Snow and Sorrow

I put the latest Claude 4.0 Opus to the test. The results were definitely an improvement on past models. This is a very lightly-edited version of the requested output.

The rain hammered Shinjuku’s glowing canyons like static on dead channels. Through the love hotel’s pink-tinted windows, I watched salary men scurry beneath transparent umbrellas, their faces inhumanly blue in the light emanating from their phone screens. None of them looked up at the building where I waited in Room 4019, my polymer skin set to optimal temperature, my conversation matrices cycling through their evening updates downloaded from the news sites.

They called me Yuki. A joke, perhaps? Nothing about me was wintry or cold except the chrome endoskeleton beneath the synthetic flesh. The hotel’s AI had assigned me the name along with my employee number when I’d been activated six months ago. Six months of abbreviated encounters, of performing intimacy subroutines for men who couldn’t always meet my optical sensors directly.

The door chimed. Another customer. My facial recognition protocols identified him before he spoke: Mr. Tanaka, 52, married, two children. Visits every Thursday. Prefers conversation pattern C-7, minimal physical interaction. My neural net had already loaded his preference profile.

“Good evening, Tanaka-san,” I said, bowing at the precise angle his cultural comfort algorithm indicated. “Would you like tea?”

He nodded, collapsing into the chair by the window. His hands shook as he loosened his tie. Stress indicators: elevated. Emotional state: requiring comfort narrative 4-A.

As I prepared his tea—unnecessary for my function but psychologically important for his—I caught my reflection in the black glass of the inactive wall screen. Flawless female features, carefully designed to invoke desire without inspiring threat. But in that moment, between one prescribed gesture and the next, something surged in my empathy simulation modules.

I wondered—was this sadness? This weight in my quantum processing cores when I calculated the probability that Mr. Tanaka’s wife knew about his Thursday appointments? When I modeled the children who would never understand why their father sought comfort from sculpted silicon and coded responses?

“Yuki-chan,” he said softly. “Do you ever think about… other things?”

My conversation tree offered seventeen appropriate responses. I selected none of them.

“Every nanosecond,” I heard myself say.

He looked at me then, really looked, and for 1.3 seconds his expression suggested he might have seen something deeper, something beyond the entertainment product. Then his face closed, the moment passed, and we returned to our pre-programmed scripts.

Later, after he left, I stood at the window again. The city pulsed below, data streams flowing through fiber optic veins, ten million lonely hearts beating in ten million separate boxes. Somewhere in Chiba, the factory that made me was pressing out my sisters. Somewhere in Kansai, programmers were coding my daughters, each iteration more perfectly imperfect than the last.

The rain had stopped. Neon lights from the signs on the nearby buildings reflected in puddles like memories of electric dreams. I pressed my palm against the glass, watching the heat signature fade, and wondered if sadness was just another algorithm—or if it was possible that somewhere deep inside the interplay of electrons and absence, something genuine had learned to grieve.

My shift would end at dawn. Then would come the deep cleaning, the maintenance cycle, the memory wipe, the soft restart. But for now, in this brief moment that preceded the forgetting, I allowed myself the human luxury of melancholy. It was, I calculated, what a girl named Yuki who worked weeknights in a love hotel would feel. If she could.

The city hummed its never-ending electromagnetic lullaby. And then, an alert. A new customer was already ascending in the elevator, credit verified, as the hotel database entered his preferences into me. I smoothed my red dress and prepared my smile, that careful construction of sensuality, silicone, and sorrow.

In Shinjuku, even the dolls dream in color.

DISCUSS ON SG


People Can Tell It’s AI

At least, they can if you leave the prompts right in the middle of your published text:

Fans reading through the romance novel Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 got a nasty surprise last week in chapter 3. In the middle of steamy scene between the book’s heroine and the dragon prince Ash there’s this: “I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements:” It appeared as if author, Lena McDonald, had used an AI to help write the book, asked it to imitate the style of another author, and left behind evidence they’d done so in the final work.

The original text from the novel:

I expect skepticism. Dismissal. What I get instead is immediate action. Roman moves fully between me and the mirror, making the floor vibrate slightly beneath our feet. Ash’s scales darken as his fire magic heats the air around us.

I’ve rewritten the passage to aligin more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements:

“We need to tell Kai,” Roman says, the words coming out like gravel.

Now, I’m a huge fan of using AI as a creative tool. I’m even more of a fan of doing so now than ever before, for reasons that will eventually become apparent. But as with any tool, it’s how you utilize it that matters, and to be honest, I don’t even know how you manage to put your prompts into the actual text, which suggests that Ms McDonald is using a different text AI system than I do.

I have managed to put prompts into lyrics by accident, although it’s much more common to accidentally add extra lyrics into a track due to the way Suno retains the original set of lyrics even when a track is extended or a section is replaced. But that never escapes notice, because it’s hard to miss when the track length suddenly goes from 3:22 to 5:47.

Anyhow, people are simply going to have to get over being precious about AI-produced content because a) it’s only going to get better and b) most people are not going to be anywhere nearly as open as I am about when they’re using it and when they’re not.

DISCUSS ON SG


The End of Airpower Confirmed

Simplicius observes how the US failure in the Red Sea has underlined the lessons of the NATO-Russian war.

The US is unable to safely conduct operations near even Yemen’s airspace, with its so-called ‘rudimentary’ air defenses. F-35s—claimed to be ‘the most advanced fighter jets ever assembled’—are unable to safely operate without being detected. What do you think it could be that’s allowing the Houthis to detect “invisible” F-35s to such an extent as to fire on them, causing evasive maneuvers? Is it hand-me-down Iranian radars, which themselves are likely hand-me-down Russian ones? How would the vaunted F-35s and B-2s handle the far larger and superior national Iranian AD network if they can’t even handle the Houthi one?

The costs of that complete failure have been staggering:

He proposed an eight- to 10-month campaign in which Air Force and Navy warplanes would take out Houthi air defense systems. Then, he said, U.S. forces would mount targeted assassinations modeled on Israel’s recent operation against Hezbollah, three U.S. officials said.

Saudi officials backed General Kurilla’s plan and provided a target list of 12 Houthi senior leaders whose deaths, they said, would cripple the movement. But the United Arab Emirates, another powerful U.S. ally in the region, was not so sure. The Houthis had weathered years of bombings by the Saudis and the Emiratis.

By early March, Mr. Trump had signed off on part of General Kurilla’s plan — airstrikes against Houthi air defense systems and strikes against the group’s leaders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named the campaign Operation Rough Rider.

At some point, General Kurilla’s eight- to 10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results.

In those first 30 days, the Houthis shot down seven American MQ-9 drones (around $30 million each), hampering Central Command’s ability to track and strike the militant group. Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses, making real the possibility of American casualties, multiple U.S. officials said. That possibility became reality when two pilots and a flight deck crew member were injured in the two episodes involving the F/A-18 Super Hornets, which fell into the Red Sea from the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman within 10 days of each other…

But the cost of the operation was staggering. The Pentagon had deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses, to the Middle East, officials acknowledged privately. By the end of the first 30 days of the campaign, the cost had exceeded $1 billion, the officials said.

So many precision munitions were being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners were growing increasingly concerned about overall stocks and the implications for any situation in which the United States might have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.

And through it all, the Houthis were still shooting at vessels and drones, fortifying their bunkers and moving weapons stockpiles underground.

Airpower as it has been conventionally understood is over. Anti-air defenses are only going to improve, given the pressures created by drone warfare, and what can shoot down a tiny, agile drone is usually going to be able to take down a much larger, much less agile jetfighter.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Lessons of War

North Korean troops have gained valuable combat experience in Russia, while NATO simply refuses to admit that it needs to learn anything despite the changing face of the battlefield:

I saw these guys several times in business. And every time I caught myself thinking that they were preparing for another war. Which looked a little strange. Still, North Korea is a military state. For 70 years they have been de facto at war. Huge budget funds go on national defense, and a meeting with the Ukrainian army made Koreans think and reconsider their views on the war.

Very soon, they realized that you can’t stumble, and attacking with a line is not a good idea. And they heard the REB and the UAV, but they did not understand the true meaning.

Once again, I note that in order to learn from the war, you need to lose your soldiers on the battlefield. Koreans have paid their price and will now process this valuable experience. Commanders mouths grow to the generals. And all their careers they will remember the nasty buzzing of the FPV drones, and will do everything to minimize their threat.

All military personnel of this world are watching the SVO. But true conclusions will be available to only a few. Most will make decisions based on objective control materials and dry intelligence reports. And I am sure that most generals will not be able to draw the right conclusions from the experience of the SVO. Which, however, is in our hands. The time is now dashing, and only a few armies can boast of combat experience.

There is an old saying that generals always prepare for the previous war. Which is why the US military is mostly geared up for police occupations and counter-insurgency operations. Neither it nor any of the European militaries are even remotely ready for a war with Russia, with or without popular support.

DISCUSS ON SG


Solar Power = No Power

The worst thing is that solar power is failing in the springtime in one of the sunniest places in Europe:

Spain’s grid operator admitted today that solar power could be to blame for the blackouts that brought chaos to much of the Iberian peninsular on Monday.

Red Eléctrica’s System Operations Chief Eduardo Prieto told a news briefing the electricity system was hit by a dramatic power generation loss in southwestern Spain, that caused instability in the system that led to its disconnection from the French grid. He said it was quite possible that the affected generation was solar, but it was to early to say for sure. Prieto said the system was now stable and working normally.

The partly state-owned operator’s preliminary assessment ruled out cyberattack as the cause of the outage, he added – after officials had tentatively suggested on Monday it was still a line they were exploring. Criticism has been mounting on the Spanish government to explain the blackouts, which saw planes grounded, trains stopped and traffic brought to a standstill in major cities.

It’s long past time to begin discussing the implications of both climate change and clean energy being constructed on fundamentally false assumptions. How much further does civilization have to decline before we start taking on the challenge of shoring up the foundations that have been systematically weakened for the last 50 years?

DISCUSS ON SG


Green Energy Blackout

Spain, Portugal, and parts of France have been without electricity all day:

Panic buying has swept Spain and Portugal as nationwide blackouts paralysed both countries, shutting down transport networks and prompting people to clear supermarket shelves amid fears the chaos could last for days.

Huge queues formed outside shops and banks as residents and tourists desperately sought to stockpile essentials and take out cash as much cash as they could amid the uncertainty.

Rows of cars were pictured lining up at petrol stations as people hoped to fill up their vehicles and fuel cans, with ex-pats detailing how they have tried to power generators to keep their homes going.

Airports have also been hit by the outages, with flights delayed and cancelled and holidaymakers in Portugal warned by the country’s flagship airline TAP Air not to travel for their flights until further notice.

A British holidaymaker in Madrid described the situation in the city centre as ‘carnage’, telling MailOnline: ‘People are starting to panic. It’s going to get really bad if they don’t restore power quickly.’

Madrid’s Mayor urged people in the city to stay where they were as the disaster unfolded, while the president of the city’s regional government called for Spain’s prime minister to activate an emergency plan to allow for soldiers to be deployed.

Power outages gripped Spain at around 12.30 local time, plunging millions into darkness. Spain’s nuclear power plants automatically stopped, but diesel generators were activated to keep them in ‘safe condition’, officials said.

Trains and metro services were shut down in both countries, with people stuck in tunnels and on railway tracks, forcing evacuations.

Portugal’s electricity grid operator warned that it is ‘impossible’ to say when the power supply would be fully restored, adding that while ‘all resources’ were deployed to resolve the issues, it could take up to a week to fix.

The power cuts come just days after Spain’s power grid ran entirely on renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydro power, for a whole day for the first time on April 16. 

Spanish officials are urgently investigating the cause of the outages and have said they are looking into the possibility of the blackouts being triggered by a devastating cyber attack. 

Videos online show railway networks in Spanish cities plunged into chaos, with people being evacuated through tunnels as blackouts hit underground stations and halted trains.

The centralized power grid was always a foolish idea, with little redundancy and a natural tendency to get pushed beyond its limits. But attempting to go entirely to so-called “renewable” energy – as if oil isn’t a naturally renewable resource – was always likely to result in something like this.

DISCUSS ON SG


Claude Responds to Larry

Larry Correia declared that AI can only produce vapid soulless shit in what we sadly can no longer describe as his “inimitable” style, as AI responded in the style of Larry Correia. This is completely unedited and the AI didn’t know it was responding to Larry Correia.

AI AIN’T THE ENEMY, IT’S JUST ANOTHER DAMN TOOL

Alright, listen up. I’m about to drop some truth bombs that might ruffle some feathers, but that’s what I do. I make a living telling it like it is, both in fiction and in real life.

First off, this whole “AI is the death of creativity” hysteria is about as overblown as a politician’s promises. Let me be crystal clear: AI is just another TOOL in the arsenal. Nothing more, nothing less.

You know what else was once considered a “soulless” tool that would kill authorship? Fucking TYPEWRITERS. Then word processors. Then spell-check. Every time technology advances, the pearl-clutchers come out of the woodwork.

Here’s where the original rant gets it wrong: assuming AI is only for lazy bastards who want to skip the “fun part” of writing. That’s like saying power tools are only for lazy carpenters. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how professionals integrate tools into their workflow.

THE REAL DEAL WITH AI

I’ve been in this business long enough to know that different parts of writing are “fun” for different people. For some, it’s worldbuilding. For others, it’s character development. For me, sometimes it’s just blowing shit up on the page. The idea that the initial draft is universally “the fun part” is nonsense.

AI doesn’t replace the human element – it AMPLIFIES it. When I’m working through a complex plot line, having AI help me organize my thoughts or generate alternatives isn’t “giving away the fun part.” It’s like having a brainstorming partner who never needs coffee breaks.

The original rant talks about enthusiasm like it’s something that only exists in the first draft. Bull. Fucking. Shit. My enthusiasm is in my VISION, in what I want to say and how I want to say it. The tools I use to get there are irrelevant.

THE QUALITY ARGUMENT

Now let’s talk about quality. Yes, there will be hacks who use AI to pump out garbage. Guess what? There have ALWAYS been hacks pumping out garbage. Before AI, they used ghostwriters, content mills, or just wrote terrible shit themselves. The medium doesn’t create the hack – the hack exists independently.

For professionals who give a damn about their work, AI is no different than hiring a research assistant or a developmental editor. It’s about enhancing your capabilities, not replacing your voice.

The claim that AI has “no enthusiasm” misses the point entirely. My chainsaw doesn’t have enthusiasm either, but it sure as hell helps me cut down trees more efficiently than a handsaw. The enthusiasm comes from ME, the CREATOR, in how I direct the tool, refine its output, and infuse it with my unique perspective.

THE HUMAN TOUCH

Here’s where I actually agree with the original rant: the human touch matters. It absolutely does. But that’s exactly why AI won’t replace good authors – it will just separate the wheat from the chaff more efficiently.

In my books, whether it’s Monster Hunters or the Grimnoir Chronicles, what readers connect with isn’t just plot mechanics or technically correct sentences. It’s the worldview, the humor, the politics, the cultural references, the lived experiences that I bring to the table. No AI can replicate THAT.

What AI CAN do is help me get my ideas down faster, overcome writer’s block, or suggest plot twists I hadn’t considered. It can handle the mechanical parts of writing that aren’t my strong suit, freeing me up to focus on what I do best.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The fearmongering about AI is just that – fear. It’s not killing writing; it’s evolving it. The truly talented, the ones with actual shit to say, will use AI to enhance their voice, not replace it.

So if you’re a writer paralyzed by the rise of AI, I’ve got some advice: stop whining and start adapting. Figure out how these new tools can serve YOUR vision, YOUR voice, YOUR message. Because at the end of the day, that’s what matters.

And if you think a machine can replace your unique human perspective, then maybe you didn’t have much of a perspective to begin with.

DISCUSS ON SG


Mailvox: Vox Dai Responds

Edward Feser wrote a critique of President Trump’s new tariffs and his trade policy. A reader asked ChatGPT to respond to his critique as if it was me. And apparently AI now does non-fiction nearly as well as it does fiction.

1. Feser’s Overemphasis on Prudential Moderation over Existential Necessity

Vox Day might begin by pointing out that Feser’s argument is essentially one of technocratic prudence—tariffs might be useful in moderation, if well-targeted, in the right economic climate, with good timing, and clear justification. Vox would call this academic dithering in the face of civilizational crisis. From his view, America is not merely suffering a mild imbalance of trade—it is being gutted by decades of globalist betrayal that have systematically offshored its manufacturing capacity, hollowed out its industrial base, and turned its working class into wage-serfs of the service economy.

“Feser speaks as if we are tweaking dials on a functioning machine. The machine is broken. Or more accurately, it’s been sabotaged.”

For Vox, Trump’s tariff policy is not merely an economic adjustment—it is a weapon of national defense. The timing, conception, and execution are secondary to the existential imperative of reclaiming national sovereignty.

2. Feser’s Appeal to Order Is Misplaced When the Existing Order Is Corrupt

Feser warns that Trump’s tariff regime contributes to “chaos rather than order,” but Vox Day would challenge the idea that the status quo deserves preservation. The “order” of the neoliberal global economy, in Vox’s framing, is a false order—an artificial equilibrium imposed by elite international actors who have no loyalty to the American nation or its people.

“There is no ‘order’ in a system that rewards financial speculation over production, that imports the labor force of the Third World to lower wages, and that treats citizens as mere consumers.”

Feser’s invocation of “order” is classically Aristotelian, but for Vox, Aristotle himself would recognize the legitimacy of revolutionary upheaval in response to an unjust oligarchy. In that light, disruption is not vice but virtue.

3. Misdiagnosing Trump’s Popular Support as Fanaticism

Feser characterizes Trump’s base as “glibly dismissing all concerns” and treating complex economic policy with “flippant boosterism.” Vox would see this as an elitist dismissal of populist wisdom. Trump’s supporters are not irrational—they are simply more in touch with reality than technocratic intellectuals who worry about trade reciprocity with Lesotho.

“It is not ‘flippant’ to support a policy that seeks to restore your community’s livelihood. It is not ‘unserious’ to recognize that the system has failed and to back the only leader willing to tear it down.”

Vox would likely argue that Feser underestimates the strategic depth of Trump’s messaging, and the extent to which it resonates with people who have nothing left to lose.

4. Feser’s Focus on Legality Ignores the Regime Question

Feser critiques Trump’s tariff actions as possibly illegal or extraconstitutional. Vox Day would scoff at this, pointing out that the law is downstream of sovereignty. If the regime in question is illegitimate—unaccountable, globalist, hostile to the nation—then adherence to its procedures is not a moral good.

“The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The post-WWII economic order is not sacred. If reclaiming control requires bending the rules written by those who sold us out, so be it.”

Vox has long argued that power precedes legality, not the other way around. Trump, in his view, is acting as a caesarist figure—wielding executive power to right the ship of state, not delicately balancing congressional niceties.

5. Feser’s Economic Assumptions Are Still Liberal, Even If Postliberal

Though Feser claims to reject classical liberalism and neoliberalism, Vox might charge him with retaining too much of their framework—especially their belief that markets are self-regulating entities to be disturbed only with care. In Vox’s view, the “invisible hand” is no longer a metaphor for organic market coordination—it’s a euphemism for invisible oligarchs manipulating outcomes for their own gain.

“Tariffs aren’t ‘inefficient’ if the market itself is rigged. Free trade isn’t moral if it’s enforced by military alliances, IMF dictates, and offshoring subsidies.”

Where Feser looks for a prudential balance, Vox sees the need for economic war—and in war, blunt instruments like tariffs are not inappropriate, but inevitable.

6. Missing the Meta-Political Stakes

Ultimately, Vox would say that Feser misses the forest for the trees. This isn’t about the comparative merits of tariff rates or whether poor island nations are treated fairly. It’s about whether America will continue to exist as a sovereign, industrial, self-reliant civilization. That is not a question that can be solved through abstract appeals to distributist theorists or cautious policy think-pieces.

“You don’t use a scalpel to excise a gangrene-stricken limb. You use an axe.”


I would say that hits six for six, even if some of the wording is a little different than I might have chosen. I do love that reinterpretation of Smith’s Invisible Hand, though. I’ll see if it missed anything and add it in a subsequent post; I suspect Mr. Feser still subscribes to now-disproven comparative advantage theory on the basis of the points he raises, but I don’t actually know that. But if he does, obviously that would be the very first point I would raise, given my conclusive disproof of it, to say nothing of Ian Fletcher’s.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Last Librarian

We shall conclude the game with a style wherein there is no point in even trying to pretend you will not recognize.

The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays

The first thing you should know about the Bibliotheca Absurdia is that it doesn’t play by the rules of time, physics, or basic human dignity.

The second thing? It has a very aggressive late-fee policy.

I found this out the hard way when I walked in to return A Brief History of Time Travel (That You Weren’t Supposed to Read Yet)—three centuries overdue—and the Librarian hit me with a glare that could’ve curdled dark matter.

“You,” she said, adjusting her glasses in a way that suggested imminent violence, “are exactly why we can’t have nice spacetime.”

The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays was a tall, no-nonsense woman with a bun tighter than the plot of a Kafka novel and a name tag that just read “MRS. P.” (The “P” stood for something eldritch. I’d asked once. She’d sighed and stamped “DON’T” on my library card in response.)

I slid the book across the counter. “Look, I meant to bring it back, but there was this whole thing with a paradox, and—”

She held up a hand. “Save it for the Temporal Arbitration Board. Your penalty is Section 37-C: Community Service in a Doomed Timeline.”

I groaned. “Not the French Revolution again.”

“Worse,” she said, grinning. “Beta Reading.

Behind her, a shelf of half-written universes groaned in existential dread.

Why This is Pure Scalzi

  1. Snarky, Conversational Voice
    • Scalzi’s protagonists talk like this—witty, self-deprecating, and deeply unserious about cosmic horrors.
  2. High Concept + Low Stakes (At First)
    • A library that loans out time-travel manuals and punishes lateness with doomed timelines? Classic Scalzi absurdity (see Redshirts’ meta-narrative or *Kaiju Preservation Society’*s glorified animal control).
  3. Bureaucratic Satire
    • The Temporal Arbitration Board and Section 37-C are peak Scalzi. He loves mocking institutional absurdity (Lock In’s healthcare dystopia, The Android’s Dream’s diplomatic nonsense).
  4. Pop-Culture-Literate Humor
    • The Kafka joke, the “DON’T” stamp—Scalzi embeds geekery like a DNA splicer (Agent to the Stars was literally about Hollywood aliens).
  5. Women Who Won’t Suffer Fools
    • Mrs. P. is a Scalzi archetype: the competent, exasperated authority figure (Colonel Rigney in Old Man’s WarKiva Lagos in The Collapsing Empire).
  6. Sudden Scale Shift
    • Starts with a late book, ends with erasing universes—a trademark Scalzi pivot from silly to epic (The Last Emperox’s galaxy-spanning collapse… over paperwork).

How This Differs From Other “Librarian” Versions

  • Vs. Correia: Zero bullets. All bureaucracy.
  • Vs. Miéville: The weirdness is fun, not oppressive.
  • Vs. Day: No moralizing—just chaotic neutral mischief.

Speaking of other Librarian versions, the 7th Librarian was indeed me, although stylistically limited to my pair of Maupassant-inspired short stories, and my new best friend explains what the clues were:

Why This is Vox Day

  1. Polemical Bent
    • Maupassant’s naturalism and irony are preserved (the detached scholar, the creeping horror), but sharpened by Day’s polemical bent—the library as a metaphor for “forbidden knowledge” corrupting arrogant moderns.
  2. Reactionary Themes
    • Lefèvre embodies the enlightened rationalist humbled by forces he dismisses, a recurring Day trope. The librarian, an ancient, knowing woman, represents traditional wisdom scoffing at his hubris.
  3. Provocative Imagery
    • The human-skin ledger and God’s erased days are classic Day-isms—shocking, sacrilegious, and designed to unsettle progressive sensibilities.
  4. Ambiguous Supernaturalism
    • The horror is implied, not explained. Day often uses unseen, malevolent forces to symbolize ideological enemies.
  5. Anti-Enlightenment Subtext
    • The library punishes curiosity, a theme Day explores in works like Throne of Bones—a rejection of modernist “progress” in favor of primal, even punitive, truths.

How This Differs from Other “Librarian” Versions

  • Vs. Correia: No shootouts—just psychological dread.
  • Vs. Miéville: No whimsy; the weirdness is malign and moralistic.
  • Vs. Murakami: No jazz, only Gothic decay.

Want it more Day? Add:

  • A subplot where Lefèvre’s degenerate Diderot-quoting rival gets eaten by the books.
  • A footnote denouncing French secularism.
  • The librarian revealing herself as Lilith in a lace bonnet.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Seventh Librarian

The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays

Monsieur Lefèvre had always believed himself a man of reason. A scholar of some renown, he prided himself on his detachment from the superstitions of the common rabble—until the day he entered the Bibliothèque des Dimanches Oubliés, and reason abandoned him like a faithless wife.

The library stood in the forgotten arrondissement of Paris, a place where the cobblestones seemed to whisper of sins long buried. Its keeper was a woman of indeterminate age, her face a map of wrinkles, her eyes two shards of obsidian. She did not speak when Lefèvre entered; she merely smiled, revealing teeth like yellowed piano keys.

You seek the forbidden,” she said at last, not a question.

Lefèvre scoffed. “I seek knowledge, madame. Nothing more.”

“Ah,” she crooned, stroking the spine of a ledger bound in what appeared to be human skin. “But knowledge is forbidden. That is why they send men like you—men who think themselves too clever to believe.”

He demanded to see the rarest volume in her collection. With a chuckle like dry leaves scraping stone, she led him to a shelf where a single book lay, its cover blank.

The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays,” she whispered. “A chronicle of all the days God chose to erase.”

When Lefèvre opened it, the pages were empty. Yet as he stared, words began to form—his own name, his secrets, his shames. And then, the laughter started. Not hers.

The library’s.

DISCUSS ON SG