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WARREN ELLIS LTD Posts

12aug26

Published August 12, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Spent last night reading a stack of issues of the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT that had piled up over the last few months.

As I said in the newsletter the other week (Unphoning), I have been disconnecting from as much of the internet as I can. Yesterday I forgot to post here because I was hanging out chatting at the coffee shop and then had to bang out nine pages of work before cooking dinner because herself caught a bug at Bloodstock. Today I hope to see an eclipse.

My connected devices are off. Unmonitored. Most notifications off. Selectively informed. I was almost tempted to get a few daily newspapers, but that really wasn’t realistic. Today I saw an article in the WSJ about “datamaxxing,” people shoving the take from as many connected devices and inputs and possible into AI chatbots. There was a time where that would have made me curious.

I was at a gig a few weeks ago and partway through I realised I’d stopped listening because I was actually being left alone and there weren’t floods of parallel input and so my brain was just pouring out all the thoughts that had been dammed in by all the noise of my life. That was bad, and also fixable.

OPERATIONS: turning notes into scripts
STATUS: maybe I should become an eclipse chaser
READING: I wanted something simple and fun, so it’s MAIGRET AND MONSIEUR CHARLES, Georges Simenon (UK) (US+), the 75th and final Maigret book, which I’ve been saving for a few years.
LISTENING: TIDE REQUIEM FOR THE LOW SEA, Zake


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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10aug26

Published August 10, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Very quickly filling up a notebook with bad ideas. Which is the only way I know of to get at the better ideas.

Blew through my to-do list. Blasting through some script now. Ganzeer sent me an email the other day headed “Going Hard,” and that’s what’s happening until now and December.

Apparently smoking is cool again. Emily Sundberg has been reporting on US events over the last year or so where cigarettes have evidently been handed out as treats.

OPERATIONS: Amending the boards, just sent a pitch and checked on the status of an upcoming project, ideally I’ll have 8pp script down by EOD and then it’s into story development
STATUS: I texted the deli and they ran out of meat so I am indoors sulking
READING: PROTO, Laura Spinney (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: BE HUMAN, Violeta Vicci & Bruno Bavota


LAST WATCHED: TITANE (2021)
DRINK: Godfather

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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9aug26

Published August 9, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I am resting my brain and conducting a managed retreat to the outside world. Except, of course, I’m not actually resting my brain, I’m trying to supercharge it in the right direction.

I briefly looked at Threads, out of pure curiosity after reading an article, and that application is deranged. Apparently it doesn’t matter who you follow or how many people you follow, the feed is entirely algorithmic, shifting constantly depending on what you read on it, and is therefore a nightmare stream of late-stage machine-curated entertainment for human victims.

New newsletter out today.

OPERATIONS: clearing up the boards, rewriting an old pitch document, assembling the shape of everything I have to get done before the end of the year and putting a list of every artist who’s asked me to write something for them up on a new board. Also digging out the notebook for PROJECT ROANOKE, because it sounds like the artist will be ready to get back to it in six weeks.
STATUS: Grey linen trousers, shirt and jacket, and a breathable shoe – I actually got summer right this year.

An hour at the coffee shop and I had the story title I was looking for.


READING: finished BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO, Annie Jacobsen (UK) (US+) last night
LISTENING: FISHERMEN’S SOUVENIRS, Teresa Hackel / Eiko Yamada


LAST WATCHED: rewatched BUGONIA
DRINK: Birds And Bees summer ale

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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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: shamanism art history archaeology
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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.

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

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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