Wesley Osam
@mwosam.bsky.social
My site is at https://www.superdoomedplanet.com .
Reposted by Wesley Osam
Happy Doctor Who day! To celebrate here is the greatest of Doctor Who images: Verity Lambert using a Mechanoid as a lighter.
November 23, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Happy Doctor Who day! To celebrate here is the greatest of Doctor Who images: Verity Lambert using a Mechanoid as a lighter.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
it's not anything remotely new, but lately i've been more attuned to people reacting to movies (and art) with comments like, "Why did that happen?" and, "I don't understand what it's trying to say," and leaving it at that, as though those are meaningful criticisms
those are invitations to think!
those are invitations to think!
November 23, 2025 at 1:13 PM
it's not anything remotely new, but lately i've been more attuned to people reacting to movies (and art) with comments like, "Why did that happen?" and, "I don't understand what it's trying to say," and leaving it at that, as though those are meaningful criticisms
those are invitations to think!
those are invitations to think!
Reposted by Wesley Osam
New, on Heat Death! Thrilled to run this absolute banger from @goldwagnathan.bsky.social, on the bizarre way that concepts from 20th century Golden Age sci-fi have lingered in the scientific imagination, despite never coming within spitting distance of becoming — what's the word? — real
The Fatal Allure of Yesterday's Tomorrows
On the dangers of seeing science fiction as a template for the future.
heat-death.ghost.io
November 20, 2025 at 3:42 PM
New, on Heat Death! Thrilled to run this absolute banger from @goldwagnathan.bsky.social, on the bizarre way that concepts from 20th century Golden Age sci-fi have lingered in the scientific imagination, despite never coming within spitting distance of becoming — what's the word? — real
Reposted by Wesley Osam
For me, the most dispiriting thing about all the political discourse on Bluesky is the absolute refusal to admit that we, ourselves, have political agency.
August 24, 2025 at 12:52 PM
For me, the most dispiriting thing about all the political discourse on Bluesky is the absolute refusal to admit that we, ourselves, have political agency.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
An unconscious assumption behind a lot of online discourse is that we’re political spectators, not citizens with collective agency/responsibility; like The Democrats are a sports team and our role is merely to yell at the TV when they play badly.
A lot of discourse lately about how Democrats fail at messaging. They do often struggle, though a lot of the problem is a hostile media. But it isn’t entirely on elected Dems—we need to admit this is an area where we, ordinary citizens, collectively have a role to play.
October 28, 2025 at 11:00 PM
An unconscious assumption behind a lot of online discourse is that we’re political spectators, not citizens with collective agency/responsibility; like The Democrats are a sports team and our role is merely to yell at the TV when they play badly.
I think one reason most people think of ideas as something precious is that we mostly do not notice when we are having them. Noticing your own thoughts is something you have to practice.
November 19, 2025 at 1:24 PM
I think one reason most people think of ideas as something precious is that we mostly do not notice when we are having them. Noticing your own thoughts is something you have to practice.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
Generative AI is based on the faulty premise that your first idea - the half-formed pondering that signals only the beginning of a long, possibly fruitless journey - is already good enough to exist. That it requires nothing but actualisation to be complete.
November 19, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Generative AI is based on the faulty premise that your first idea - the half-formed pondering that signals only the beginning of a long, possibly fruitless journey - is already good enough to exist. That it requires nothing but actualisation to be complete.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
Any creator will tell you that it's the process, the *work* of creating something, that determines its final form. Your "idea" might be for one thing, but in the *making* of it, you get a thousand new ideas that change it into something else.
November 19, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Any creator will tell you that it's the process, the *work* of creating something, that determines its final form. Your "idea" might be for one thing, but in the *making* of it, you get a thousand new ideas that change it into something else.
Wanting to write more for the blog but my attention span right now is so short I'm barely getting through a sentence without getting distracted.
Not great for reading, either; I'm switching between a dozen books at any given time.
Not great for reading, either; I'm switching between a dozen books at any given time.
November 16, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Wanting to write more for the blog but my attention span right now is so short I'm barely getting through a sentence without getting distracted.
Not great for reading, either; I'm switching between a dozen books at any given time.
Not great for reading, either; I'm switching between a dozen books at any given time.
William Hope Hodgson was an amazing inventor of monsters. One of my favorites came from the Carnacki story "The Whistling Room," about... well, what it sounds like.
Other favorites include the revenant from Percival Landon's "Thurnley Abbey," and L. P. Hartley's Traveling Grave.
Other favorites include the revenant from Percival Landon's "Thurnley Abbey," and L. P. Hartley's Traveling Grave.
What's your favourite monster/creature from literature? I'm thinking Tuunbaq from Dan Simmon's The Terror, the triffids from Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, the demon from M.R. James' Casting The Runes, Grendel, Pennywise, etc.
November 16, 2025 at 1:55 AM
William Hope Hodgson was an amazing inventor of monsters. One of my favorites came from the Carnacki story "The Whistling Room," about... well, what it sounds like.
Other favorites include the revenant from Percival Landon's "Thurnley Abbey," and L. P. Hartley's Traveling Grave.
Other favorites include the revenant from Percival Landon's "Thurnley Abbey," and L. P. Hartley's Traveling Grave.
A thing the Simpsons writers eventually figured out was that the kind of stories they were telling didn't have to resolve everything at the end of an episode: Homer can quit his job for the thousandth time and everyone will go along with him being back at the nuclear plant the following week.
November 11, 2025 at 1:37 PM
A thing the Simpsons writers eventually figured out was that the kind of stories they were telling didn't have to resolve everything at the end of an episode: Homer can quit his job for the thousandth time and everyone will go along with him being back at the nuclear plant the following week.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
One of the seminal moments of my media literacy education was tuning in to the S2 premiere of Sledge Hammer to see how they handled Sledge causing a nuclear apocalypse at the end of S1.
They scrolled "THE EARLY YEARS" under the title for a few seconds, then chugged along as if nothing happened.
They scrolled "THE EARLY YEARS" under the title for a few seconds, then chugged along as if nothing happened.
November 11, 2025 at 1:13 PM
One of the seminal moments of my media literacy education was tuning in to the S2 premiere of Sledge Hammer to see how they handled Sledge causing a nuclear apocalypse at the end of S1.
They scrolled "THE EARLY YEARS" under the title for a few seconds, then chugged along as if nothing happened.
They scrolled "THE EARLY YEARS" under the title for a few seconds, then chugged along as if nothing happened.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
What you need to do is have them not be the protagonist at all, but the person who *helps* the protagonist. Sherlock Holmes is never the one to whom the interesting thing happens, he's the one who investigates interesting things happening to others.
November 11, 2025 at 1:27 PM
What you need to do is have them not be the protagonist at all, but the person who *helps* the protagonist. Sherlock Holmes is never the one to whom the interesting thing happens, he's the one who investigates interesting things happening to others.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
The real problem for Bond is also the problem for Batman, Doctor Who, and dozens of similar characters -- the idea that a melodrama hero must also be a dramatic protagonist. The two roles are fundamentally irreconcilable. I blame George Lucas and Joseph Campbell.
November 11, 2025 at 1:18 PM
The real problem for Bond is also the problem for Batman, Doctor Who, and dozens of similar characters -- the idea that a melodrama hero must also be a dramatic protagonist. The two roles are fundamentally irreconcilable. I blame George Lucas and Joseph Campbell.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
Don Draper is a fantasy of being a 21st century man going back to the 1950s and thinking thoughts like "oh but of course a woman is as good at creativity as a man". It's a fantasy of superiority every bit as seductive as fantasies of 'inferior peoples' who 'need to be governed' by colonisers.
November 3, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Don Draper is a fantasy of being a 21st century man going back to the 1950s and thinking thoughts like "oh but of course a woman is as good at creativity as a man". It's a fantasy of superiority every bit as seductive as fantasies of 'inferior peoples' who 'need to be governed' by colonisers.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
and this feels something big that's happened to us as a culture. a total moral superiority to the past (my instinct is that this is technocratic in origin, but interested to hear other explanations) to the point that we really cannot believe it was like that.
November 3, 2025 at 12:02 PM
and this feels something big that's happened to us as a culture. a total moral superiority to the past (my instinct is that this is technocratic in origin, but interested to hear other explanations) to the point that we really cannot believe it was like that.
A really great thread on contemporary attitudes to the past, in and out of SF; reminds me of some of what John Rieder wrote about in Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction.
I know nothing, nothing about clothing. My only thought right now about all this is: the specific thing they're going for I THINK is "would have been an exciting maverick in 1955". Everyone always wants to have been a 'man out of time'. That is exactly who Don Draper is. It's a sci-fi fantasy.
November 3, 2025 at 1:35 PM
A really great thread on contemporary attitudes to the past, in and out of SF; reminds me of some of what John Rieder wrote about in Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
Tolkien was not, in fact, very interested in realism at all. He was interested in religion, and myth, and language. The mistake people keep making is conflating realism for detail: they're not the same thing, and detail need not be the enemy of imagination.
November 1, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Tolkien was not, in fact, very interested in realism at all. He was interested in religion, and myth, and language. The mistake people keep making is conflating realism for detail: they're not the same thing, and detail need not be the enemy of imagination.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
TWENTY DAYS OF TURIN is a magical book. Post-fascist Italian weird horror novel that seems to predict the internet, our deep need to pour ourselves into it, the isolation and web of espionage it creates, the way it is exploited by power.
Adored it
Adored it
October 31, 2025 at 12:59 AM
TWENTY DAYS OF TURIN is a magical book. Post-fascist Italian weird horror novel that seems to predict the internet, our deep need to pour ourselves into it, the isolation and web of espionage it creates, the way it is exploited by power.
Adored it
Adored it
Reposted by Wesley Osam
it's not that you can't give a classic a bad review but there's a certain smugness about the way some people do it that I find intolerable. oh you didn't like the great gatsby? should we throw a party? should we invite ernest hemingway
October 30, 2025 at 3:07 PM
it's not that you can't give a classic a bad review but there's a certain smugness about the way some people do it that I find intolerable. oh you didn't like the great gatsby? should we throw a party? should we invite ernest hemingway
An unconscious assumption behind a lot of online discourse is that we’re political spectators, not citizens with collective agency/responsibility; like The Democrats are a sports team and our role is merely to yell at the TV when they play badly.
A lot of discourse lately about how Democrats fail at messaging. They do often struggle, though a lot of the problem is a hostile media. But it isn’t entirely on elected Dems—we need to admit this is an area where we, ordinary citizens, collectively have a role to play.
October 28, 2025 at 11:00 PM
An unconscious assumption behind a lot of online discourse is that we’re political spectators, not citizens with collective agency/responsibility; like The Democrats are a sports team and our role is merely to yell at the TV when they play badly.
A lot of discourse lately about how Democrats fail at messaging. They do often struggle, though a lot of the problem is a hostile media. But it isn’t entirely on elected Dems—we need to admit this is an area where we, ordinary citizens, collectively have a role to play.
October 28, 2025 at 10:59 PM
A lot of discourse lately about how Democrats fail at messaging. They do often struggle, though a lot of the problem is a hostile media. But it isn’t entirely on elected Dems—we need to admit this is an area where we, ordinary citizens, collectively have a role to play.
Reposted by Wesley Osam
and because i can imagine the bad faith reading of this, what i am *not* saying is that everything about the extant democratic party is hunky dory other than its total absence of a communications/propaganda infrastructure. what i *am* saying is that this absence puts a hard limit on reaching voters
the democratic party’s basic problem is it has almost no control over how its message reaches the ears of voters, especially outside of presidential election years. but rather than devote serious time, attention and cash to that problem its consultants and pundits want to fight factional battles
October 27, 2025 at 6:45 PM
and because i can imagine the bad faith reading of this, what i am *not* saying is that everything about the extant democratic party is hunky dory other than its total absence of a communications/propaganda infrastructure. what i *am* saying is that this absence puts a hard limit on reaching voters
Reposted by Wesley Osam
October 27, 2025 at 4:26 PM