Nick Hubble
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thehubble101.bsky.social
Nick Hubble
@thehubble101.bsky.social
5.4K followers 760 following 1.6K posts
Aberystwyth-based writer, researcher, critic, academic. Nonbinary (they/them)🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️. Columnist, Vector: #SFFResistance. Blogs on SFF at Prospective Cultures - current topics: #ScottishSFF #CriticismForInterestingTimes. https://linktr.ee/nick_hubble
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thehubble101.bsky.social
It's beginning to feel a bit like ... PictCon 1 #Pictcon
Selfie in front of Christmas tree
November 8, 2025 at 9:13 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Seeing lots of nice pics from Brighton on social media. Here's one of me on Aberystwyth seafront about 45 mins ago. Nice here but looked like it was raining out to the west towards Ireland.
Selfie of well-wrapped-up non-binary person with grey beard on Aberystwyth seafront. Consti (the hill) in background to the north. Waves lapping on the shore.
November 1, 2025 at 5:49 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Nice out in the sun today on Aberystwyth seafront #Faberystwyth
Selfie on Aberystwyth promenade with hills to south in background.
October 15, 2025 at 4:35 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Having a weird month - up and down. But I have finally looked into the last remaining bag I removed from my former office in January and was rewarded with genuine treasure in the shape of a couple of classic CDs. So in lieu of fairly meagre showings on this account recently, here's a picture.
Two CDs: L7's Smell the Magic and Marianne Faithfull's Broken English
September 24, 2025 at 11:05 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
No. 59. Margot Bennett, The Long Wat Back (1954) and The Furious Masters (1968). Despite some dated aspects, these novels point the way forward from the postwar decades of Britain to the twenty-first-century feminist perspectives that are more prominent in science fiction and fantasy today. (76/-)
Cover of The Long Way by Margot Bennett. The illustration of a tree is by James Boswell. Cover of The Furious Masters by Margot Bennett
September 21, 2025 at 10:16 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
More flags. Here is Kathleen Stock trying to be light-hearted in the Times about rightwing Anglo-British nationalist flag flying. Funny how a biological essentialist also turns out to be an apologist for ethno-nationalism.
It is true that some far-right groups are supporting the new flag-raising movement, but so too are Conservative and Reform MPs. Robert Jenrick, for instance, seems to have raised more Union Jacks in the past few days than the average 18th-century midshipman. And to pick up on this trend is exactly the right move. Luckily for shy English patriots, an accident of history has gifted them a choice of two flags, and they can get behind whichever is then deemed the lesser of two symbolic evils.
August 24, 2025 at 5:40 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
This is England in 2025. Spectator hacks think they're so funny.
Over the last few weeks, Brits across the country have been adorning streetlights and roundabouts with Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses. This is perhaps one of the most benign demonstrations of national pride possible – yet it is being treated by some as a revolutionary act.
August 22, 2025 at 2:27 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Submitted the manuscript for Culture Wars in Britain today.
Non-binary person with grey beard, sunglasses, cap and headphones sitting in sun in garden against a wall.
August 21, 2025 at 10:21 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Vector, the journal of @bsfa.bsky.social No. 301 Summer 2025, Food and SF. Great to get my copies. Stunning cover by Hyunjin Seo. Lots of good stuff & my latest #SFFResistance column looking at the laws of hospitality in books including Amal El Mohtar's The River Has Roots, The Hobbit and Glory Road
front cover of Vector - details as in post. The illustration is corn on the cob but with circuitry inside it. My column, The Resistance. Picture of my head and shoulders. Last page of column with picture of the cover of The River Has Roots.
August 17, 2025 at 7:39 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Just seen the latest ParSec. Pretty awesome set of contributors for this one. I have a couple of reviews: Amal El Mohtar, The River Has Roots & Arkady Martine, Rose/House (which only came out in the UK this year). Fantastic pair of novellas to get to write about!
Cover of ParSec 14, Summer 2025. Black and white cover art of a planet above an outstretched hand by Elena Betti. Contributors to this issue include Anne Charnock, Adam Roberts, Dave Hutchinson, Lyndsey Croal, Gary Gibson (also interviewed), Steve Toase, Michael Conley, and Teiks Marija Smits. Contents on left. Book Review Index on right.
August 5, 2025 at 7:06 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Editor and contributor copies of The 1920s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction have come through. Great chapters from @erinacean.bsky.social, @afrayn.bsky.social & @kristinbluemel.bsky.social. The 10 volume Decades Series (conceived in 2007, published 2014-2025) is complete. (profile cover updated)
The 1920s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction. Edited by Tamas Benyei, Shene Boskani & Nick Hubble. Bloomsbury: The Decades Series. Back Cover of The 1920s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction. Note BCCW logo. Contents Contributors Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Tamás Bényei, Shene Boskani and Nick Hubble 1. Fairy Fruit and Creative Auto-Intoxication: The 1920s as a Decade of Fantastic Romance Nick Hubble 2. The Way Things (Still) Are: Women, Visions and Realities in the 1920s Lesley A. Hall 3. The Shapes of Time: Novelistic Form and Decadal Time in the 1920s British Novel Tyrus Miller 4. The First World War in the 1920s Andrew Frayn 5. Home and Away: The Fiction of the 1920s and the British Empire Tamás Bényei 6. Casting Shadows: Women, Absence, and History in the Gendered Narratives of Naomi Mitchison Shene Boskani 7. Englishness, Modernism and Gender—The Hungarian Reception of Virginia Woolf Nóra Séllei 8. Platforming the Poor in 1920s Britain: Habermas, Foucault, and the Politics of Display Luke Lewin Davies 9. Animals at the Hearth: A.A. Milne, E. H. Shepard and Illustrated Fantasies of Rural Living Kristin Bluemel Timeline of Works Timeline of National Events Timeline of International Events Biographies of Writers Index All 10 volumes in the now completed Decades Series. The 1920s, The 1930s, The 1940, The 1950s, The 1960s, The 1970s, The 1980s, The 1990s, The 2000s, The 2010s.
August 1, 2025 at 12:32 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Proofs of my chapter 'Devolution, Nationalism, and the Rhetoric of Independence' from Benjamin Kohlmann and Matthew Taunton, eds, 'The People' and British Literature: Belonging, Exclusion and Democracy, Cambridge University Press, December 2025. #ProofingTime #AcademicSky #Cymru
#Scotland
Proof of Chapter 18: 'Devolution, Nationalism, and the Rhetoric of Independence' by Nick Hubble. Text reads The Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935 adopted the strategy of the Popular Front as an anti-fascist organisational technique combining a united front of working-class organisations with a wider popular alliance including socialists, social democrats, liberal and even moderate conservatives. In practice, such alliances were organised at a national level and resulted in 1936 in the election of Popular Front governments in both France and Spain. As Elinor Taylor has shown, Popular Front politics in Britain gave rise in the second half of the 1930s to an extraordinary set of realist novels, which ‘functioned as a site of negotiation for the imaginative making of a politics’. In many ways, the most exemplary of these novels was Lewis Jones’s Cwmardy (1937), written by a Welsh Communist miner, who was actually present as a delegate at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern for Georgi Dimitrov’s speech announcing the national focus of the Popular Front, in close collaboration with Communist intellectual Douglas Garman for the party publisher, Lawrence & Wishart. The novel is not just an epic tale of strikes and collective political action but, in the words of Jones himself, ‘a class book in the fullest sense of the word’ which deals with ‘every phase of human existence from within the community’. Randall Swingler, writing about Cwmardy and its sequel We Live in the Daily Worker, suggested that together they could be read as ‘a sort of parable of the whole development of the working class in England’. While Taylor notes Swingler’s ‘elision of “England” and “Britain”’, she supports his argument that the novel’s investment in popular life allows it to provide ‘a glorious affirmation of the people who made this book’. But the question of the exact national identity of these people remains unsettled. Screenshot from Cambridge University Press announcing a new book, 'The People' and British Literature: Belonging, Exclusion and Democracy, edited by Benjamin Kohlmann and Matt Taunton, due out in December 2025. As previous image but with list of contributors: Benjamin Kohlmann, Matthew Taunton, Andrew Galloway, Andrea Haslanger, Ella Dzelzainis, Natasha Periyan, J. Dillon Brown, John West, Jon Mee, Charlotte Jones, Elinor Taylor, Helen Fulton, Peter Womack, Ramesh Mallipeddi, Santanu Das, Steven Connor, Ian Haywood, Sarah Cole, Joseph Brooker, Nick Hubble, Mark Steven, João Florêncio, Regenia Gagnier
July 23, 2025 at 10:16 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Cam Mason leaving it late to sprint out of the slipstream and win the men's national circuit race championship (he's also currently British Cyclocross champion). Good day for Scotland.
Two male cyclists going past the Prom Diner in Aberystwyth seafront. Motorbike camera tracking them.
June 27, 2025 at 8:44 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Kate Richardson of @albaroadteam.bsky.social launching her sprint to come round Izzy Sharp of Lidl Trek and win the British National Circuit Race Championships in Aberystwyth earlier this evening. Fantastic race. Glad it dried out a bit as the corner at the bottom of our road a bit dangerous.
Two women cyclists on Aberystwyth seafront in UK national circuit race championship.
June 27, 2025 at 7:04 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Isengard.
Building site with tower blocks and cranes in the background.
June 24, 2025 at 11:57 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
The Debatable Hills.
Field with sheep in foreground. Some odd-shaped lumpy hills in the distance.
June 24, 2025 at 10:34 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Temporal distortion.
Blurry greenery through train window. Reflected lights. Temporal shiver.
June 24, 2025 at 10:02 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Mach
Machynlleth railway station.
June 24, 2025 at 10:00 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Caravans at Borth.
Caravans at Borth. Through opposite side train window.
June 24, 2025 at 8:59 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Next stop: Bow Street. Welcome to Hell.
(Bo)w Street. 'Welcome to Hell' is written on the wall of the house. Fields in background.
June 24, 2025 at 8:41 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
En route to London for the Clarke Award tomorrow. I think one reason it always feels such a state-of-the-nation event is because I have to journey through time and space to get there.
Picture taken through train window as we pull out of Aberystwyth station.
June 24, 2025 at 8:35 AM
thehubble101.bsky.social
I like Galadriel in Magic (the Gathering). This is from the Galadriel commander deck, where being tempted by the ring is part of the game. Guidance or Dominion? In my @speculativeinsight.bsky.social essay, 'Should Galadriel Have Taken the Ring?' I elaborate on why this isn't a binary question.
Magic the Gathering cards from the Galadriel commander deck. The bottom right is not the actual Galadriel card but a slightly thicker card version that comes in the set. So, we have Galadriel, Elven-Queen (i.e. Fairy Queen!). 4/5 Legendary Creature - Elf Noble (mana cost 4). Will of the Council: At the beginning of combat on your turn, if another Elf entered the battlefield under your control this turn, starting with you, each player votes for dominion or guidance. If dominion gets more votes, the Ring tempts you, then you put a +1/+1 counter on your Ring-bearer. If guidance gets more votes or the vote is tied, draw a card. The land card (bottom left) is Woodland Stream with a little but of text: 'There lie the woods of Lothlorien! That is the fairest of the dwellings of all my people.' - Legolas. Top right is the Mirror of Galadriel, legendary artifact (which allows you to scry 1 card for a mana cost varying on how many legendary creatures you control): 'Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true,'
June 23, 2025 at 12:42 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
Out for some fresh air at the Castle. It's important to breathe.
Pride flag and Y Ddraig Goch flying by the Castle in Aberystwyth today.
June 22, 2025 at 4:35 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
She certainly found out first hand what happened.
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June 18, 2025 at 11:22 PM
thehubble101.bsky.social
In terms of Vienna Diary, she arrives in Austria on 25/26 February 1934 which is 10 days after the main fighting but she spoke to eye witnesses and went to the scenes. So you get passages like this:
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June 18, 2025 at 11:15 PM