Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー

🇺🇲🇯🇵 || Writer of fantasy westerns and talky short stories || Author of THE SHATTERED FRONTIER series (Book 3 in-progress) || Amateur photographer of Japan

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

Project Plug!

The Shattered Frontier is a fantasy western (or six-guns and sorcery, if you like) series that follows a bounty hunter and her sidekick crisscrossing the nation of Furydale as violent magicks begin to creep back into the world. 🧵

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

@Jadestormchase Amazing! 🥹

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

@AmericanaAesth High Noon was filmed there! A great place to visit. 🙌

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

"Sometimes when all our attention is thus focused on memory, our eyes, unguided by ourselves, will distinguish from a mass of detail some single object, presenting it with a clarity never achieved by concentration."

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Been feeling bleak for the past week after I read an essay saying the market for middle-grade books has collapsed because kids can no longer read them. Two long-time publishers of middle-grades have shuttered, with more to come. We don’t appreciate what a crisis this is. +

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

And I've been enjoying every second of it. 🥹

[Gearoid Reidy リーディー・ガロウド @GearoidReidy]

Hot weather always gets the headlines, but no one comments when it's cool. Tokyo is currently enjoying its coolest June in decades: it's been under 25c for 8 days in a row. The last time this happened was 2006.

[Jade 翠勇弥🌪️ Japanese storm chaser ストームチェイサー @Jadestormchase]

アメリカの人へ
何故かダコタ関連でバズってるので宣伝と最近フォローしてくれた方に

私は年に1ヶ月-1.5ヶ月、日本からアメリカに嵐を追うストームチェイサーです

今年は6/22までアメリカに滞在して、ここ数日はアメリカ北部でストームチェイスをします

画像は今年ベストショットのカンザスでの嵐

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

Just finished 'The Shadow of the Torturer' by Gene Wolfe. Another book I've had sitting on my shelf back in America for years, but was never successful in breaking into it. Tried one more time on Kindle and the oft-repeated suggestion that you're supposed to just let the prose wash over you was what actually carried me through to the end.

Urth is a strange and fascinating place, and very hard to believe that it's home. The entire book is couched in Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In this case, Severian moves about the dust and bones of an interstellar empire. The sun is dying, society has regressed, nothing new is being built, old relics and laws are being cleaved to like a life raft, and everyone sits beneath the authority of a ruler who lives... somewhere. We don't even know where the throne is.

The story itself is presented in a framed narrative and chronicles the adventures of Severian, a torturer who will one day sit on the throne. He is also completely unreliable and, despite having a perfect memory, there is a lot about his life he doesn't want us to see. Perfect memory also does not shield a man from having a limited perception of the world, and so we only see what he wants us to see--and, more importantly, we only see what he is *able* to see.

It's a novel (one of five in the series) that presents the world as something unknowable by most of the people who live in it, and, on top of that, presents a protagonist who's not incredibly interested in truth. And so the result is almost a kind of abstract journey through a ruined world that's riding out its own coda and a scattered mind with which to view it. All of this guided by Wolfe's incredible prose, which easily telegraphs the depth of the author's vocabulary, but not to the point where it gets pretentious. As others have said, it reads like the author just loved language, and the opportunity to occasionally demonstrate that love and how language evolves over time was just too great to pass up.

It was a big reason why I loved 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' by Ron Hansen so much. 'The Shadow of the Torturer' likewise cradles its central character with near-mythic language. And much like with Jesse James, we're asked to read past all that to assess Severian's morals and goals and judge just how good of a person he is. (Not very.)

There were some parts of 'The Shadow of the Torturer' that rubbed me the wrong way, but I want to finish the series before passing too much judgment. The first four books were written as one novel and it's difficult to say exactly which parts are Severian embellishing his story and which are genuine flaws in the story itself.

Long post! But I really liked the book. Moving on to 'The Claw of the Conciliator' next and maybe I'll be able to finish two books for June.

Books I've read so far this year:

January: All the Pretty Horses
February: Hardwired
March: The Martian Chronicles
April: Project Hail Mary
May: On the Beach, No Longer Human
June: The Shadow of the Torturer

[Westerns & the Old West @DavidLambertArt]

Get on it, people.

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

I loved the first Senua game, but the second one lost my interest pretty quickly - which was a massive shame because it was in development for 7 years.

Fingers crossed for this one, though. Shocked they're coming in with a third game after only 3 years.

[Shinobi602 @shinobi602]

SENUA announced, a new game in the Hellblade franchise, coming to Xbox, PS5 and PC in 2027

#Xbox #XboxShowcase

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

@DavidLambertArt Seraphim Falls feels depressingly underwatched. It's a really interesting western.

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

Closing in on the final mission in Cyberpunk 2077. Going to be really sad when it's over, but what a ride it's been. Definitely going to end up in my top 10.

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

"Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them."

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

Reading 'The Shadow of the Torturer' by Gene Wolfe for June. 👍

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

@wesleytypes @dragonage I'd probably prefer a remaster, myself. Maybe a visual update to bring the races more in line with their appearances in DA2.

[eric ゑリｯ久 @shinobu_books]

What does Osu! 押忍🥋mean?

You often hear the word Osu! Osu! at a Karate Dojo or club. But what does that mean? There are several competing theories however the two Kanji押忍 could be interpreted as,

“Though you are enduring terrible situation, you persevere and press forward.”

This is often used as both a greeting and the reply to that greeting. In other words, it’s much like Ohayogozaimasu! (good morning!) Konnichi wa! (Good Day!) Konban wa! (Good Evening) Hai! (Yes! Understood! Present!) Iie!(No!) Wakarimasen! (I don’t understand!) Ossharu Toori Desu!(It is as you say!) Thus Osu! can stand in for any of those meanings.

Therefore the meaning is clear for members of a Dojo or club, however other people will find it hard to understand. That is why it is not used outside of the Dojo (Haha)

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

@bunburyoudoujp To their credit, they replaced all the trains recently and they're definitely a lot better. The issue has always been the glacial pace of expansion and how it hasn't kept pace with increased ridership. Maybe someday we'll get to ride around the bay completely. 😁

[Yesterday's Print @yesterdaysprint]

Wausau Daily Herald, Wisconsin, June 3, 1922

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

One of the interesting things in Gene Wolfe's Wikipedia page:

"...[Wolfe's] most famous professional engineering achievement is a contribution to the machine used to make Pringles potato chips."

We owe this man a lot.

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

Reading 'The Shadow of the Torturer' by Gene Wolfe for June. 👍

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

Amazon, please. 😭

[Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️ @BaronDestructo]

Sadly, it's true. Amazon has elected not to move forward with the new Stargate series.

There's not much I can add beyond confirming what's happened. But I will say this...

Creator Martin Gero developed a new Stargate series over two years, ultimately crafting a show that offered a fresh jumping-on point for new viewers while deeply respecting existing canon. It was a series that avoided the pitfalls of several modern remakes and reboots by fully embracing the core of its predecessors: action, adventure, exploration, wonder, heart, humor, and found family. And based on that creative vision, the new Stargate series was greenlit in November of 2025.

As of today, officially, that original vision is no more. We'll never get the opportunity to introduce you to that world and those characters - or reintroduce you to, and check in with, some familiar faces from the past.

My heart breaks. For the incredibly talented writers who worked tirelessly to bring this show to life. For Martin who maintained an unwavering positive outlook throughout despite the challenges, and who always strove to make a show that would honor the fans while welcoming a new audiences. And for the long-suffering Stargate fandom who waited so long and came so close to getting a show they truly would have loved.

[Anthony Lowe | アンソニー・ロー @AntonymLowe]

@NateSilver538 California leadership did a victory lap when they passed Japan to become the 4th largest economy, but Japan tends to finish counting their votes in a matter of hours.