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WARREN ELLIS LTD Posts

27jul26

Published July 27, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Note finger partially over lens because I had already drunk all these, and also a Cornish whisky called Pocketful Of Stones.

Out in November: a new edition of OCEAN by myself and Chris Sprouse.

New newsletter went out Sunday.

I saw Teresa Hackel and Eiko Yamada play at the Fishermen’s Chapel last year. Turns out they recorded an entire album while they were there, FISHERMEN’S SOUVENIRS.

Adding up the numbers on the track listing, this could well be the actual performance I saw. I have had to order it from Japan, but what the hell.

My brain has been entirely empty and useless for the last ten days or so. Actually, it’s worse than that – I haven’t had a single good idea in two weeks and I keep losing things. Radical steps must be taken. Aside from messages and emails, I’ll be offline for the rest of the week.

Apple is having issues with its smart glasses post-Meta-pervert-glasses, and if the below is true, it’s clever:

Apple has reportedly considered… a version where the cameras can analyse the surroundings but cannot record photos or video. Such an approach could still support object recognition, navigation, Siri, calls, and music playback.

Hook that into Contacts and Calendar as well as Maps, say, and you finally have a use case for smart glasses that isn’t capturing for “content.” That is the actual assistant-with-eyes that people have been writing about for thirty-odd years. Which is why it probably won’t happen.

STATUS: heading out to a gig in London tonight. The weather can’t make up its mind as to whether it’s 28 and sunny or 21 and windy, so fuck knows what I’m going to wear
READING: LOST LAMBS, Madeline Cash (UK) (US+)

DRINK: Flint Vineyard Bacchus

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

Tags: music tech
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morning computer dem bones again

Published July 27, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Jason Limon.

An Early Bronze Age metalworker and shaman discovered over 200 years ago in a lavish burial near Stonehenge and long assumed to be male was actually female, a new genetic analysis reveals.

The results of the ancient DNA analysis of the “Upton Lovell Shaman,” carried out by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London, break the previously held stereotype of Early Bronze Age women, according to a statement from the Wiltshire Museum, where the remains and grave goods are housed.

I was rather hoping to find a scan of Mike Moorcock and Mal Dean’s JERRY CORNELIUS comic, as I seem to have misplaced my old copy of Moorcock’s MY EXPERIENCES IN THE THIRD WORLD WAR, so pretend there’s a picture of Jerry Cornelius saying “dem bones” here.

Lordess Foudre and I talk about THE PRISONER a lot.

PREVIOUSLY:

Tags: art history archaeology shamanism
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morning computer, Remedios Varo

Published July 22, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Remedios Varo.

Remedios Varo Uranga was one of the few acknowledged female surrealist painters of the first half of the 20th century. She defied the male dominated artistic world of that era through her unique and peculiar approach to Surrealism. The stepping stones for her original form of Surrealism were set early in her childhood and adolescence, fuelled by a multicultural background and upbringing.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

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My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

Tags: art surrealism
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20jul26

Published July 20, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Wearing a Victor Victoria shirt from the Nineties and a Swatch Metropolis from the Eighties and accepting that all this is “vintage,” not “last year.” Julbo don’t even make those shades anymore. DEPRESSING

ACCESSIONS:

While I was reading PHENOMENA by Annie Jacobsen (click this link and scroll halfway down for my initial notes), which is in large part about remote viewing used by the US military, I kept being reminded of this book I read when I was a kid. Written in 1973, FLIGHT FROM TIME ONE was about a cadre of military remote viewers sending their “astral bodies” out into the world, and I remember there was a bit about sliding into an alternate reality termed Algeria-A, or Time Two. So I hunted a copy down on eBay for a whole one pound plus postage. I’m going to be very curious to see how it reads to me, more than forty years later.

OPERATIONS: This week is a bit of a sprint – essay for a reprint collection, story solve, generate two new projects – but hardly the worst.
STATUS: attention reclamation attempt once again
READING: IF RUSSIA WINS, Carlo Masala (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: SEA SWALLOWED WANDS
DRINK: Boulevardier, amended – half-shot Campari, half-shot red vermouth, one shot whisky, dash of orange bitters. Victory.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

Tags: books library
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morning computer summer

Published July 20, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Paolo Lazzarotti (Italy), “Complete Rainbow”

Good morning sinners.

My problem, apparently, is that I’m interested in too many things. In fact, someone made a point of writing to my office a few weeks ago specifically to tell me that my interests aren’t interesting.

I never had a problem with being a generalist – it’s a big world and it’s been around a long time and I want to learn as much about it as I can. But, these days, to get ahead you have to niche down hard, to become a trusted expert in one particular thing. You want to be the one voice the AI reaches for to answer a question, or the single speaker in your specific pigeonhole.

So this here is where I don’t do any of that and wander all over the place, because my stupid brain is only happy when it roams.

A Midori A6 commonplace book: with, apparently, “instructions” only in Japanese. Worth reading THE NOTEBOOK by Roland Allen for a sense of what a commonplace book can be. I actually first heard of commonplace books when I was young – I read a short autobio piece by Alfred Bester in, I think, HELL’S CARTOGRAPHERS, and he used one. I really have to hunt around for a new copy of that book.

Startup Develops Micro-Drones Capable of Shooting Down Insects in Mid-Air. Drones and insects always makes me think of NORMAL. I guess we’re at drone war with the mosquitoes now. Rich people will use them instead of bug repellent or nets.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

Press the floating Subscribe button to have these notes sent to you.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

Tags: photography
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19jul26

Published July 19, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I grew lilies. I have a whole new, and hopefully long-term, plan for the garden, and am looking at an autumn/winter of being outside with implements of destruction. The raspberries have been great, I have some blueberries coming, and it looks like I may get figs this year.

I decided I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to go and see THE ODYSSEY. That last trailer removed any wish I had to go and spend three hours of my life in front of it without access to cigarettes and alcohol. I’m sure it’s the sort of film that can only be appreciated properly on a decent big screen, and whatever enjoyment I might get out of it eventually will be diluted by a small-screen viewing. But, frankly, not every Nolan film hits for me. Which is fine. Nobody’s oeuvre should be for everyone. And I’m in the odd position of being, evidently, one of the few people who enjoyed TENET.

A stuck-together newsletter went out today.

It’s turned a little colder, after the blazing weeks – wearing a old John Varvatos cotton snap-front henley over a grey Carhartt chambray shirt. Timex Expedition Scout watch for a no-nonsense day.

I spent a chunk of yesterday looking at the new functions offered by my newsletter host, beehiiv. I really don’t need the majority of them – I’d rather die eaten by dogs than run an online community again. Their hosting podcasts is interesting, but the idea of doing one more thing as a one-man band is just exhausting.

STATUS: Putting myself back together after a goblin week. Apparently it is now impossible for me to remember to eat breakfast.
READING: IF RUSSIA WINS, Carlo Masala (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: SOUND HOARD, Laura Cannell

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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6jul26

Published July 6, 2026 by Warren Ellis

TELEMETRY:

Accessions:

My previous digital copy of this was bootleg: a proper copy showed up in an Amazon sale, and I decided a legit and decently formatted version was worth the 99p.

ANTWERP, Roberto Bolano (UK) (US+)

OPERATIONS: finalising solicits text for a graphic novella, getting into a large client project, clearing space for a four day crash on the unfinished prose novella. Updating the boards today.
STATUS: 45 minutes at the coffee shop with a notebook and a digital audio player that isn’t my phone, with a watch on so I don’t have to look at the phone to check the time.


READING: PHENOMENA: US GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATIONS INTO ESP AND PSYCHOKINESIS, Annie Jacobsen (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: THE GODS LAUGH, Alison Cotton


DRINK: a Manhattan with two dashes of cold brew coffee liqueur instead of bitters. Excellent.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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30jun26

Published June 30, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Well, I wasn’t in the mood to post anything during the heatwave, and my poor eight-year-old ThinkPad was in such dire straits that opening more than four tabs while I had any other applications open was becoming a serious challenge for that faithful machine. To the point where I couldn’t finish the novella I was supposed to be landing last week.

It took Lenovo a month to ship me a new ThinkPad. I’ve been using ThinkPads for decades, as they have the best keyboards, but next time I need a new computer I’ll think again. It arrived yesterday, and I spent much of the day setting it up. It shipped without a power brick, which was fun. And it’s taken several hours yesterday and two hours this morning to get the wifi card to behave. I think I have it now. But, Christ, why isn’t anything easy?

It’s raining outside. The heaviest storms seem to be passing us by, sadly. I have to spend the day catching up on everything I haven’t been able to do since last Thursday and then try and get some client work out of the way. Might be a few days before I get back to logging anything here.

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24jun26

Published June 24, 2026 by Warren Ellis

It is absolutely blazing out there today. Heat warnings are in effect. Friday looks like it’s going to be the hottest day.

OPERATIONS: 700 words yesterday, looking for at least 1000 today
STATUS: DHL have lost a mystery parcel that was on its way to me last week. They claimed to be “tracing” it yesterday, but had it in three different locations at the same time, so I figure that’s gone for good. And my two Royal Mail parcels have just been marked as “Unable to attempt delivery.” Is everything melting just because it got warm?
READING: PHENOMENA: US GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATIONS INTO ESP AND PSYCHOKINESIS, Annie Jacobsen (UK) (US+)

Puharich asked McCulloch to find him a patient at Bellevue who’d been committed for the first time to the psychiatric ward for hearing voices. McCulloch located a machinist whose psychiatric medical profile was completely normal other than a sudden audio aberration. Before the voices appeared, the machinist had displayed no symptoms of insanity. Whereas many a 1950s doctor would have written the man off as crazy, Puharich and his foundation had another theory to pursue. They believed the man might be hearing voices that were traveling on a radio wave, that the machinist was somehow “tuned in” to a specific radio frequency that other individuals could not hear. “We found out that his job was the key to the diagnosis,” Puharich wrote. In the machine shop where the man worked, the machinist’s daily routine was “grind[ing] metal casings against carborundum wheels” for hours at a time. At the foundation facility, Puharich’s research team gave the man a dental examination, “which showed that his metal fillings were coated with carborundum dust,” or silicon carbide, a semiconductor. The carborundum “behaved like the crystal rectifier in the old crystal radio sets of the 1920s,” wrote Puharich. When the subject was placed inside the Faraday Cage, all electrical and radio signals were eliminated. “We found that his voices ceased,” Puharich confirmed. “His teeth were cleaned and he was cured of the ‘psychiatric’ problem.” The man was never crazy to begin with. “Rather, we found that he was precisely tuned to radio station WOR in New York City.”


MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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