sean guynes

@guynes

critic and cultural historian of genre fantasies / senior acquiring editor @leverpress.bsky.social / associate editor of sf @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social / read more: seanguynes.com

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sean guynes@guynes· Jul 13

We should never forget that Sam Neill's best movie is the TV miniseries MERLIN (1998):

Sam Neil as Merlin, wearing an incredible feathered-covered cloak and wielding a sword.

sean guynes@guynes· Jul 10

I think this is the current/forthcoming AI cover. It has that awful Thomas Kinkaid sheen. Horrifying. And *not* the first AI cover he's used. His cover art in the 80s and 90s was amazing. Gross to see this embrace of AI just because it's cheaper and easier. Is he also pro-AI novels?

AI generated cover of Charles de Lint's Dog Sisters.

sean guynes@guynes· Jul 9

One of the (many) exciting books @leverpress.bsky.social has coming out next year is the second edition of @effjayem.bsky.social's book on Heinlein. With this incredible cover:

Cover of "The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein: A Critical Study of His Work" by Farah Mendlesohn, with a cover painting featuring a space station from the NASA archives.

sean guynes@guynes· Jul 7

how about House on the Borderlands's swine things?

Cover of Richard Corben's graphic novel adaptation of William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland, featuring grotesque swine people.

sean guynes@guynes· Jun 27

Just played a banger 4.5hr game of FURY OF DRACULA. I was Dracula, as usual, but this was the first time I won in 6 years of playing. It was a very close game, too. I had 1 health left and, a bit anticlimactically, I won on a technicality. (Not my image, just for show if you don't know the game.)

cover of FURY OF DRACULA board game, with Dracula looking a bit cheesy as he plots your death

example set up of the game, with a map of Europe and many cards

sean guynes@guynes· Jun 24

I think Pokemon Crystal is the most aesthetically pleasing object I have ever owned. (This is, sadly, not my copy. Cartridges that still work go for $170+.)

the pokemon crystal gameboy color cartridge

sean guynes@guynes· Jun 24

Reading the second book in Cherryh's FADED SUN trilogy. It's fine. Interesting, at least, as most Cherryh is -- but the trilogy hasn't yet struck me as anything amazing stand-out.

cover of Shon'jir by C.j. Cherryh with people in Arab-inspired nikab-like clothing.

sean guynes@guynes· Jun 23

Have you ever wanted to write about *every* *single* *minute* of a film? Well our incredible film|minutes series at @leverpress.bsky.social lets you do just that. The first three volumes in the series are beautiful, brilliant examples of how to do this kind of hyper-close reading:

Cover of Shane Denson's "Bride of Frankenstein"

Cover of Dan Hassler-Forest's "Texas Chain Saw Massacre"

sean guynes@guynes· Jun 23

I'm not sure if I've said this here before, but starting later this year @leverpress.bsky.social has will be publishing the edited collections that spin out of the Domitor conferences on early cinema. Here's a look at the cover of the first volume we're doing on copyright and early cinema:

Cover of "Copy/Rights and Early Cinema," a yellow cover with a black-and-white photo of some early film folks being silly.

sean guynes@guynes· Jun 22

What a silly fucking character. I can't help but picture this every time he's mentioned. What is cool about him?

a white dude who studied the blade, wearing a leather jacket, sporting dope sunglasses, and wielding the most badassest katana you ever did see.

sean guynes@guynes· Jun 6

"Fans of X are the specialest kind of fans" is such an uncompelling narrative, even if it's a rhetorically powerful one. You can find superfans of anything doing the same or equivalent stuff. I'm not convinced horror—or any genre—is especially unique in this regard.

Post that reads "Horror people turn up for unfamiliar movies with unproven directors and no-name actors. Horror people are the ones who don't use "low-budget" as a pejorative. Horror people will watch horror from 100 years ago. It's not weird that horror people are like this, it's weird that other genre fans aren't."

sean guynes@guynes· May 23

star trek voyager title card with text that reads "tuvix is captain now"

sean guynes@guynes· May 23

Star Trek: DS9 title card with "Babylon 5" written as the episode title.

sean guynes@guynes· May 19

It was surprising and a great pleasure to come across this comment by Gary Farber, discussing my writing. Very nice to see that the older generation of sff fans/writers/editors/critics doesn't think I'm totally off-base! (He goes on to discuss a minor issue with something that I totally agree with.)

$Facebook comment by Gary Faber: "I'd seen his name around -- vaguely -- for several years, and after reading this piece, realized I had no clear idea who he was, so I read a couple of his other LARB pieces, and went to his website and read some of the Swann and other material. I was impressed by the fact that I agreed with just about everything he said -- not about Swann, with whom I would claim familiarity, but I've read only a fraction of his work overall, but -- about publishing history and Wollheim and in his piece on the Futurians, and such, that I found no significant errors, to the best of my knowledge, which unfortunately is just not the case with so many other critics of the under-40 generation."$

sean guynes@guynes· May 19

I think this is pretty ridiculous to me for a few reasons. First, we don't need to do the "I got a PhD b/c I'm not right in the head" thing. That sort of self-deprecation isn't a useful strategy for thinking about pursuing higher ed.

Blusky post that reads:

"there is a REASON that literally 99% of humans do not pursue doctoral research

yes, it's hard

but it's also tedious as hell

and you need to be at least a little not right in the head to do this long enough to get anywhere"

sean guynes@guynes· May 11

Aside from citations, you really don't need all that many explanatory notes. Just say what you want to say.

Famous horror writer Garth Marenghi in a suave leather coat dispensing sage advice: "I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards"

sean guynes@guynes· May 11

From the comments:

sean guynes@guynes· May 5

Hmmm... I wonder if there's anything problematic about Craig Shaw Gardner's Arabian Nights trilogy... (Extra point if you can guess the artist; the woman's profile on the cover of the third book is a good giveaway)

Cover of The Other Sinbad by Craig Shaw Gardner

Cover of A Bad Day for Ali Baba by Craig Shaw Gardner

Cover of The Last Arabian Night by Craig Shaw Gardner

sean guynes@guynes· May 5

Sorry, it's THE TRIBE not TRIBES:

still from The Tribe opening credits, with teens on a beach, and "The Tribe" overlayed

sean guynes@guynes· May 5

This one got the range of weird/good/bad sff covers. I'm also partial to these, which interpret the novel's Asianness in drastically different ways:

Baen hardcover of Cherryh's Paladin, with a woman in armor, a man in armor, and a horse behind them.

Mandarin paperback cover of Cherryh's Paladin, with a woman holding a sword shown in close up, and a foregrounded Mongolian-styled man on a horse in miniature on the left side.

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 28

Some exciting books forthcoming from @leverpress.bsky.social this year include:

Cover of "Otium: An Anthropology of Work, Freedom, and Common Ground in the Global Economy" by Gregor Dobler, featuring the word "Otium" in colorful letters repeated in different colorways down the length of the cover.

Cover of "Travels with Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde" by Suzanne W. Churchill, Linda A. Kinnahan, and Susan Rosenbaum, featuring a drawing of Mina Loy laying on the grass reading.

Cover of "Human* Being: On Otherkin Identity and Digital Community" by Devin Proctor, featuring jellyfish drawings by Ernst Haeckel.

Cover of "Practice Dialogues: Listening to the Wisdom of Care Work," edited by Alice Lesnick, featuring a watercolor painting that depicts a splash of water.

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 27

This is a new binding type for me. It's essentially an extended french fold (or gatefold), where the back flap actually covers fore-edge and folds under the front cover, so that the book is completely wrapped. It must be very annoying to read!

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 21

From my southern upbringing, much beloved by the older generations: Ambrosia salad. Marshmallows, fruit, jello, nuts, and cream.

a cup (and that's too much!) of ambrosia salad, made of cream, jello, fruits like cherries and pineapple, marshmallows, and nuts

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 21

Whoever read this 1995 mystery novel won the jackpot! And they didn't collect! And what was the "surprise gift"?! I'm dying to know! I wish I could send this in and collect on it now, but alas I'm probably 30 years too late...

ad from a mass market paperback: "Play Mystery Library's Lucky Hearts Game" with a scratch card revealing an Ace

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 20

A few years ago I wrote an essay on Scalzi's RED SHIRTS and squeecore, interrogating that discourse, and today got a comment from someone who is still mad mad mad about "Scalzism" as though anyone really gives a shit about that in 2026. But it is a fascinating look at how Right-wing losers...

A WordPress comment from ThirteenthLetter: "You have only yourself and your fellow activists to thank for the victory of Scalzism and the death of science fiction. When you turned SF writing into an ideological mission instead of a creative one, what did you think was going to happen? Of course the insincere sociopaths best at gaming the system would come out on top, mouthing agreement with your ideology and delivering slop. Well done guys, hope killing the most vital field of literary endeavor was worth it."

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 17

We're publishing the first book in our groundbreaking CINEMAS OF ASIA series this fall. Books in this series offer a sustained study of a single film, like BFI's Film Classics. The first book, by series co-editor Andy Jackson, looks at Lee Kwang-mo’s 1998 film Spring in My Hometown (아름다운 시절).

Cover of Andrew David Jackson's book "Spring in My Hometown" about the film of the same name, with the Korean title beneath the English title, and an image from the film (a woman and a child) in a circle on the cover.

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 17

Drop your crime-fighting Catholics:

Poster painting based on the 1940 film "The Mark of Zorro," with the masked and hated hero bending his foil, a grin on his face.

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 16

This is couple goals: Mystery writers Frances and Richard Lockridge, c. 1950, with their cat Martini.

Frances and Richard Lockridge with their Siamese cat Martini, looking down at one of their many co-written novels.

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 2

It's eating at me that I'm spending a good chunk of my reading and writing time this year doing a Secret Thing that will not see the light of day until 2027. I've gotta work hard to keep up other reading/writing to make it look like I'm actually doing stuff this year. So my next essay is on...

A painting by James Gurney, which is the cover of Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time. It's a realistic painting featuring dinosaurs and humans parading in utopian bliss in Sauropolis, the capital of Dinotopia.

sean guynes@guynes· Apr 1

You may be stressed, but not "Theoden-listening-to-Wormtongue's-bullshit" stressed.