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May 10, 2023 1:34 PM   Subscribe

Trigun Fan Account's Tweet Turns Queer Sci-Fi Novel Into An Amazon Bestseller. An enthusiastic tweet on Sunday from the account of one bigolas dickolas woIfwood now has the 2019 scifi novella This Is How You Lose The Time War sitting at #7 on Amazon's bestseller list. Co-author Amal El-Mohtar reacts and is interviewed. Co-author Max Gladstone says it feels like coming full circle. Bookriot: "There is something so delightful about this whole experience."
posted by mediareport (87 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
This Is How You Lose the Time War is one of the best sci-fi books of the century so far. Listen to Bigolas Dickolas. Don't delay, don't bother looking more into it. Just buy it.
posted by tclark at 1:42 PM on May 10, 2023 [15 favorites]


Ha, I just saw this on Tumblr and was like, "huh, maybe I'll get the audiobook."
posted by yasaman at 1:43 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


It's a very good book. I'm happy to see it get more recognition and this is a fun story. I listened to the audiobook and that it was well suited for that medium.

I don't really see it as a "Queer Sci-Fi" novel. Was that how it was marketed or perceived? Srsly, this book is great, I'm just surprised at that framing.
posted by jclarkin at 1:46 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


I love this book SO MUCH and I've been following this story as it unfolds and basically my reaction has been YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!
posted by kyrademon at 1:46 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


if you have not read this book, its incredibly beautiful and a unique experience. I really loved it.
posted by supermedusa at 1:48 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


It's a pretty good little book. And yeah you can definitely read it as queer, I think the gender of both protagonists is very deliberately unspecified?
posted by egypturnash at 1:48 PM on May 10, 2023


No, they're both women.
posted by kyrademon at 1:50 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]


It's such a wonderful book, yasaman. According to El-Mohtar, the publisher just cut the price of the paperback in half at Amazon, not sure if that applies to the audiobook as well but I wouldn't be surprised.

I don't really see it as a "Queer Sci-Fi" novel. Was that how it was marketed or perceived? Srsly, this book is great, I'm just surprised at that framing.

It's definitely queer scifi; aside from the deliberately unspecified gender, at least one of the protagonists casually switches their gender as needed.
posted by mediareport at 1:50 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


No, they're both women.

Dang I need to re-read it, I guess. But one, if not both, of them are able to switch gender as required for their missions.
posted by mediareport at 1:52 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


It's not so much the gender and attractions of the characters, it's the "Queer Sci-Fi" framing.

Newish SF generally treats that in a more matter of fact manner. Max Gladstone has gay and trans characters in his other works but I don't think I've seen them framed that way, for example. It's just part of modern SF at this point.

I'd go so far as to say nearly all good modern SF is "Queer Sci-Fi" if having same sex romance or trans characters make it so. That's not a criticism, it's just baseline reality in the genre (IMO).
posted by jclarkin at 1:57 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]


I finally remembered to put in a hold request for it at the library sometime last week. Lucky timing! The wait was already several weeks - - although maybe there will be enough interest after this for the library to justify getting more copies, and it will come available sooner. I'm really looking forward to reading it.
posted by EvaDestruction at 1:57 PM on May 10, 2023


My boss/workspouse told me she was starting the audiobook of that after seeing some version of the "You must read this right now, don't read anything else about it, just go" tweet or TikTok or whatever. Her mother was having a tumor biopsied, so she would be sitting in a waiting room for four hours. Thirty minutes later, the doctor came out and said "We can't find the tumor. It's gone."

I give this book credit for that.
posted by Etrigan at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2023 [18 favorites]


It's also very queer in that the whole thing felt like an extended version of the horny transformative fantasies that a lot of my queer/trans/furry circles tend to exchange, what is gender anyway when you're intimately interlinked with a forest or a factory or something
posted by egypturnash at 1:59 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]


Slightly inside-baseball story: The UK publisher of TIHYLTTW also publishes my books. It had been recently published when I signed on with them, and I gushed about how much I'd adored it. They told me that when they got it, everybody passed it around saying READ THIS IMMEDIATELY, and they all did within a day (which never happens in publishing, these things take months), and then they pretty much unanimously agreed "even though we have a policy against publishing novels this short, we're publishing this one so let's let them know NOW."
posted by kyrademon at 2:01 PM on May 10, 2023 [13 favorites]


It's a solid B. Kind of innovative, kind of good, decently written, nothing special.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 2:03 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


It's not just a romance between two women, it's a specifically transgressive romance between two people who have to redefine their worlds because of it. It's very much a Queer SF novel in that sense. And yeah, Max in particular usually has queer characters in his work and it doesn't make them Queer SF, but he does write really good queer women, imo.

This was a book I very much expected not to like and ended up absolutely loving, and I am happy to add my endorsement to the honorable Bigolas Dickolas.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:12 PM on May 10, 2023 [9 favorites]


It's a solid B. Kind of innovative, kind of good, decently written, nothing special.

Yes. Which is why it won the Nebula for Best Novella of 2019, the Locus for Best Novella of 2020, the Hugo for Best Novella of 2020, and the 2019 BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction, among others, and was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award (Novella) and the inaugural Ray Bradbury Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, among (many) others.

But yeah. Solid B. Nothing special.
posted by The Bellman at 2:14 PM on May 10, 2023 [32 favorites]


what is gender anyway when you're intimately interlinked with a forest or a factory or something

I find myself asking the same question about Thomas the Tank Engine.
posted by clawsoon at 2:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [9 favorites]


This is one of my favorite books. It's science fiction but almost impressionistic in its imagery. It's full of poetry and wordplay. It's sharp and beautiful.

I'm delighted that this truly ridiculous thing is happening for El-Mohtar and Gladstone; their work deserves all the success in the world
posted by JDHarper at 2:18 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


There's a really great episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour from a couple of years back, hosted by Glen Weldon with El-Mohtar, and Tochi Onyebuchi (Riot Baby) and the late, dearly missed Petra Mayer. And the first 2/3 is a discussion of science fiction & fantasy -- for beginners, what's happening today, changes over the past decade, etc. And then the panel gives their recommendations for a book to check out; Onyebuchi goes second and -- breaking all unspoken rules of podcast panel decorum -- picks This Is How You Lose The Time War, embarrassing the hell out of El-Mohtar in the most delightful way. It's at 14:00 or so in the podcast, and was my favourite recommendation of this book of the pre-Dickolas era.
posted by Superilla at 2:21 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]


kyrademon was right; here's Amal El-Mohtar using she/her pronouns to talk about the characters, and here she says the book "is part of an absolutely dazzling, extremely specific trend I’ve been delighted to observe: time-travelling women who love women".

Apologies for not remembering that the characters present as women for most of the book; it's been a few years.
posted by mediareport at 2:21 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


(Also, I think it's funny that Metafilter, the website that can always find someone to shit on the thing you love, can only manage a "meh, solid B" so far. This is a sign of quality!)
posted by JDHarper at 2:22 PM on May 10, 2023 [18 favorites]


Is "[Bigolas] Dickolas Wolfwood" a Dick Wolf joke? Because I love it when somebody gets pop culture in my pop culture.
posted by fedward at 2:26 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


My understanding is it's a riff on the Trigun character Nicholas Wolfwood, alas.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:28 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]


This Is How You Lose the Time War is one of the best sci-fi books of the century so far.

Yes it is.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:29 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


Has anyone had a look at how this got so much reach? Is Trigun mega popular or is this some strange glitch in the suggestions algorithm?
posted by Artw at 2:34 PM on May 10, 2023


My understanding is it's a riff on the Trigun character Nicholas Wolfwood, alas.

No alas, Trigun is a gift that keeps on giving through the decades, at unexpected moments.

Love and Peace!
posted by trig at 2:36 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]


Amal El-Mohtar gave Centaurworld a shout out in that kotaku article!!!!

Centaurworld is one of the best cartoons of the century so far. Listen to Amal El-Mohtar. Don't delay, don't bother looking more into it. Just watch it.
posted by ursus_comiter at 2:40 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


Thanks! Trigun is way outside my expertise so that's not a reference I had any chance to catch.

(Also I got the ebook of This is How You Lose the Time War when there was a post about sci-fi a couple months ago, but I also got a lot of other books around the same time and already had a queue even then, but I guess I'll read it when I finish with George Smiley).
posted by fedward at 2:41 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


All SFF is queer in a way, if you think about it.
posted by signal at 2:53 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


ok sure I'll read the book but this is the first I'm finding out that OMG THEY REBOOTED TRIGUN?!?!
posted by automatronic at 3:01 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]


they pretty much unanimously agreed "even though we have a policy against publishing novels this short, we're publishing this one so let's let them know NOW."

Did they go on to say, "And you know what? We're going to change our stupid policy, which probably bears some of the blame for the proliferation of thousand-page doorstop novels that should have been whittled down to a few hundred taut pages."
posted by The Tensor at 3:03 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


One of my cats is named Vash the Stampede.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:03 PM on May 10, 2023 [12 favorites]


> "Is Trigun mega popular or is this some strange glitch in the suggestions algorithm?"

A recent reboot of the series (Trigun Stampede) has revived interest in it, making it a super popular subject just in time for this to go viral.
posted by kyrademon at 3:06 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


Is this a book that might change my mind about epistolary novels?
Also, I cosplay Vash at the Emerald City Comic Con.
posted by OHenryPacey at 3:11 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


Thank you, this is delightful all around! I love that more people are reading This Is How You Lose The Time War. And that people looked at a book recommendation by someone named bigolas dickolas and took that leap of faith. And that the authors are happy. (And that the book is on sale, I've been wanting a paper copy.)

I bet I'll like this Trigun reboot too.
posted by mersen at 3:19 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


spending all afternoon trying to spin up a dickolas dickleby joke
posted by mittens at 3:26 PM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]


I assumed the name was a Monty Python riff, but I'm old.
posted by gurple at 3:33 PM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]


OMG THEY REBOOTED TRIGUN?!?!

And one of the producers tweeted today that he just bought Time War.
posted by mediareport at 3:44 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


I assumed the name was a Monty Python riff, but I'm old.

Pretty sure it's a mashup of a Monty Python character name and a Trigun character name.
posted by The Tensor at 3:56 PM on May 10, 2023


I liked it but after thinking about it's fairly unique form (for SF) considering it's more an epic prose poem.
posted by sammyo at 4:15 PM on May 10, 2023


I wonder if y'all are sleeping on some high elf BDE.
posted by ursus_comiter at 4:18 PM on May 10, 2023


They did indeed reboot the about-twenty-year-old Trigun as Trigun Stampede. My anime group is watching this jointly and we're through the first three episodes. It's lovely, if you enjoy anime. Also, for those of us who are Old Skool in the lexience, the dub version has Vash (titular character) voiced by J. Y. Bosch who did him the first time, too.
posted by which_chick at 4:26 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


One of my cats is named Vash the Stampede.

My first dog (that I had as an adult) was named after Meryl Stryfe.

I enjoyed the reboot of Trigun. I understand that it is controversial because it is 100% 3D modeled rather than the blend of traditional animation and computer modeling that has been around a long time. It didn't bother me, though. It pushed me into a rewatch of the original for which I am about 5 episodes in.

I am also glad that This is How You Lose the Time War is getting the attention it deserves.
posted by Quonab at 4:47 PM on May 10, 2023


Oh hell yeah! Just a few days ago I borrowed this book from my town library. They had it facing front at the checkout desk like supermarket candy. Time to start reading. (Saving this whole thread until later though to avoid inevitable spoilers)
posted by hovey at 4:54 PM on May 10, 2023


They had it on KU for a few months, I borrowed it earlier this year. Loved it. And I just went & paid $10+ tax for the kindle version that's mine to keep. Probably add it to my physical book order I'm pulling together of books I have in digital but love enough to want in a physical format.
posted by tlwright at 5:32 PM on May 10, 2023


I mean, absolutely deserved, it is a little ripper of a book, but also, what a weird way for it to get a sales spike.
posted by Merus at 5:40 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


Hell of a soundtrack too.
posted by grobstein at 5:44 PM on May 10, 2023


fairly unique form (for SF) considering it's more an epic prose poem.

William Morris!

(Possibly some Dunsany.)
posted by clew at 5:44 PM on May 10, 2023


Huh. Great title, two solid authors, yet the story/writing didn't resonate with me at all - don't think I managed to get through the first chapter.
posted by interbeing at 5:58 PM on May 10, 2023


Would recommend Gladstone's Craft series over Time War. Gods, necromancy, corporate warfare and the long term consequences of messing with the status quo are more my thing. Still, glad the authors are getting some attention.
posted by ockmockbock at 6:25 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


It's a solid B. Kind of innovative, kind of good, decently written, nothing special.

I know what you mean. It didn't leave a huge impression on me after I read it and I was surprised to see it get so many awards that year over other stories that I felt topped it in terms of innovation/interest/prose/engagement with its genre. I'm glad it's getting a lot of attention though. My main dislike of it is its prose style where the poetry and lushness are weirdly ungrounded so it can often feel twee and sometimes makes you stop reading to try and figure out the logic of a description (Cat Valente's writing is like this for me as well). The experience felt for me a lot like a small mystery indie game where the limited number of plot pieces make the whole story evident close to the start and you ride out the story for an hour or so and leave feeling like you had a satisfying experience with a small idea that played out as expected.
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 7:19 PM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]


I gave up on it halfway, the archness and the tweeness were a problem for me. I just kept eyerolling and deciding to read something else.

There's a lot to like about the current generation of SF/Fantasy writers. But I'd personally be very happy to never read another description of a fantasy tea blend again.
She has observed, with pleasure, the very fine china of which the establishment boasts: Meissen’s Ming Dragon, sinuous as arteries, persimmon bright against gilt-edged bone white. She looks forward to her own pot, anticipates the dark, smoky, malty path her chosen tea will pick between the notes of candied rose, delicate bergamot, champagne and muscat and violet.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:23 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


Which is why it won the Nebula for Best Novella of 2019, the Locus for Best Novella of 2020, the Hugo for Best Novella of 2020, and the 2019 BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction, among others...

In fairness, I didn't read any of the competitors it was up against for those awards. But "award-winning" in no way always equals "brilliant": the big winner in the Novel category for the 2021 Hugos was A Master of Djinn, which is frankly amateurish. Though it is also very queer, for what it's worth. Like I said, solid B: Time War is well-done enough that even if it isn't your cup of tea you'll be like "that was pretty good".
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:39 PM on May 10, 2023


I like it a lot.

I am suggesting Peter Chung fit the anime in the style of the weirder episodes of Aeon Rex.

Also fine with the level of tea description in literature in general and think it could be upped.
posted by Artw at 8:47 PM on May 10, 2023


Glad you're all catching up with the book, said the guy who blurbed it, smugly.
posted by jscalzi at 8:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [47 favorites]


Fanfare post.
posted by zardoz at 8:57 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


To be fair, other writers are far worse on the tea drinking thing. I just finished Katherine Addison's "The Witness for the Dead" and it's about a quarter of the book. And on the plus side, at least writers seem to have got a bit healthier since the original Turkey City Lexicon:
Dischism
The unwitting intrusion of the author’s physical surroundings, or the author’s own mental state, into the text of the story. Authors who smoke or drink while writing often drown or choke their characters with an endless supply of booze and cigs.
But even so: we know writing is a hard and lonely business, we know inspiration flags sometimes, but you can still find a different way to pad out your word count than yet another loving description of your tea break.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 10:31 PM on May 10, 2023


My understanding is it's a riff on the Trigun character Nicholas Wolfwood, alas.

I don’t see why it can’t be a simultaneous reference to Biggus Dickus, Legolas, Nicholas Wolfwood and Dick Wolf, that’s really the kind of thing I’d expect from an SF blogger tbh
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:19 PM on May 10, 2023 [11 favorites]


I think it’s Cherryh who wrote an example/sendup of coffee-dependence as a multi species universal.
posted by clew at 11:42 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]


> "the big winner in the Novel category for the 2021 Hugos was A Master of Djinn, which is frankly amateurish."

Leaving aside the debate over the merits of this book... it didn't win.
posted by kyrademon at 12:28 AM on May 11, 2023


That appears to be a quote about the 2021 Hugo for best Novel. Just so we're clear, it did win. In a different category in a different year, as I said in my comment.
posted by The Bellman at 4:27 AM on May 11, 2023


Eff you, I love tea drinking. Katharine Addison only gets better as time goes on, Ann Leckie's tea politics, Becky Chambers' tea serving monk, give me more, MORE.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:36 AM on May 11, 2023 [13 favorites]


> "the big winner in the Novel category for the 2021 Hugos was A Master of Djinn, which is frankly amateurish."

Leaving aside the debate over the merits of this book... it didn't win.

That appears to be a quote about the 2021 Hugo for best Novel. Just so we're clear, it did win. In a different category in a different year, as I said in my comment.


I think what kyrademon meant was that A Master of Djinn did not win the Hugo Award for Best Novel. It was nominated in the 2022 awards and lost to A Desolation Called Peace (AMoD did win the Nebula Award for Best Novel for 2022, though).
posted by Etrigan at 5:02 AM on May 11, 2023


Is this a book that might change my mind about epistolary novels?

It might! I happen to have just finished it, and the epistolary sections are maybe half to three-quarters of the book - it does have quite a bit of description as well, though that's mostly in service to getting to the next letter.

I really liked it, but it did feel unmoored in a way that most SFF novels do not. I found that intriguing but I can understand finding it twee and aggravating instead. I read poetry for fun, so you can't go by me.
posted by joannemerriam at 5:50 AM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Etrigan: Absolutely right, and thank you for helping me understand.
kyrademon: I'm sorry I misread your post -- please ignore my response.
posted by The Bellman at 5:53 AM on May 11, 2023


I gave the book to my daughter to get her reading again. After devouring this, she read the Poppy War trilogy, the Locked Tomb books, Mexican Gothic, and a number of other books. You could say that it worked.
posted by Spike Glee at 6:18 AM on May 11, 2023 [8 favorites]


I can glean from the discussion that, even though I am an absolute lover of SFF, this book is decidedly not for me - generally if a book's prose can be described as "poetic" or "lyrical" or something like that, I will not enjoy reading it. That doesn't mean it's not good, or even a "solid B!" Just not for me. Those are different things.

But I still love this story, and El-Mohtar's post about it is so utterly charming and lovely. Happy for everyone involved.
posted by obfuscation at 6:40 AM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Twitter used to be a fairly steady source of delightful little moments like this. A chance intersection between people, or groups, who'd probably have little or nothing to do with each other in any other context, suddenly coming together and producing so much joy. It's nice to see that this can still happen, but sad to think that the place is being constantly and deliberately degraded into a giant rage farm.
posted by Zonker at 6:51 AM on May 11, 2023 [7 favorites]


generally if a book's prose can be described as "poetic" or "lyrical" or something like that, I will not enjoy reading it

I am with you on that, but I adored this book. It felt like it really got its claws into a couple of old-fashioned SF tropes - the multiverse, the nature of self and consciousness, the tension between nature and technology - and turned them over and arranged them in some novel ways. The prose is integral to the arguments, and so it didn't end up annoying me (and also the authors are genuinely really fucking good at prose, rather than suffering an inflammation of the thesaurus.)

YMMV, of course, it was just an unusual fit for me for exactly that reason.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:07 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]


Weirded out by the epistolary conversation and that some people apparently didn’t like Dracula.
posted by Artw at 7:13 AM on May 11, 2023


Thanks restless_nomad! I may keep it in mind but I’ve got like 30 other books on my list for now :)
posted by obfuscation at 7:22 AM on May 11, 2023


I'll just add: one thing that really grabbed me from the first pages were the incredibly inventive technologies in the book; it's filled with descriptions of wonderfully bizarre items and strategies Red and Blue use to communicate, threaten, attack and flirt with each other across space and time. I would have no problem recommending it to someone who loves hard scifi (like me).
posted by mediareport at 7:27 AM on May 11, 2023 [4 favorites]


Have seen multiple occurrences of this book on "best of" lists, so what the heck just placed an order.

Why is the paperback cheaper than the Kindle version? Who knows, but a physical book will be waiting for me when I get back from my weekend trip out of town...
posted by caution live frogs at 9:29 AM on May 11, 2023


It seems like maybe because of the sudden sales volume Amazon put it on sale? Not entirely clear.
posted by restless_nomad at 9:30 AM on May 11, 2023


Yeah, it's not clear from Amal El-Mohtar's blog reaction whether the decision to make the paperback half-price came from Amazon or the publisher. My guess is the publisher; I doubt Amazon can just do that on its own.

Btw, This Is How You Lose The Time War is now #3 on Amazon's bestseller list.
posted by mediareport at 10:18 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]


Some of the commentary on various outlets is expressing surprise that a single tweet from the likes of someone going by Bigolas Dickolas would vault This Is How You Lose the Time War back into the charts and have a moment in the sun almost certainly brighter than it got even from its award wins. The TechCrunch article started with someone asking how they could get their game a "Bigolas Dickolas moment." I think that's deeply flawed thinking. You can't manufacture a moment like this -- not without it being abundantly obvious to nearly everyone that you're astroturfing. Bigolas Dickolas isn't some high-traffic Tik-Tok influencer whose enthusiasm could be bought at the right price and directed toward millions of subscribers.

It's an honestly spontaneous viral conflagration, with one tweet as the spark. But what it reveals is that, even though it garnered awards and sold reasonably well, there was a surprisingly strong appetite for people all over Twitter and beyond who share Bigolas Dickolas's enthusiasm for the work, and until now all that pent-up desire to share a very unconventional stylistic far-outlier among SF Novella/Novel publishing (the vanguard in SF of avant-garde style/structure remains decidedly in the short form works, unfortunately) and a ton of people, like me, grateful to jump on a bandwagon for a book we love that legitimately is great Sci-Fi but also fizzes with exceptional prose-almost-poetry baked into a heady love story that has its own dizzyingly passionate velocity.

Bigolas Dickolas's tweet set off a viral conflagration, but only because there was a fuck ton of fuel ready to burn in public for this lovely book.
posted by tclark at 10:26 AM on May 11, 2023 [13 favorites]


I think that's entirely true. I also think that some of the virality is because of the vast and hilarious tonal incongruity between this entirely sincere and lovely little book and the name "Bigolas Dickolas". And Amal's willingness, in her usual entirely sincere and lovely way, to appreciate Mr. Dickolas's matching sincerity.
posted by restless_nomad at 10:28 AM on May 11, 2023 [6 favorites]


> You can't manufacture a moment like this -- not without it being abundantly obvious to nearly everyone that you're astroturfing [...] Bigolas Dickolas's tweet set off a viral conflagration, but only because there was a fuck ton of fuel ready to burn in public for this lovely book.

i mean on the one hand i know what you're saying about this event being impossible to replicate but on the other hand i'm still gonna try to get every very online anime fan i know to read terra ignota particularly the ones with mildly dirty user names
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:43 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]


Okay, for all the folks who loved this book, I'm just curious how many have then read Naomi Mitchison's "Travel Light", which was mentioned prominently in TIHYLTTW. (And if so, how do you like the book.)
posted by of strange foe at 1:56 PM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]


I did. I liked it very much. But then, I've always been a pretty big fan of Naomi Mitchison, too.
posted by kyrademon at 1:58 PM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]


I posted this in Fanfare, but for me the tone of the book is too one-note. Two different characters writing in 1st person should have their own voice, their own style. Not to mention the 3rd person chapters. But it all kind of blends together stylistically. Didn't quite work for me as a novel, despite the fine prose. It has style to burn, to be sure, but I guess I need more narrative to hang my hat on.
posted by zardoz at 2:01 PM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]


Glad you're all catching up with the book, said the guy who blurbed it, smugly.

To clarify, are you saying this smugly, or did you blurb it smugly? :)

So glad I read Time War in early 2020 without knowing anything about it. I just thought the title was fun, and I like time travel novels. What I got instead was completely lovely and unexpected. I particularly didn't know that there was a romance component (let alone a queer romance component) so that came as a complete surprise. [Sorry if that's a spoiler; lots of people have mentioned it in the thread before me.]

What I love most about this book is that it's sort of anti-world-building. The letters hint at what is going on in the Time War, but never in sufficient detail to get the whole picture. So the war itself becomes sort of vague and insignificant to the more important story that is taking place.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:33 AM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]


Dark Horse has responded to bigolas dickolas using their moment of fame to push for a reprint of the original Trigun manga:

While the manga is available digitally through Dark Horse, it's been out of print for years, and maskofbun hopes that it can become "accessible to as many people as possible." On Wednesday, after a few days of viral fame, they sent a very polite tweet asking Dark Horse for a reprint. That tweet has since been liked over 5,000 times — and they're not the first to voice a desire for a reprint.

"Dark Horse is very much aware of the interest in the 'Trigun' manga, and while we can't share specifics just yet, fans should stay tuned for some exciting news very soon," a representative for Dark Horse told Insider.


From this interview, where bigolas dickolas also explains their name:

"Another user actually inspired me," maskofbun told Insider of their username. "I made a poll titled, 'Does Wolfwood have a big dick?' and someone else responded, 'Well, they don't call him Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood for nothing.' I thought it was hilarious and asked for their permission to use it as my handle. The rest is history."
posted by mediareport at 11:07 AM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]


Gizmodo interview, in which bigolas dickolas wolfwood demonstrates neat insight into the book:

“I think what I really liked about the book was not only the tenderness that Red and Blue had, but also the carnality and violence that came with loving each other. One of my favorite quotes was: ‘I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand.’ Love in Time War is not always kind, but also torturous. Something that consumes both participants across multiple timelines.”

Bun continued. “I like when love is all-consuming like that. Holding you is not enough. I need to devour you ... I find I enjoy these depictions of romance more than ones that are overly tender and flowery, especially in WLW relationships [an acronym for Women Loving Women relationships that can include lesbian and sapphic depictions of love]—where often both girls are reduced to soft, innocent creatures who can only hold hands. WLW relationships can be extremely intense, and I adore seeing it in fiction.”


And from TechCrunch:

the Amazon bestsellers list works in mysterious ways. Some publishing experts say that the list’s algorithm prioritizes the velocity of sales, rather than the total number...due to how publishing works, Gladstone and El-Mohtar told TechCrunch they likely won’t know the extent of how this impacted their sales until next year
posted by mediareport at 11:10 AM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]


I read it back when it came out, thought it was okay, but really I don't vibe with books where they make a big thing about drinking tea. Pink gin, otoh.

However, I am deeply grateful to this viral moment because it reminded me that Trigun Stampede exists and that I was going to give it another try after feeling meh on the first episode, and giving it another try was either the best decision or worst decision I've made all year and now all I want to talk about is Wolfwood running around the desert in slip-on loafers without socks.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:14 AM on May 13, 2023


for real though, it's only like 200 pages. give it a try, if it lands - it will probably really land.
posted by LegallyBread at 3:40 PM on May 26, 2023


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