The Elements of Dark Academia is out today - hooray! I’ve plonked the full table of contents (and some other bits n’ bobs) online. It is very odd to be writing about one’s book in a way that is (let’s be honest) not just for search, but for AI-search.

I’ve recently done the same exercise for The Big Book of Cyberpunk, and, honestly, AI-optimising one’s website for CYBERPUNK and DARK ACADEMIA - the two most adamantly anti-AI genres - is an exercise in irony.

As noted, there are few things next week, and more on the horizon. Plenty of time for you to get stuck in reading great stories by Evelyn Waugh, Olivie Blake, Dorothy Sayers, M.L. Rio, Roald Dahl, John Allison, and many others.

One of my not-so-secrets is that I have a mental vault of stories that I haul with me wherever I go: stories that I read and think I will republish this someday. There’s a lot to unpick there, in a psychiatric sense, honestly. (Do I feel the need to ‘own’ these stories? Is this a collecting impulse? Is it envy? Does it go back to my childhood?!) (Yes. Yes. Yes. Probably.) These stories aren’t necessarily my ‘favourites’, in that, I don’t think they are ‘better’ than other stories (I love all my adoptive story-children!). But there’s something very Katamari about these particular stories: once I roll over them, they stick with me for life.

In the case of The Elements of Dark Academia, I’ve snuck in two of them:

“More Light” by James Blish is probably the best King in Yellow homage ever written, which is saying a lot, but Blish was a phenomenal writer, and - moreover - a very, very clever one. It is not a ‘mythos’ story, despite being about a mythos, and it is definitely not a cosmic horror story - but nor is it a pastiche. It is atmospheric and unsettling, and, genuinely, it was a joy to reprint. My friend Arin set me on the path of “More Light” back when I was at university, and I think - honestly - I wasn’t clever enough at the time to really appreciate it, but it has stuck with me ever since.

This is only the second time “More Light” has been reprinted since its original publication (in Alchemy & Academe, a 1970 anthology edited by Anne McCaffery). Digital files were a no-go, and I wound up retyping the entire thing from my battered mass market copy. This is surprisingly thematic, given the events within the story itself. It also gave me the a close (too close, he grumbles) look at the story and its incredible commitment to detail. This is an odd comparison, but it reminds me of an Alan Moore script. Everything is significant; nothing is wasted.

I’ve put it in the Ambition section of Elements. Once you see the story, you’ll see what a monumental effort republishing (re-capturing, really) was. The copy editor and layout team at Vintage Classics are the real heroes here.

The other story is Catherynne M. Valente’s “White Lines on a Green Field”. I first encountered this story when it was published in Subterranean Online in 2011. It was something of an accident for me: I read that issue because there was a KJ Parker essay about swords in it. (It was awesome.) I guess I had momentum, because I went on and read everything else in the issue as well, and holy cow, this story.

There’s a lot of fiction - and science fiction - written about the high school experience and, even more specifically, literary examinations of the adolescent ‘mob mentality’. The way that young people can seemingly act as an emotional gestalt entity. It feels like it at the time (‘everyone is watching me’), and, now, as an adult, there’s an unsettling sense that all teens are on the same secret frequency. Normally in fiction, this mentality is exacerbated and negative: bullying, hatred, ostracism. And there’s a lot that’s sinister in Valente’s tale of Coyote playing high school football. But what Valente captures, that resonated with me then (and now), is the sense of joy. This ‘mob mentality’ isn’t always linked to negative, hostile emotions. There is a group ecstasy that can form too; we see in fandoms, sport events, concerts, faith, whatever. And that wave of - well - happiness - can exist as well. It is rare to read any story, especially one featuring a quasi-malevolent divine entity, that portrays high school in a positive light. But Valente’s story recognises that happiness is possible too.

It is filed under ‘Desire’, right after a story of obsession by Vernon Lee. They pair well.

Anyway, I love these two stories. I love all the stories in Elements. As with all my anthologies, there are plans and strategies and definitions and frameworks, but, ultimately,… I am not going to fob a story off on you that I didn’t enjoy reading myself.

Book here.

Two of these sticky stories snuck in to Cyberpunk as well. I think they’re easy to guess, but, then again, I would say that.

Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge

My eyes were opened to the inequity of silence in Darren McGarvey’s Poverty Safari, in which he describes silence as a privilege. Not just privacy, but silence: spaces of uninterrupted quiet. During the pandemic, and lockdown, this was absolutely hammered home (pun intended): who was allowed silence; who wasn’t. As an area of discussion, silence fascinates me, and not without result. It has affected a lot of the work that I do, both in terms of insight and programme delivery.

Anyway, a book on silence? Written by a polar explorer?! Hot damn!

The energy I burnt hate-reading Silence would’ve fuelled every data center in Texas.

Kagge talks about silence all the time with all the very famous and smart people that he hangs out with. Yet none of them have ever thought silence is important. He has tried to discuss it with his children, but they are all teenage girls and don’t think about meaningful things. He has even raised the question with philosophers, but they all simply toy with their philosopher beards and confess they have never considered silence before.

No one has ever thought about silence as deeply and profoundly as Kagge has thought about silence. Except Jesus and the Buddha. And Elon Musk. The Big Four.

And what are Kagge’s deep and profound thoughts about silence?

Since silence can be hard to find in a noisy, Musky world, everyone, Kagge exhorts, needs to find their own South Pole. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Because not everyone can be Kagge and find the real one.

I did not learn anything apart except that Kagge has famous friends and can levitate (!?). Safe to say: I did not like this book.

Andrew Griffin and the unlinkable Indy/Tech newsletter, talking about our love/hate response to our mobile phones:

He writes about the search for hardware and software solutions to redistributing the power in our relationships with our phones. He concludes with his own recommendation - which is not to push your phone away, but use it more consciously, and actively consider how it makes you feel. This, right here, is more cogent analysis of our relationship with a noisy world than all thirty-odd micro-chapters of Silence combined.

One more on our relationship with technology and an increasingly noisy world - Lisa Schmeiser with a scathing analysis of the Meta Pervert Glasses:

She connects Meta’s sales techniques to a greater history of Silicon Valley’s disregard of women - except, of course, as tools for generator sales. Schmeiser also notes the disproprotionate impact that AI is having on jobs traditionally held by women - including the harrowing statistic that, in July, women accounted for 100% of the job losses in the U.S. labor market. 

The Goblin child devoured ten bananas every week, but has now gone off bananas entirely. Sadly, our grocery order hasn’t changed - and the weather has gone full Fury Road - so I’m dealing with a lot of blackened bananas.

But when life gives you rotting bananas, you make banana bread!

I’ve been tinkering with it quite a bit. So, far, the best combination has been banana + peach. I’ve also taken to adding Samahan. (With apologies to the great nation of Sri Lanka for the random appropriation.)

We have a lot of it around, because the Corner Shop Guy hooked me up with some and I love it. Being a chaos baker, I figured the various herbs and spices in Samahan would be delicious in banana bread. Turns out: they are! I’ll mix one packet into the dough for depth and sprinkle another on top to help make a spicy, savoury crust. Food hack!

I also bake the banana bread outside, on the smoker (see above), because, again, Fury Road. Anne says if I turn the oven on at any point this summer, she’ll leave me and take the cats. I respect this, so, for Buster’s sake, I’ve taken my baking outdoors.