Author: Warren Ellis

Caves And Waves: 29jan26

Published January 29, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Paper flowers preserved in a sealed Chinese cave for a thousand years.

TODAY:

UK citizens to be able to travel to China visa-free. Looks to be broadly similar to the visa waiver we have with the US, and one presumes this will be seen as a signal to the US.
“Alfvén waves—plasma waves traveling along Earth’s magnetic field lines—act like an invisible power source, fueling the stunning auroral displays we see in the sky.” Never heard of them before! I love that.
The oldest wooden tools yet discovered – 430,000 years old.

This is a tripwire crossbow. I discovered Will Lord some years ago, when he was on an episode of FIRST MAN OUT, and have been following his work ever since.

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FIRST MAN OUT was a show where survival expert Ed Stafford would race against someone with similar skills through some inclement part of the world. The episodes would all follow a similar pattern – Stafford would almost kill himself to win, and his competitor would rock up to the finish line a short time later having had a nice time and usually arriving in some style. I have a memory of Will Lord’s episode featuring him basically whittling a hotel room and dining like a medieval king while Stafford nearly died a couple of times and crawled around in the dark eating ants.

STATUS: went out for a glass of wine and a quick stop at the shops yesterday so of course I have a slight cough and what feels like the beginning of a chest infection today
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:

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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Orbits: 28jan26

Published January 28, 2026 by Warren Ellis

^{Hugo Canoilas}

I’ve been reading newsletters. Lots of different kinds. I did that awful thing last night where I disappeared into my phone for four hours, just reading and studying and appraising. I’ve been having to rejig my own newsletter a bit this month, due to a dose of Best Laid Plans being laughed at by the universe. Because the universe is mostly dark matter.

I have a feeling I’ve seen a few people comment that there is more writing out in the world than at any time in human history. And, of course, print literature now has to jostle for money with paid Substacks and the like, just as broadcast TV now has to wrestle with streamers for every eyeball. Lots of launches, lots of decaying orbits. Space is weird right now and I’m wondering what it looks like and what’s next.

TODAY:

Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 4% chance of hitting the moon. Astronomers who never saw SPACE 1999 or read SEVENEVES are very excited about this because they could look at real-time collision effects, moonquakes, maybe recover chunks of rock and absolutely not witness the moon knocked out of its orbit.
“Did you know Charles Babbage hosted soirées most Saturday nights during the London “season” from the early 1830s until the early 1850s? That’s where Ada Lovelace first saw the difference engine when she was just 17. The guest list included people you’ve definitely heard of: Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday and Felix Mendelsohn for instance, and people who were as famous at the time, like Caroline Norton, the author and political lobbyist who secured divorced women the right to custody of their own children, and later copyright of their own writing. Or Mary Somerset, the famed mathematician. Harriet Martineau, arguably Britain’s first sociologist, and Monsieur Sismondi, the Swiss economist who coined the term proletariat. Actors, sculptors, politicians, aristocrats and inventors all came to these events.” No, I did not!
Apparently the Milky Way is embedded in an impossibly large sheet of dark matter tens of millions of light-years across. I doubt the attached image explains anything, but I find it pleasingly trippy:

I did a show about dark matter once and all that still fascinates me.

Accessions:

I have a feeling I briefly met Aleks Krotoski in Brighton once, when having coffee with Ben Hammersley? Anyway, this book seems to tie into some work I’m doing right now (which I am dreadfully late on).

What was once a wild west of experimentation has wormed its way into Washington’s corridors of power. Award-winning broadcaster and academic Aleks Krotoski journeys from cult fringes to the heartlands of government to meet the moguls, effective altruists, geroscientists and entrepreneurs who are disrupting death. Along the way she encounters radical life extensionists transfusing their teenage son’s blood, transhumanists who want to upload consciousness to the cloud, biohackers flogging AI-powered wellness apps and billionaire kingmakers building brand-new nations.

THE IMMORTALISTS: THE DEATH OF DEATH AND THE RACE FOR ETERNAL LIFE, Aleks Krotoski (UK) (US+)

OPERATIONS: yesterday was a clusterfuck so today I am all in until midnight
STATUS: I am well aware that I am behind on a hundred emails
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:

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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UFO Cuisine – 27jan26

Published January 27, 2026 by Warren Ellis

This is a restaurant called Iris in Norway. I really want to go there one day.

The whole article, which has lots more photos, is fascinating. But I kind of love that Nordic hyperlocal-style cuisine is shedding the rustic authenticity bit and going UFO.

OPERATIONS: got an extra little task dropped on me last night, so I am basically rammed for another week to ten days now
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)

At the end of September, Britain’s foreign secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, spoke with President Eisenhower, who said that he wished that Lumumba ‘would fall into a river of crocodiles.’ Douglas-Home replied that ‘regretfully, we have lost many of the techniques of old-fashioned diplomacy.’

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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26jan26

Published January 26, 2026 by Warren Ellis

1236pm and I still haven’t eaten, so I have failed at the day already. Remarkably little of interest on the RSS today. The dollar continues to crash against the pound, and of course I have a payment in transit right now. I fully intended to go out for coffee this morning but it was cold and I had things to do early on – including trying to fix the fact that my newsletter header image is somehow vanishing in Beehiiv after years of working perfectly.

You ever have one of those days where you just know from the get that nothing is going to go well? Happy Monday.

TODAY:

A list of some of the current smart glasses options. I still wonder if glasses aren’t a dead end. In The Economist today, I read: “HSBC, a bank, estimates there are 15m users of smart glasses worldwide; Apple, which reports its latest quarterly earnings this week, is thought to have sold 250m iPhones last year alone.”
The film version of PROJECT HAIL MARY is going to be two hours and forty-six minutes long! 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.
And an IG carousel of bookshops in London, a few of which I know personally, some of which I’ve never heard off, so I’m off to look at websites:

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OPERATIONS: scripts, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter template fixing, running out of month very very fast now
STATUS: made a venison goulash from scratch last night that turned out very well. Secret weapon:

READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:

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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Konsztrukting Soundz: 25jan26

Published January 25, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Konsztrukting Soundz is a wonderful local event of experimental music that I try to attend every month. Last night’s event was really good.

The standout for me was Mandhira de Saram’s absolute storm of looped violin work with electronic intrusions. She has no website I can find, but she’s on IG and I found a couple of collaborations on Bandcamp, none of which seem to approach the force she brought to bear last night, so, given what was said at the top of the performance, I suspect she’s testing a new style.

I was also impressed by Angharad Davies, who’s one of the players on this Eliane Radigue piece I didn’t know:

And here with John Butcher, which is much more reminiscent of what she did with Rie Nakajima last night:

I can’t tell you how much better I feel after one of these gigs. Three hours on airplane mode, just listening and thinking.

Previous notes on Konsztrukting Soundz.

TODAY:

Creators of Project 2025 Want to Send Unmarried People to Camps. Marriage Bootcamps. Ending in communal weddings like the Moonies.

Today’s newsletter is out.

OPERATIONS: scripts, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter probably a dozen other things I’m forgetting
STATUS: I have a thousand things to do so of course I’m going out for lunch instead
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Door 200

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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24jan26

Published January 24, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Actually furious with myself at how much time I’ve burned this month. I keep reading about “friction-maxxing,” which mostly seems to be farting around because you’re comfortably well-off and don’t have to worry about work and money every minute of the day. I was faintly reminded of an appalling piece in, I think, i-D around 1990, when a rave face wrote about “home chill-out room sessions” which were absolutely middle-class dinner parties for the acid house generation. “Cream cheese on celery will totally do your head in” is the phrase that stuck in my head.

Friction-maxxxing, as a term, is making it everywhere, just as “Occupy” once did – I remember Marc Benioff co-opting Occupy as business aspiration, floating the buzzphrase “Occupy the enterprise.” It’s in Architectural Digest this week, and it reeks of privilege trying on “adversity.”

I have a feeling 2026 is going to be a deeply bullshit year.

OPERATIONS: script, foreword, prose series development, outline
STATUS: All of which will be curtailed by my going out to a gig tonight.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (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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23jan26

Published January 23, 2026 by Warren Ellis

^{Ay-O, “Rainbow Volcano”}

Everything seems to be happening a lot, doesn’t it? I’ve barely even left the house this week because of work and weather, and yet there doesn’t seem to be enough time to either get the work done or keep up with anything else. Instagram was my last footprint in social media and I’ve hardly even looked at it lately, let alone used it. I’m supposed to be disconnecting and reading books and watching films and writing in my notebook at night and I find myself buried in news apps and newsletters and search engines (often while watching Bloomberg with one eye) until 1130pm while also writing material directly on to my phone because it’s in my hand which is the WORST habit. (IA Writer is great for that. DON’T DO IT.)

Onwards.

TODAY:

US Congress finds itself powerless to take its war powers back. No kidding. Obama didn’t roll back the war-powers creep from the GWB years.
Dan Catt accidentally boiled his liver
We have now invented “active sitting“
“A video of a slender bamboo stalk that somehow grew through a metal lamp post near the World Trade Plaza in Xinchang County, China’s Zhejiang Province, has gone viral on social media. Dubbed the “Indomitable Bamboo”, the resilient plant took root just a few centimeters from the lamp post and made its way inside it through a small opening near the base.”

The Economist excels themselves with this haunted image:

OPERATIONS: script, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter,
STATUS: the girl cat is fine – apparently she’s just lost weight and assumed her ultimate form. Less overnight email than at any time in probably the last ten years.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (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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21jan25

Published January 21, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Today is already a bin fire in the rain.

OPERATIONS: script, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter, probably six other things I’m forgetting and dealing with stuff I wasn’t supposed to have to deal with
STATUS: One of the girl cats is going to the vet today, so that’s going to kick another hole in the day.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: this has been stuck in my head for DAYS:

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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20jan26

Published January 20, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I found a weird little object online – a USB reader for floppy discs. I still have a few boxes of floppy discs from way back when that I didn’t throw out. There’s a fair chance they’re all as corrupted and rotted as shit now, but I picked up said weird little object and I’m going to see if any of those disks are recoverable. Chances are they have a lot of old Marvel, DC and Wildstorm stuff on, and while it’s not crucial to have copies of those old scripts, and they would be painful to look at, I feel like it would be kind of nice to possess them again. I’ve had so many hard drive and storage issues over the years, so many lost scripts and documents and emails, that I’ve gotten used to considering it all volatile and ephemeral and have learned not to be upset at losing things and to let go of things. To be able to recover just a handful of old pieces would have its pleasures.

In retrospect, I should have printed off literally everything and gotten filing cabinets and, I dunno, a full library system or a zettelkasten index or something, and stayed analogue. I have this memory of a bit in the old MAX HEADROOM show where Blank Reg tries to sell a cyberpunk kid a book on the grounds that it’s a “non-volatile storage medium.” Oh, bugger me, the clip’s on YouTube-

TODAY:

Former Bank of England analyst insists UK must plan for a financial crisis in the event that the US government announces the discovery of alien life: “UAP disclosure is likely to induce ontological shock and provoke psychological responses with material consequences … There might be extreme price volatility in financial markets due to catastrophising or euphoria, and a collapse in confidence if market participants feel uncertain on how to price assets using any of the familiar methods.”
Inventor building AI-powered suicide pod – playing with ChatGPT? Cut out the middle man and go straight to the chatbot death box.
Humans returned to the British Isles after the last Ice Age 500 years earlier than we thought, largely down to the balmy climate of southern England, where I live

Accessions:

CUTS BOTH WAYS, Ed James (UK) (US+)

The 9th Rob Marshall book. I have a great fondness for these less than cosy Scottish crime novels. This one seems to be in the nature of a put pilot for a new series, so it’s probably not the one to start with.

OPERATIONS: script, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter
STATUS: what is this outside world you speak of
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Night Tracks
LAST WATCHED: GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING

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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19jan26

Published January 19, 2026 by Warren Ellis

_{Stephen Willats}

I fully intended to walk outside to get coffee and sit with the notebook this morning, but it’s pushing noon and I’m still in the office chair, probably getting piles and trying to deal with the day’s problems. Pretty much all of which are of my own making, because email and messages are silent. I’d even thought about getting a cab down to Leigh to visit the new Little Fin cafe, but no, here I am reading a PDF for a book I’m running out of time to write the foreword for, looking at the research materials for a prose thing I only have 12 days left to land, and figuring out ways to somehow bring my venerable and moribund newsletter back from the dead.

Everything feels weirdly silent today. Can the internet hold its breath?

New issue of NEURAL magazine arrived, so that’s tonight sorted.

TODAY:

Europe and the UK look at their options over the Greenland bullshit.
Russian programs (one called Thread 3) to capture, study and weaponise UFO technology
Nuclear bunker falling into ocean (UK coastal erosion)

OPERATIONS: script, foreword, outline
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: The Early Music Show
LAST WATCHED: three more episodes of MOONSHINERS: MASTER DISTILLER

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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