I’m Ally (they/he), a musician on semi-hiatus for health reasons. I was born in England in the 1980s, and so far remain alive — if this changes, I’ll let you know.
My passions include classic literature and drama, sci-fi and fantasy, murder mystery, poetry, classic film, weird music, comedy, quizzes, puns, footnotes, and keeping obsessive lists.
I’m disabled so I have no plans to stick to a schedule. Posts will appear when I manage to make them. Panda companion*.
The name of this blog originates from Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett.
The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more stairways than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
I do not and will not use AI — I just happen to like em-dashes, okay?
You can find me elsewhere online at the following places:
- YouTube: genteelblackhole
- Bandcamp: bugprentice
- Instagram: hisdorkmaterials
- StoryGraph: genteelblackhole
(*Bear with me.)
A Genteel Black Hole 