Mahmud El Sayed

Just found a really strange note on my desk in my own handwriting: "You really enjoyed reading 'There Is No Antimemetics Division'. Great book. Top notch worldbuilding and exciting plot. Old-school SCP shenanigans." I have no recollection of writing this.

There's one positive about how terrible Manchester United are playing, it should signal the end of interviews with tax exile Jim 'the UK is being colonised by immigrants' Ratcliffe where he pontificates about politics. No one cares, Jim.

Honestly several things are depressing about ai but the two that stand out are the eagerness of people to outsource thought because cognitive effort is uncomfortable, and the casualness with which people use the shiny, easy thing knowing it's bad for climate change

"You're in a bookshop walking along the stacks when all of a sudden you look down and see a book. You reach down and flip it over. The book lies there on its back, its pages exposed. The book wants to be back on the shelf but you're not helping. Why is that?"

Woo happy to see FF as a semi-finalist but even happier to see @mruthrobinson.bsky.social and @mahmudelsayed.bsky.social repping FF as finalists in the story category!

I'm really happy to announce that THE REPUBLIC OF MEMORY is being translated into Catalan by @jande-editorial.bsky.social and @ferranrafolsgesa.bsky.social. My first translation! I'm so excited to try and read it, particularly the Nupol sections. editorialjande.com/producte/la-...

James Joyce in the movie theater watching THE ODYSSEY, arms crossed, scoffing at the visual depiction of Odysseus as a grizzled Matt Damon. No, Ulysses is a middle-aged Jewish advertising man in Dublin called Leopold Bloom.

Heartbreaking

Congratulations to Pip Adam, recipient of the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Audition!

I thought Republic of Memory, by @mahmudnawaz.bsky.social, was absolutely brilliant and spilled several thousand words about the use of language alone in that book, to go up on Nerds of a Feather in a few days.

And I want it to be clear this should be a matter of consent. I should have a right to veto use of GenAI to alter the text of my book, to forbid my book being fed into any LLM including proprietary, and to veto its use in associated areas--cover, design, translation, audio, and marketing copy.

Undercover French police:

I was going to stop watching The Diplomat but then CJ Cregg and Josh Lyman showed up

English: Halloween Arabic: Eid Al-Raab (The Festival of Fright)

Jippii! I finished Control Resonant. Excellent game and prob my GOTY but no Ahti?!? Is he still on his lollie lomps? Does Remedy think I'm yesterday's grouse's son? I feel the band around this head and someone is gonna be taken behind the sauna unless we get some Ahti DLC! Perkele!

How to Stop The Boats? Stop The Bombs first.

One of my biggest problem with the Society of Authors charter on AI is that it is purposefully badly written. It's like one of those political statements where the aim is to say nothing as expansively as possible in order to avoid a soundbite.

"Pssst, you, yes you, I have a samizdat of Sally Rooney's new novel but it's going to cost you. It's only printed on carbon paper but it will scratch that literary fiction itch. Just remember, If the governmemt catch you with it, don't mention my name."

This type of unfounded accusation is becoming more and more common against writers of a certain background. If The Atlantic care so much about AI use, why don't they go after the writers who admit using it like James Frey or Olga Tokarczuk or Anthony Horowitz? It's plain double standards.

It seems like every time I finish a book, I'm adding another to my TBR pile. Reading is a Sisyphean endeavour. "I leave Sisyphus at the foot of that TBR pile. One always finds one's burden again."

I'll be at @liverpooluni.bsky.social next weekend as part of the Liverpool Literary Festival talking all things AI, Arabfuturism and linguistics. Come and say salam if you see me! #LivLitFest www.liverpool.ac.uk/literary-fes...

Ruin a book by adding a word: The Republic of Memory Loss

When There Are Wolves Again is a hopeful, engaging, and profound novel. Is it pollyannaish? Perhaps a smidge. But mostly in the sense of the original 1913 novel Pollyanna, which urged optimism-driven action in the face of adversity. Courage my friends, 'tis not too late to make a better world.

Accidentally watch one AI video of Colonel Gaddafi doing a rainbow flick and suddenly your IG reels are full of dead Arab dictators playing football. Stop the world, I want to get off!

"In the wild, a man must know his place. Forest. Desert. Tundra. They each have their own je ne sais quoi. A man must be prepared to quoi wherever he can. Savour by Dior."

Midnight Diner returns! Come on, Netflix. Don't let us down. japan-forward.com/tv-series-mi...

I have now also been killed by a haunted sub-woofer but this time it was more of an experiment. I just wanted to see if it could be done. Control Resonant did not let me down.

The idea of authors being in competition with each other is bizarre to me. Books aren't cars. We don't get just one.

"I hear the gooseberries are doing well this year. And so are the mangoes."

*Clears throat* *Picks up sign* *Starts chanting while leading a protest against the corporations, waving the sign up and down* "Down with the elites! Down with the old, in with the new! Read, read debut novels!" bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Playing Control Resonant and the first boss fight is: Defeat The Artist. Me: Artist, your work is derivative and leaves me feeling cold. Use of colour? Lacklustre. Use of space? Amateur. I wish I could muster the emotion to hate it but it's just boring.

Lanterns Season One is done and just realised that John Stewart is 100% the type of guy to ask to borrow your USB-C cable on a train because his phone battery is on 7%. (But seriously, good show elevated by great casting. Someone needs to cast Kelly Macdonald in the next season of Fargo)

Question: So, what's Control Resonant like? Answer: I just got killed by a haunted speaker.

Some Kojima name suggestions: V.I. Lain General W. Crimes Bro Cringeman Dick

Dashiell Hammett: PI Gruffalo is hired by a beautiful heiress to track down her missing husband but when the man turns up dead all the signs point to him as the killer.

Researching djinn for my WIP but only during daylight hours. I don't want to risk rousing something... unnatural.

every couple of years a mainstream media outlet covers nerd shit like they're discovering a strange new animal in the woods. but those of us who live in the woods are like "oh that's just jerry. fuckin chill out."

Past Mahmud, Present Mahmud is as weak as you. The WIP is still IP and yet I am playing Control Resonant. Join with me brother! Together we are more than a match for Future Mahmud.