Josh Wilson

Josh Wilson is the editor and publisher of The Fabulist Words & Art.

Apologies to Asimov: Three Laws of Generative AI in Creative Writing

In the spirit of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, I offer this bit of mind candy, in the hopes that it might be useful to consider and work with. To remain analogous to Asimov, the ...

Poetry in Prose: The Spark that Leaps Between

[These comments on style were originally collected in a tweet thread that was retweeted by Neil Gaiman, which is pretty darn neat.] In the course of editing prose fiction, I find myself continually returning to ...

Our Policy on AI in Writing and Art

Updated 1.22.23 We affirm to our readers and contributors that The Fabulist Magazine is, first and foremost, a venue for connections and encounters with unadulterated human creative works. • Unless otherwise specified in any given call ...

Lord of the Simulacra: Notes on Amazon’s ‘Rings of Power’

Is it OK to just sit back and enjoy Amazon Studios’s lurchingly entertaining, absurdly big-budget streaming series “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”? That depends on what you want it to be — ...

Mona Caron: Getting Lost in the Weeds

Mona Caron's epic murals are full of pageantry, wonderment and amazing detail, and have been a transformative presence in San Francisco neighborhoods, alleys and street corners since the '90s. In her extravagant illustrations of re-imagined ...

Emily Knox: ‘People Who Try to Ban Books Truly Believe That Books Are Powerful’

Emily Knox has good news to share. The path to salvation, she says, can be found in books, through the act of reading widely, with an open mind, and thinking critically. She also has a ...

Our Winter’s Tales

[Vote for "Our Winter's Tales" in the 1st Annual Utopia Awards. Polls are now open through Aug. 21, 2022.] Today is the Winter Solstice, and the reality of days getting longer and the sun returning ...

Urban Fantasy Has a Political Edge in Jadie Jang’s ‘Monkey Around’

‘Monkey Around”By Jadie JangSolaris (2021)ISBN: 9781781089200 Buy this book on Indiebound In Jadie Jang’s “Monkey Around,” urban fantasy is the milieu — specifically the richly diverse, politically activated, increasingly gentrified San Francisco Bay Area of the ...

Phil Tippett: 24 Frames Per Second

In this transcript of The Fabulist's wide-ranging conversation with Phil Tippett, the modern master of stop-motion animation talks about the art, mental health struggles, and techniques of sculpture, puppetry, writing, film editing, lighting, and collaboration ...

‘Mad God’ is Phil Tippett’s Stop-Motion Nightmare Come True

Phil Tippett already lives in your dreams. Are you ready to take a tour through his nightmares?   As a master and innovator of stop-motion animation, Tippett made his name bringing exotic creatures to life for ...

‘Here is the Future You Requested’: The Fabulist at Lit Crawl ’21

The Fabulist's fifth annual Lit Crawl reading was hosted last night at the fabulous Adobe Bookstore on 24th Street in San Francisco's Mission District. It was a smash. Standing room only, as usual, though entry ...

Let’s Get Lost with Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Terminal Boredom’

Terminal Boredom: StoriesBy Izumi Suzuki (Verso, 2021)ISBN: 9781788739887 Buy this book on IndieBound! At first, Izumi Suzuki's short works of self-spelunking science fiction — complete with shapeshifting aliens, interspecies relationships, dream machines and gendered dystopias ...

The Day-Glo Apocalypse of ‘Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts’

They had me at the Mod Frogs. Attired in tailored suits, with skinny ties, pointy shoes, pencil moustaches, and all as green as Kermit — these stylish, savvy, human-sized “mute” mafiosi are just the tip ...

‘The Owl House’: Disney Does Hieronymus Bosch

Children’s literature, which this reporter maintains must include visual as well as text media, has always had a weird streak.  It’s tempting to cite “Adventure Time” as a recent trendsetter — the bizarro Cartoon Network ...

Once in a Blue Moon: October 2020

There are two full moons this month. October 1 brought us the harvest moon, a haunted orange beauty peering down at us through the wildfire smoke that shrouds The Fabulist's hometown of San Francisco. Halloween, ...

Where There’s Smoke: September 2020

This Month:Editorial • Publishing Schedule • Open Call for Short Fiction Editorial: "Where There's Smoke" Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer in America with barbecues and weekend sales at the mall. This summer, ...

Fantastical Fiction, Art and Social Change

"Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words." — Ursula K. Le Guin Science fiction and fantasy are powerful vehicles for social critique, and for envisioning ...

Ellen Klages on the ‘fantastic constructs’ of her magical San Francisco

[Ellen Klages has won her share of literary awards, but the biggest prize of all goes to the reader, who gets to explore the familiar, but distinct, worlds she creates. A San Francisco Bay Area ...

What Poe can teach us about the pandemic

But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, ...

David Tennant reads vampire stories, Michael Moorcock’s rock ‘n’ roll chaos

(Above: Edvard Munch, "Vampyr") David Tennant reads vampire stories: Hallowe'en has come for you a little early with this special treat — great vampire fiction by Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Edith Wharton and other great ...

Strange transits through “The Daylight Gate” (review)

The Daylight GateBy Jeanette WintersonGrove Press (2012) Buy this book via IndieBound Unfailingly dire, unflinchingly bloody, full of love and license, and brimming over with real devotion and all-too-human devilry, Jeanette Winterson’s “The Daylight Gate“ ...

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: Gene Wolfe’s ‘The Fifth Head of Cerberus’ (Review)

Support indie booksellers and buy this book via IndieBound • Amazon users can buy this book as a trade paperback (Gollancz SF Masterworks edition) or a Kindle ebook. The Fifth Head of Cerberus: Three NovellasBy ...

On Octavia E. Butler’s Birthday, Why Not Read Some of Her Game-Changing Classics?

[All links to books are via IndieBound.] Octavia E. Butler's birthday is today, June 22, and her death in 2006 at age 58 — attributed variously to a stroke and also a head injury — ...

Neil Gaiman on Gene Wolfe, Stranger Things 3 trailer, all 37 Batman TV villains, ‘Peanuts’ vs. ‘The Thing’

At a time when TV adaptations of classic works of SF/F are coming fast and thick, Neil Gaiman's appreciation of the late Gene Wolfe's most famous work is also a testimonial to the pleasures of ...