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oarditi

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I'm Oliver Arditi, a fantasy worldbuilder, conlanger, and storyteller, working my way towards publication. #writing #reading #fantasy #sciencefiction #worldbuilding #conlangs

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New on my blog is the second half of my top 10 imaginary worlds. I get a bit deeper this time (or go on a bit more!), as these are ones that have shaped me as a writer.

https://oliverarditi.com/2024/05/06/my-top-10-imaginary-worlds-part-2/

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Full disclosure: I know Alex Cochran. But that’s not why I was so knocked out by this book. ‘The Pollutant Speaks’ is a beautifully written exploration of themes I’m already obsessive about: social justice, the philosophy of language, aliens, big spaceships…

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Read as a whole body of work (which has taken me many months) Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry is a tragic and audacious testament to an extraordinary creative spirit.
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Still trying to find that elusive epic fantasy series that I completely vibe with. Tad Williams’s ‘The Dragonbone Chair’ surprised me with some great characters/worldbuilding and the high quality of the prose.

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Why nobody has taken by the scruff of the neck and made me read N.K. Jemisin before is an abiding mystery. ‘The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms’ is right up my street.
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I’ve just dealt with the middle volume of Mike Brooks’ ‘God-King Chronicles’ series. Very entertaining, likeable characters, gripping plot, solid worldbuilding. I had a lot of fun reading it!

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Hilary Mantel’s posthumous ‘A memoir of my former self’ is of course of great interest to fans of her fiction, but every one of the disparate, beautifully written pieces in this book is worth reading on its own merits.

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oarditi , to Floating Is Fun
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I haven’t been keeping up with random book news! First ‘Attending Daedalus’ arrived in the post, to much excite as I’ve wanted it for years and never before found a copy under £100. Then I accidentally bought a stack at Eastercon. Then the next Expanse book arrived for me at the library. So many read! 😝

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oarditi , to bookstodon group
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Just arrived for me at the library, from Forest Hill in Lewisham.

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The latest episode of my free grimdark fantasy serial can now be read on my blog. In ‘Prize Fighter’ the company’s second-in-command is attempting to assess a new recruit, but his efforts are hampered by an impromptu wrestling match.

https://oliverarditi.com/2024/03/25/the-blackswords-s1e5-prize-fighter/

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I’ve just finished this very enjoyable, pan-historical garden fantasy (is garden fantasy a genre? It is now!), ‘Threading the Labyrinth’ by Tiffani Angus.

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oarditi OP ,
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@Narshada @oarditi @bookstodon It’s worth the wait!

oarditi , to bookstodon group
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Fission is the British Science-Fiction Association’s fiction anthology. No.3 was a great read, particularly ‘Las Artes Hipnóticas (2032)’ by David Thomas Henry Wright, ‘The Burn Out’ by Lyle Hopwood, and ‘The Precious Physical World’ by Eva Garcia Guerrero (trans. Mike Lucas)
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‘Caliban’s War’ is the 2nd Expanse book, a very entertaining SF thriller with some excellent characters.
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This anthology of contemporary fairytales, edited by Teika Bellamy, is a great read: mysterious, disturbing, enchanting, compassionate, life-affirming, and wise.
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My sickbed reading. This brilliant, mind blowing book becomes even more of a swirling, psychedelic fantasia if you read it in a semi-delirium 🤣
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Robert Sapolsky’s ‘Determined’ is a very thought-provoking, enjoyable book, and a surprisingly easy read for such a hefty tome.
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This wonderful short book is both a blistering polemic and a moving, immersive story-world.
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Brit Bennett’s ‘The Vanishing Half’ is a brilliant, moving and mysterious exploration of family, truth, twinship and African-American experience.
@britrbennett @bookstodon

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‘The Well at the World’s End’ doesn’t quite do what most fantasy readers would like a novel to do, but it’s a beautifully crafted, intricate tapestry of language and imagination.
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A fascinating read, considering revenge from a psychotherapeutic perspective. Cogently argued, insightful, and thought-provoking.
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I’m very excited to have received these printed issues of BFS Horizons (pictured here with my lunch), the British Fantasy Society short story magazine.
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This is an audacious, brilliant follow-up to ‘Three Body Problem’, marred for me by politically naïve worldbuilding and writing of women characters that is frankly misogynistic.
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oarditi OP ,
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@thebaywindowgirl @bookstodon That’s interesting, any thoughts on what made it impenetrable for you?

oarditi OP ,
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@thebaywindowgirl @bookstodon It doesn’t have that sense of mystery that sucks you in to 3BP. Different translator too.

oarditi , to bookstodon group
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My Christmas book haul—some great stuff to get my teeth into here ❤️
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oarditi , to bookstodon group
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Interzone 296 keeps its standards as high as ever. For me the best stories were Alexander Glass’s multiverse/Chesterton/art-history mash-up ‘Sfumato’, and Alex Penland’s Classical gender yarn ‘We Are Only Ourselves’.
+ @InterzoneMag @manyoyo @bookstodon

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Le Guin’s first three novellas. A masterclass in economy: these stories are as epic, as deep, as wide ranging, and as emotionally powerful as some entire series of lengthy novels!
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This beautiful quote from Alan Moore squeezes a whole affective and intellectual meditation on memory, history, preservation and loss into two sentences.
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Just finished this on the train to that London for the BSFA winter social. It’s an exciting, well constructed, Wuxia inspired fantasy thriller, in a gorgeous Daphne Press edition I won in a raffle at Fantasycon!
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I don’t normally enjoy children’s books, but this cosmic, Blakeian fantasy about race, freedom, creativity and spirituality is pretty mind blowing!
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This is both a very readable introduction to, and a fascinating systematic taxonomy of spec-fic genres. Fun to read and very informative.

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Episode 3 of my free grimdark fantasy series ‘The Blackswords’ is now available on my website. Join our intrepid antiheroes in a frantic dash for the docks to board a ship to safety.

https://oliverarditi.com/2023/12/01/the-blackswords-s1e3-free-beer/

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Jack Vance’s ‘Tales of the Dying Earth’ is hugely influential (a whole sub-genre is named for it), but more to the point, it’s a hilarious and entertaining read.
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This is a wonderfully pragmatic approach to the language wrangling that writers have to do! Putting it into the mouths of some characters makes it even better.
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oarditi , to bookstodon group
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I picked this up at Fantasycon to see whether I wanted to subscribe. It’s superb! It’s hard to pick a single standout story, but I loved ‘The Alien Invasion’ by Ely Percy, and ‘Space’ by John Buchan (‘author of ‘The 39 Steps’). @shorelineofinfinity @bookstodon

oarditi , to bookstodon group
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Here’s a typically sour but perceptive Wrey Gardiner quote. Almost every sentence in that book is an epigraph!
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oarditi , to bookstodon group
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I’ve just finished this gorgeous novella by Priya Sharma. Very complex in all the good ways, and transparently simple in all the beautiful ones.
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oarditi , to bookstodon group
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Available now on my blog is ‘Lights Out’, the second episode of my free grimdark fantasy serial, The Blackswords. It’s set in the same world as the novel I’m currently drafting, although it’s a very different kind of story. Enjoy, and please do tell me what you think.

https://oliverarditi.com/2023/10/29/the-blackswords-s1e2-lights-out/

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oarditi , to bookstodon group
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This wonderful quote from one of my favourite authors is a devastating rejoinder to all the revenge/power fantasies that tend to pass for excitement in fiction…
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I re-read this after 35 years—and found it to be action-packed, baroque, philosophical, freakishly inventive, and utterly hilarious.
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oarditi OP ,
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@katrintheresa @bookstodon I re-read it because I’m on a mission to read all of Moorcock’s ‘Eternal Champion’ books in order—some I’ve never read before, but many I read as a teenager.

oarditi , to bookstodon group
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My latest read. This issue of @InterzoneMag has a particularly excellent crop of non-fiction writing. The standout story for me was Nozaki Mado’s ‘The Fifth Horizon’, trans. Cat Anderson.
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This is a sumptuous piece of linguistic worldbuilding, that explores the relationship between subjectivity and collectivity, through well-imagined characters and exciting plotting.
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oarditi , to bookstodon group
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New on my blog is ‘Cheap Wine’, the first episode of my free grimdark fantasy serial, The Blackswords. It’s set in the same world as the novel I’m currently drafting, although it’s a very different kind of story. Enjoy, and please do tell me what you think.

https://oliverarditi.com/2023/09/28/the-blackswords-s1e1-cheap-wine/

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