Steve J. Wright
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stevejwright.bsky.social
Steve J. Wright
@stevejwright.bsky.social
240 followers 220 following 1.9K posts
Arts and sciences person, very unprofessional SFF writer and reviewer, blogs at stevejwright.com. Mastodon @stevejwright@c.im
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stevejwright.bsky.social
Convincing you to read my novel with the first sentence. Share yours if you want.

(Start of "Felons in the Eyes of God".)
Header line: Felons in the Eyes of God by Stephen James Wright Page 1 of 214 CHAPTER ONE Laura I'm reasonably sure this guy isn't actually human, and I am dead certain that he's creeping me out. Still. I need this deal, so I'm keeping the creepy feelings well under control. I hope.
November 11, 2025 at 1:19 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
Something I wrote a while back, here:https://stevejwright.com/2023/02/16/now-is-the-winter-of-our-ai-content/
Books are not fungible. But AI content is. You can order it by the yard, or by the bucketful, or whatever metaphor appeals to you. It’s bean-counter heaven – you can get as much “consistent reading experience” as you like, any time you like, at the click of a switch.
November 10, 2025 at 1:12 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
People have been posting consoling cat pictures. I would follow suit, but am handicapped by not having a cat. So, I invite you to enjoy this picture of the absence of a cat.
Snow, with the rather cartoonish imprint of a cat's paws (specifically, next door's cat, just after it jumped off our windowsill.)
October 24, 2025 at 5:02 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
*sigh* Once again, I hate being right.

From my long piece (stevejwright.com/2025/01/30/t...) about AI and its failings:
There is, I suppose, one actual, valid, use case. If you want something with a predictable format, and one for which fact-checking is completely irrelevant – well, you could certainly get a chatbot to turn out any number of newspaper opinion columns, at least from some opinion-column writers. No, “Generative AI” cannot replace genuine human expertise. No, it cannot replace genuine human creativity. But I am not the only person to observe that it can, in fact, replace Boris Johnson14. Since I think Boris Johnson could be more usefully replaced by an empty space, I don’t think this is much of a win for AI. 14. It would not surprise me in the least if Boris Johnson was already using ChatGPT or similar to produce his columns. After all, actually writing all that stuff would seriously cut into his drinking and shagging time, wouldn’t it?
October 16, 2025 at 10:17 AM
stevejwright.bsky.social
It's still ticking upwards. I don't think this is going to go down in history as one of Keir Starmer's greatest ideas.
Screenshot of UK government petitions website, the salient details being the title: "Do not introduce Digital ID cards" and the number of signatures: 2,360,393.
September 28, 2025 at 8:58 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
A little piece of Hookland has arrived!
"The Latchless Door: Rhymes & Songs of Hookland", seen here lying on a dusty carpet with the shadow of a dead orchid encroaching on the bottom right.
September 5, 2025 at 10:41 AM
stevejwright.bsky.social
Fellow UK peeps, please spread this one around (if you haven't already.)
Graphic from the European Movement: Leaving the ECHR won't fix migration. But it will: - Destroy our relationship with Europe. - Destabilise the UK. - Put us in Putin's camp. - Take away protection for our human rights.
August 26, 2025 at 5:57 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
Haven't read "Deathless" yet, though with a recommendation like that, well, I must give it a look. I was introduced to Valente through "Radiance", which I remember reviewing on my blog.
(Sample of my critical acumen appended.)
Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente. Possibly the year’s most significant novel in the field of retrofuturistic cinematic epistolary dieselpunk surrealism. Admittedly, it’s not an overcrowded sub-genre, that. Actually, I don’t know quite how you would classify this one, if you worry a lot over sub-genres. The author herself describes it as a decopunk alt-history Hollywood space opera mystery thriller with space whales, and, really, that’s fair enough. (I think decopunk is like dieselpunk, only without the stains.) Perhaps the best way to deal with this one is to slot it into the category of SF that Brian Aldiss helpfully named the Widescreen Baroque. (And, as the old adage has it, if it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it.)
August 24, 2025 at 2:17 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
From one of my blog's long screeds:
I’ve read a certain amount of the TESCREAL mob’s output (for my sins), and entirely too much of it is along the lines of “here are all the cool things we will do with nanotechnology/AI/aneutronic fusion/whatever, just as soon as those science peons in the laboratories get round to inventing it.”
August 9, 2025 at 11:29 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
"Oh dear. The Myrka."
The Myrka, from the Peter Davison era story "Warriors of the Deep". A not terribly convincing pantomime dinosaur.
July 27, 2025 at 4:03 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips A room with a view.
Frythe sucked in air through set teeth. “Yes, well,” he said. “I think I may have to outfit this particular room as a private library, or laboratory, or something of that kind. I don’t think that my prospective patients would be terribly enthused by the prospect of what awaits them should my efforts fail.” He snapped his fingers and pointed. “That spire, there – is that the steeple of -?” “St. Symeon’s, yes,” said Norris, as he stepped forward to join Frythe at the window. The view, when Norris was in a more fantastical frame of mind, always reminded him of a stormy sea – the rolling waves capped with white foam. But these waves did not move; they were the rolling shapes of hills, stretching away towards the horizon. And the foam caps were equally solid – the white of marble, of monuments; tombs and gravestones in irregular lines, many of them stained with lichen or partly overgrown by bushes or long grass. “The cemetery of St. Symeon’s,” said Frythe, “or, more popularly, the Shamington Necropolis.”
July 4, 2025 at 11:43 AM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips N'se-the-knife gets a foreboding.
“Something is different.” There was a change, somewhere, in her surroundings – something she had failed to noticed, in the outpouring of her grief and the responses of the powers. Something mundane…. She turned from side to side, her fingers clawing at the air, trying to drag the errant sensation to the forefront of her mind…. “There,” she said, and hissed, and pointed. “The old house?” “It has stood empty for some years now, but there is a change, a change in its, its aura. Life. Life is returning to it. As if it wakens from a deep stupor. Nothing is there yet, but the change is coming.” “What should we do, Mistress?” “Nothing. The house has been occupied before. So long as we remain reasonably discreet, we need not be concerned by it. Go back to the others, Jared. Tell them I will return shortly.” “Yes, Mistress.” Jared turned to hurry back to the mausoleum. N’se-the-knife remained standing there for a few minutes more, her face thoughtful, her amber eyes turned in the direction of Hitherbridge House.
July 3, 2025 at 8:02 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WI{Snips Despite Berkeley's best efforts, the removals men keep finding things to worry about in Meredith's furniture.
The rest of the day went smoothly enough – not perfectly smoothly, of course; there were hold-ups and misunderstandings and a certain amount of strong language used. Berkeley was helping Mr. Thacker carry some boxes into the ground floor reception room when there came a shriek from above of “Mind that cucurbit! – oh, Hell’s bells!” followed by a crash of breaking glass. “That sounded expensive,” said Mr. Thacker. Berkeley shrugged. “We knew there’d be some casualties, so to speak. Never mind, Mr. Thacker, no point in docking anyone’s wages. Truth is, you’ve done a lot better than I was expecting, in the matter of breakages. You’ve got some good lads, there, Mr. Thacker, and no mistake.” “Well, thank you kindly, Mr. Berkeley. Although….” Mr. Thacker shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “What’s the matter?” asked Berkeley. “Well,” said Mr. Thacker, “I’ve born in mind all that you said, about doctoring and it involving some nasty looking things, and I’m quite sure you’re right, but this box here -” he nudged it with his foot “- well, I’m blessed if I can see any use for the contents, medical or no.” “Let’s have a look, then.” Berkeley lifted up the top of the box.
June 30, 2025 at 1:00 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips It's not always easy, being den mother to a pack of ghouls.
“About flowers, and pretty things? – No matter. Well.” She glared at Horace, and at Big Peter. “It seems both of you think you are in the right, and I have no means to determine what actually happened. So the best I can do is this.” She extended one leg, and swept her foot across the game board, scattering the pieces at random. “That game cannot proceed; it is over, finished, done. Start afresh with a new one, if you will. Or not. Do as you please. But you will do it fairly and with courtesy to each other, or I will know the reason why.” Horace sank down on his haunches, wrapping his arms around himself and keening softly. Big Peter just stood there, blinking in confusion at the game board. “Mistress.” It was Luke’s voice. “Garland and I were not talking about flowers.” “Do I need to know what you were talking about?” “Yes, Mistress.” Luke took a step towards her. He was the biggest of all of them, half a head taller than Big Peter, even. “I think – we think – it is important.” N’se-the-knife massaged her temples with her fingertips. I am dead, she thought. Why should I have headaches? Death should have delivered me from such things, surely? “Speak, then.”
June 29, 2025 at 11:54 AM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips Meredith does not have a clean desk policy.
The windows were shuttered and the curtains drawn, but the room was not in darkness – it was brilliantly illuminated by the moaning glare of a carbon arc lamp. The harsh white light exposed a scene which did, indeed, look like the lair of a sorcerer, although it also looked like a warehouse after some sort of cataclysm. Shelves and boxes lined two of the walls; a third was hidden behind a veritable jungle of glassware, tubes and flasks and pipes through which translucent fluids moved, taking their impetus from spirit burners underneath. Beside the door was a desk and a swivel chair, and next to that, ranks of lead-acid batteries to power the doctor’s electrical devices. The space was already cluttered with half-dismantled contraptions of brass and iron and glass, and in the middle of the floor stood a work table, beside which Meredith stood, sticking out her tongue in concentration as she applied a long-handled screwdriver to the inner workings of another device. She was in her shirtsleeves, her collar loosened and her bow tie nowhere to be seen, but she still wore her beard and moustaches. “Oh. Berkeley. Is that coffee? Good man. Put it – err -” She looked from side to side, trying to spot a place for the tray. “P’raps if I could move some of those papers on the desk -” Berkeley began.
June 27, 2025 at 12:34 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
40+ appreciation post, reskeet with a pic if you're on the right side of 40.

I remember being 40. It seems so long ago. Because it *is*
Screenshot of me - 62 year old fat bloke with glasses and hair apparently borrowed from Professor Branestawm for the day, sat in front of computer with a silly grin on my face.
June 24, 2025 at 8:26 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
I believe the technology to house Musk's massive intellect already exists.
Picture of ZX Spectrum microcomputer. (Kids, ask your grandparents.)
June 23, 2025 at 7:42 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips Meredith, talking to an estate agent, taking the opportunity to deliver some exposition about her background.
And then a spell at the Devilmakers’ to round it all off.” “The - ?” “Oh, forgive me!” Frythe laughed. “The Imperial Military Academy. A bit of a silly joke, that. You see, the officials had a passion for abbreviation, and we would receive all sorts of orders and memoranda headed Imp. Mil. So, some wag decided that the place was actually, you know, a mill for imps, and from that -” “Oh, I see,” said Norris. “I admit, I was alarmed, there, for a moment. So, you also served in the army?” “Well, one does one’s duty. And a stint in the forces is part of the deal, and well worth it for the training one gets at the Academy and the practical experience out in the field. Yes, I spent a four year hitch on attachment to the Fourth Fusiliers, and I was gazetted captain, so I could swagger around in the uniform and put on airs if I wanted to. But, frankly, I’m much happier conducting my researches somewhere people aren’t likely to be shooting at me. I suppose -” Frythe’s light tone became more serious “- that I’m still fighting a war, really. A war against disease, and the oldest and canniest enemy of them all. Death.” He smiled wryly, and continued, in a more casual tone, “Of course, I know it can only be a desperate, last-ditch holding action!
June 23, 2025 at 11:37 AM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips Some people like to introduce characters by showing them as they go about their everyday lives. Meet N'se-the-knife.
N’se-the-knife hissed in exasperation. She bore down harder, whispering the secret words as she carved the marks, again, into the dead girl’s chest. Her amber eyes glowed with the power of her will, focused entirely on this one working, this one task. She could feel her ancestors beside her and within her, all chanting in unison, and her vision reached out into the great void, and found - Nothing. The marks were just marks, bloodless gashes in the flesh. The corpse was just a corpse. She looked down, at the still, waxen face, at the pale lips that she had kissed so many times…. She stood up, raising herself to her full height, her cloud of wiry hair brushing against the ceiling of the vault. Still standing astride the dead girl’s body, she declaimed, “She has gone.” A low, wordless moan sounded from the circle of watchers. One of them – Luke, it was Luke – said thickly, “She… does not rise?” “She does not.” N’se-the-knife stepped down from the stone slab. She reached out for a cloth, and carefully cleaned the bone-handled knife. Only after that did she take a cerement and wrap it around her lean, bare body.
June 22, 2025 at 12:18 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips - offstage, the forces of righteousness are gathering, or at least having tea together.
Indeed, the mother seemed to think that she shunned the society of youths of her own age, and would go ‘mooning over old poetry by lamp-light’ instead of meeting with her peers. The mother ascribes much of the decline in her daughter’s health to this behaviour.” “She may have a point. Reading poetry in a graveyard by night is scarcely the most salubrious of recreations. It smacks of the morbid fantasizing indulged in by some young persons of tender and impressionable years.” “I would not have thought that likely – such problems are usually the purview of the aristocracy, and the family is more of the respectable lower middle class type.” “In my experience,” said Wemys, “psychological morbidities may arise in any manner of person; the more complex ones are found mostly in the aristocracy, only because the aristocracy alone have the money and leisure with which to indulge them. You must concede, surely, that these poetical expeditions sound very like a pretext for the girl to slip away and meet a suitor? Probably one who would not meet the parents’ approval?” “It could be, it could be,” said the bishop, “and you know I speak with veracity when I say that I would rather it were that than – something else. But you must in turn concede that there is at least the possibility of that other thing.”
June 19, 2025 at 6:37 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips Aftermath of an industrial disaster.
“Did ‘e live?” he asked. “T’boy, Ah mean, at start of it all.” “Regrettably, no,” said Meredith. “The fact is that a traumatic amputation – which is doctor-talk for having your arm ripped off at the shoulder – is often not survivable, even for an adult – which this boy was not – in good and well-nourished health, which he was most definitely not. Hang it all, man -” her voice rose to an angry shout “- you wouldn’t let your machines get so worn out and run down that they could barely work, so why the devil do you let your workers get in that state?” The flunky seemed stung into action at that. “Mr. Heston pays the going rate to all his employees!” he snapped. “Peace, Oswald.” Heston’s eyes opened again and fixed themselves on Meredith. “Tha thinks tha knows summat, doctor? Tha thinks tha’s a clever man? Well, then. Explain summat.” He pointed to the sheet-covered forms on the cobbles beside him. “Eight men dead, there, wi’ not a mark on ‘em. No burns from t’fire, none of thy traumatic amputations – and yet, there they lie, dead as doorknockers. So, with thy medical knowledge, canst tha tell me what killed ‘em?” “I believe,” Meredith said with freezing hauteur, “I might venture an opinion.”
June 18, 2025 at 10:20 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips Hair! I can do hair!

Anyone who's seen my self-inflicted haircuts: No you can't Steve.

Shush. I mean, I've used the word in my WIP. Here's Meredith's first appearance. (We are inside Mr. Norris's POV, and he expects Dr. Frythe to be a man, hence the male pronouns for the good doctor.)
The doctor turned towards him. “Ah. You must be Mr. Norris, then? Very decent of you to come to meet me. I’m much obliged.” In person, Dr. Meredith Frythe was… not quite what Mr. Norris had expected. He seemed surprisingly young for a scholar of such accomplishments; though he wore a neatly pointed goatee and moustaches stiffened into spikes by wax, his cheeks and jaw were otherwise smooth, almost boyishly innocent of stubble. He was a little shorter than the average height, and his voice was a light tenor. He was dressed in impeccable fashion for a medical man – frock coat, top hat, stiff collar, trousers with a knife-edge crease and shining patent-leather boots. Shirt and collar were crisp and white, everything else was black – except for his bow tie, which was a deep purple colour, and the small, round lenses of his spectacles, which were tinted blue. Norris could see that the eyes behind them were grey and merry, and there was a smile on the rather sensual mouth framed by the doctor’s facial hair. Beneath the top hat, the doctor’s hair was longer than was fashionable, curling chestnut-coloured locks reaching to his shoulders. His handshake was brisk and firm, but Norris felt his hand was decidedly on the soft side. But, of course, Frythe was a surgeon, among other things, and so he would have to take good care of his hands…. “It’s no trouble at all,” Norris remembered to say. “Not for such a valued person as yourself, of course.”
June 15, 2025 at 5:16 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
Bloody hell. Called it.

I hate being right.
Screenshot of a week-old post regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia's arrest, with my reply as follows:- Am I overly cynical for suspecting that the "transporting undocumented migrants" thing will probably turn out to be "gave a couple of mates a lift to work a few times"?
June 14, 2025 at 10:39 AM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips Meanwhile, in the mausoleum next door, the cannibal ghouls are getting restive, and N'Se-the-knife lays down the law.
“Ahh,” said N’se-the-knife. “You wish to go out into the streets, find someone to murder, and then eat them.” “Murder is a strong word, Mistress,” said Luke. “What other name would you give it? – well, never mind. So. If that is what you wish to do, then why not go forth and do it? I do not own you, you make your own choices. The door is behind you – open it and go out.” Her voice hardened. “But this much I will say. Sooner or later, you will make a mistake – perhaps on your first kill, perhaps your tenth, or your hundredth – but you will make a mistake, and it will lead the police and all the powers of the state to you. So, if you choose to go out of that door, do not come back.” “But -” said Luke. “That is not fair,” said Garland. “This is our home.” “Then you should know better than to bring ruin and destruction to its door!” N’se-the-knife snarled. “Go if you wish, but if you do, you will not come back. On that, I am adamant.” “But where are we to live?” asked Garland. “Find another vault. Or sleep under the hedgerows, or the railway arches. Or find work as jobbing builders and rent a room from a respectable elderly lady! I neither know nor care where you will choose to go! It is none of my concern!”
June 12, 2025 at 8:47 PM
stevejwright.bsky.social
#WIPSnips The movers arrive. Plus, the secret origin of "Miss Mary"!
“Yes, I’m thinking that the ground floor should be for all the regular doctoring gubbins, and this floor will be where we sleep, and that leaves the first floor and most of the undercroft for the fun stuff. Now what’s that noise outside? Is that a van?” She flitted to the nearest window. “Oh, it is – that’s the movers, isn’t it? Oh, gosh, what super horses!” Berkeley joined her at the window. The huge bulk of the moving van was, indeed, coming up the lane, drawn by a stolid team of six massive dray horses – Shire horses, Berkeley thought, or something like that; big beasts with hooves the size of dinner plates, anyway. “I suppose I should go down and start organizing them,” said Meredith. “No, Miss, not like that. You need to put a jacket on, you can’t go out meeting working men in nothing but your skirt and blouse. You’ve got a nice grey jacket that matches that skirt, I know you have. You go and make yourself presentable while I let the movers in.” “Spoilsport,” said Meredith. “But, all right, let’s keep up appearances, then. Hmm. I suppose I need a first name, don’t I? In case I need to sign things or something.” “Try Mary, Miss. Same initials, and sounds close enough to Meredith that you’ll come if you’re called by it.”
June 11, 2025 at 11:41 AM