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WARREN ELLIS LTD Posts

sailing ship time: 26mar26

Published March 26, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Off to see PROJECT HAIL MARY today, and then I need to crack a story idea that’s been eluding me for two weeks, and tomorrow is solid scripting and prose writing all damn day, and then the weekend is all about washing out propagators and starting seeds. It’s going to be a cold weekend, and the light and spring warmth is supposed to come back next week… and I’m back to living in the weather changes. I suspect I’ll be losing an entire day next week to running the woodchipper and chopping holly wood into logs, in between planting raspberry canes and onions.

I missed this yesterday: NASA intends to send a probe to Mars on top of a nuclear-electric drive, Space Reactor-1 Freedom. It seems to be pretty much a test article – a year-long transit to Mars does not imply much in the way of breakthrough oomph, but the efficiency of nuclear-electric thrust does mean that once it’s dropped off its payload of helicopters at Mars there will be more than enough juice to send the thing off to Saturn.

Important to remember that this is nuclear-electric, not nuclear-thermal – therefore slower but “cleaner.” I don’t yet know enough to know if a bigger reactor will provide more nuclear-electric speed, so we’re still in sailing-ship transit times. I always thought I’d see a solved version of NERVA in my lifetime, but I guess not.


READING: NETTLES AND PETALS, Jamie Walton (UK) (US+),  THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)

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

Tags: space Mars
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moonbase: 25mar26

Published March 25, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I noticed yesterday that NASA announced “President Trump’s Moon Base” will be commenced before the end of 2028, therefore the end of the President’s term. Given that the delayed Artemis 2 mission is a lunar flyby and Artemis 3 was reconfigured from a lunar landing to a low earth orbit test of new spacesuits and the dock/undock of a lander – and note that Apollo did those missions the other way around, Apollo 7 crew-rated the boat and lander configuration in LEO, Apollo 8 was the lunar flyby – this may get a little scary/deathy. Twenty-five launches between now and the end of 2028, ten lunar launches next year alone, is a hell of a swing.

I took this ten minutes before the HAIL started.

Absolutely dismal day out there, with a “feels like” of -4 C and 40mph winds. The mancub has made it clear that he blames me – he hates the wind, and is punishing me for taking the sun away. For some reason, he made the very specific decision, not long after we got him, that the weather is always my fault.

Accessions:

OPERATION PAPERCLIP: NAZI SCIENTISTS IN AMERICA, Annie Jacobsen (UK) (US+)

BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO, Annie Jacobsen (UK) (US+) – PRE-ORDER

OPERATIONS: Zoom call later, and I need to ship out eight pages, review some story documents and get 500 words down on another thing, as well as start Sunday’s newsletter.
STATUS: 7hrs sleep.
READING: NETTLES AND PETALS, Jamie Walton (UK) (US+), which I got given for Xmas and I’m opening now because food growing season has begun. THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+), re-reading REALITY HUNGER, David Shields (UK) (US+)

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

Tags: books moon space
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old new year’s eve: 24mar26

Published March 24, 2026 by Warren Ellis

It is Old New Year’s Eve. The Julian Calendar wasn’t officially abolished here in the UK until 1752, and on that calendar the New Year started on what is now 25 March (also Lady Day).

A second chance to start the year.

Apple blossom is coming. This evening I am pulling out a notebook in which I will section off the garden on paper and start writing the list of tasks that need to be done out there before the end of this month. Yesterday I got an extra five 30L pots, I have some extra compost on the way, and I have a rough and probably quite chaotic planting plan.

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content break: 23mar26

Published March 23, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Spring is surging out there in the world. A few little flashes of cold, then some rushes of warmth. I have some big pots and extra compost arriving over the next couple of days. Bot traffic is expected to exceed human traffic on the internet by 2027, and, frankly, I can already tell. I note that The Economist is now referring to the current mess in the Middle East as The Third Gulf War, a term that has a bit of a chill on it. A review of two dozen clinical trials suggests that the supposed magic fix for depression through use of psychedelics seems to be mostly down to the placebo effect. Freeze-dried elflord Bryan Johnson is livestreaming himself smoking toad pus. One study suggests that 20% of more than 14,000 books self-published through Amazon are mostly written by AI. However, something like 3.5 million books were self-published last year, and they obviously couldn’t all be checked by that study. When the net tells you to go back out into the world, you should probably listen.

OPERATIONS: One of those “touching eight different things” days
STATUS: Sleeping poorly. 7hrs 52m, stress marker of 72. I need to take this damned FitBit off again. Watching the exchange rate go up and down like a yoyo.
READING: THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+), re-reading REALITY HUNGER, David Shields (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: The Early Music Show

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

Tags: society space weird
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breathwork: 22mar26

Published March 22, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Another interesting night was had at Konsztrukting Soundz. Notably, Viv Corringham:

New newsletter is out.

I’m poking around the garden, assessing the winter damage – a branch snapped off an apple tree, most of the bulbs coming up blind, soil issues here and there – and getting myself back into the outdoor headspace.

STATUS: Taking a decompression day. Got tickets to see PROJECT HAIL MARY later in the week. As I wrote in January:

I actually liked the book, but I’m going to be curious to see if Drew Goddard addressed the underlying autistic note in and the apparent asexuality of the protagonist.


READING: THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: The New Music Show: Icelandic Chill

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

Tags: music events
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The New Notebook System: Fourth Stage

Published March 19, 2026 by Warren Ellis

In which we discover that three notebook covers is not enough, because I simply have too much going on and each project needs its own notebook once it’s formed in my main daily notebook.

And so I went to InkitLeather, because I have a ton of Field Notes notebooks from when I was on their quarterly subscription service:

A black leather notebook cover. It smells so good. And it’s a custom design. It’s built to take SIX Field Notes notebooks.

And that completes the system. This gives me fifteen notebooks in use across four notebook covers.

All serious thinking is pen on paper. All memory-making is pen on paper.

PREVIOUSLY:

Tags: notebooks
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not going out: 17mar26

Published March 17, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Missed my work targets yesterday, so today is a lock-in. Taking the opportunity to go through my Bandcamp listen list while I’m doing all the things. Probably going to spend too much money today.

Apparently it’s St Patrick’s Day?


READING: finished THE BOOK OF COMMENTARY / UNQUIET GARDEN OF THE SOUL, Alexander Kluge (UK) (US+)  last night

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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The New Notebook System: Third Stage

Published March 16, 2026 by Warren Ellis

So I got bought these lovely notebooks by Atoms To Astronauts for my birthday.

But they’re A6. So they don’t fit either of the notebook covers I have.

Off to Amazon to find an A6 notebook cover.

Why? Because I am really busy, I do a lot of thinking on to paper, I have a ton of projects in train and they all need their own notebook. So I have three of the Atoms notebooks in this cover, they are all live, and now I grab one of three notebook covers when I go out, totalling nine different notebooks – and, frankly, right now, that’s not even enough. It is, however, organised and portable.

PREVIOUSLY:

Tags: notebooks
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springing: 16mar26

Published March 16, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Marianne Eriksen Scott-Hansen

Pen’s most important lesson for any creative: not technique or timing, but the huge cost of inaction. “My errors of omission have cost me far more than my errors of commission,” he explains. “The places where I cowarded out, because I was embarrassed or thought I would look too pushy—where I held myself back—those are the things I regret.”

I see Paul Thomas Anderson finally got his Oscar – which I still think should have been for THERE WILL BE BLOOD – and FRANKENSTEIN quite rightly got the nod for costume design.

Dark indigo denim shirt, dark indigo denim jeans, dark navy sailcloth chore jacket, dark blue leather slip-ons and a blue linen scarf: spring is creeping in. The apple trees and cherry trees in the garden are budding, and I’ve planted a plum tree and a pear tree over the weekend. Time to start the berries soon. Double espresso at the coffee shop, and I’m debating a walk down to the deli for cheese, bresaola and quince paste. Winter feels definitively over, and god knows it wasn’t much of a winter this year. I feel cheated. But the seasons will do what they do, and it’s time to get back in my body. Gig at the weekend, and there’s a couple of things on at the Jazz Centre that caught my eye.

Fuck all going on in my RSS feed this morning, so I’m heading into my email. Or going for a walk.

OPERATIONS: Across three different jobs today, staging them up for the week’s production.
STATUS: Attacking my email. Burned 3400 calories yesterday but my heart rate only got up to 128, which is a good thing. No heart attack.
READING: THE BOOK OF COMMENTARY / UNQUIET GARDEN OF THE SOUL, Alexander Kluge (UK) (US+) and THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)

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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offline day: 15mar26

Published March 15, 2026 by Warren Ellis

The elderly chickens expired in the night, and so my day is going to be clearing a big patch of garden, digging it up, burying the chickens and then planting things on top. Hence the big rugged garden watch (which I just noticed is two minutes fast), and I’m putting my Fitbit back on in case I need an early warning system for heart failure. I will not be looking at my phone again until tonight. This puts me another day behind on everything: I know I have a ton of email to respond to, but it will have to wait until tonight or tomorrow.

Today’s newsletter went out this morning.


READING: THE BOOK OF COMMENTARY / UNQUIET GARDEN OF THE SOUL, Alexander Kluge (UK) (US+)

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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