaker dwarf Benjamin Lay (1682–1759), an abolitionist who was so fervent in his activism he was kicked out by Quakers.
This is basically my complaint about every big AAA game I've played recently. It just feels so pointless. www.avclub.com/ghost-of-yot...
September 25, 2025 at 2:36 PM
This is basically my complaint about every big AAA game I've played recently. It just feels so pointless. www.avclub.com/ghost-of-yot...
I like that cover a lot more than the bland US cover
September 23, 2025 at 4:12 PM
I like that cover a lot more than the bland US cover
Finishing (fingers crossed) my re-read of Kostova's The Historian for "reasons."
Still working through the first volume of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.
Hopefully also wrapping up my Yaszek's Galactic Suburbia, an excellent and important work of women's sf recovery!
Still working through the first volume of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.
Hopefully also wrapping up my Yaszek's Galactic Suburbia, an excellent and important work of women's sf recovery!
September 19, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Finishing (fingers crossed) my re-read of Kostova's The Historian for "reasons."
Still working through the first volume of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.
Hopefully also wrapping up my Yaszek's Galactic Suburbia, an excellent and important work of women's sf recovery!
Still working through the first volume of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.
Hopefully also wrapping up my Yaszek's Galactic Suburbia, an excellent and important work of women's sf recovery!
Folks, get off of Academia[.]edu. Delete your accounts. Put your work on a faculty webpage, on hcommons, on your own webpage. But not on Academia[.]edu.
www.academia.edu/terms
www.academia.edu/terms
September 19, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Folks, get off of Academia[.]edu. Delete your accounts. Put your work on a faculty webpage, on hcommons, on your own webpage. But not on Academia[.]edu.
www.academia.edu/terms
www.academia.edu/terms
Beauty does exist and it's a mass market paperback.
September 17, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Beauty does exist and it's a mass market paperback.
Penguin UK is publishing this exquisite series of four horror novel reprints, and an anthology (not pictured here), with some absolutely incredible covers. Not listed for sale in the US, sadly, much like their incredible set of "Penguin Weird Fiction" reprints from last year. These are to die for.
September 9, 2025 at 1:35 AM
Penguin UK is publishing this exquisite series of four horror novel reprints, and an anthology (not pictured here), with some absolutely incredible covers. Not listed for sale in the US, sadly, much like their incredible set of "Penguin Weird Fiction" reprints from last year. These are to die for.
Things are happening, transformations working their way through me, new forms emerging into possibility...
September 8, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Things are happening, transformations working their way through me, new forms emerging into possibility...
something watery this way comes
September 8, 2025 at 12:27 AM
something watery this way comes
Kostova's The Historian, reading academia for filth:
September 4, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Kostova's The Historian, reading academia for filth:
I *finally* finished Peake's Gormenghast (novel, not the whole trilogy yet). Yes, Peake was a fucking genius. Kind of wild that like 350-400 of the 568 pages is pretty boring sutff, but the whole of it is brilliant and it's never anything but lushly, gorgeously written. Essay to come soon.
September 1, 2025 at 4:21 AM
I *finally* finished Peake's Gormenghast (novel, not the whole trilogy yet). Yes, Peake was a fucking genius. Kind of wild that like 350-400 of the 568 pages is pretty boring sutff, but the whole of it is brilliant and it's never anything but lushly, gorgeously written. Essay to come soon.
Very excited about the next couple days of my life.
August 31, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Very excited about the next couple days of my life.
Discovered that the filker, Leslie Fish, who inspired this anthology with her song "Carmen Miranda's Ghost," is now an anti-trans bigot and posts poems like this. She was formerly an anti-war activist and member of the Wobblies, a legitimately interesting anarchist, and now a right-wing grifter.
August 27, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Discovered that the filker, Leslie Fish, who inspired this anthology with her song "Carmen Miranda's Ghost," is now an anti-trans bigot and posts poems like this. She was formerly an anti-war activist and member of the Wobblies, a legitimately interesting anarchist, and now a right-wing grifter.
From my boy Thomas Burnett Swann:
"Where is the Bird of Fire? In the tall green flame of the cypress, the lifted flame of the oak, I guess his burning. [...] Always shadow and sound but not the bird. Always he climbs beyond my capturing, and the wind possesses his cry."
"Where is the Bird of Fire? In the tall green flame of the cypress, the lifted flame of the oak, I guess his burning. [...] Always shadow and sound but not the bird. Always he climbs beyond my capturing, and the wind possesses his cry."
August 22, 2025 at 8:03 PM
From my boy Thomas Burnett Swann:
"Where is the Bird of Fire? In the tall green flame of the cypress, the lifted flame of the oak, I guess his burning. [...] Always shadow and sound but not the bird. Always he climbs beyond my capturing, and the wind possesses his cry."
"Where is the Bird of Fire? In the tall green flame of the cypress, the lifted flame of the oak, I guess his burning. [...] Always shadow and sound but not the bird. Always he climbs beyond my capturing, and the wind possesses his cry."