Tag: books

fish weather: 15feb26

Published February 15, 2026 by Warren Ellis

It is pissing down outside and the garden, waterlogged by weeks of rain, is starting to flood. I still have to plant and re-plant dormant trees and am fast running out of time.

I decided to get the Substack app and poke around in it last night, and fuck me did I underestimate the number of newsletters out there right now. It seems to me to be roughly equivalent of those days when most people seemed to be on blogspot. I’m going to need to delete that app immediately, because I was reading on my phone for three or four hours.

And it was on one of those newsletters that I discovered that Maya Deren wrote a short book on filmmaking. And there’s a PDF linked at the bottom of that page.

OPERATIONS: finishing touches on a script, then rewrite the newsletter template
STATUS: rrrreally just want to curl up somewhere with a book for ten hours
READING: Picked up a sample of BLANK SPACE by W David Marx

If artists can only make art while standing in the middle of the town square, you’re going to get more boring art.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/book-review-blank-space

That feels flat-out brilliant.

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

Comments closed

reaching into fog: 13feb26

Published February 13, 2026 by Warren Ellis

^{Emi Mizukami}

Yesterday I wrote my newsletter and then the Beehiiv editor deleted half of it, never to be seen again, which will teach me to write directly into a web page. Everything is so fucking broken these days that even writing into a web-based word processor is like reaching into fog and fooling yourself that there’s something solid in there.

I’m not on Bluesky, I glance at X once in a blue moon, I never bothered with Threads and I can go days without even thinking about IG, but this piece by Sean Bonner made me wonder what the hell is going on out there in the fog:

…a lot of conversations on BlueSky are still about how they aren’t using X. This is a pretty common thing in the beginning of any social site, but I admit I was surprised that this far long that’s still such a common theme there. And it isn’t just X, but posting about not using a whole collection of other apps and services, and also guilting/shaming others for using any of those apps and services. People are even making block lists (more on that next) of people who use other services.

Yesterday evening I made blood orange mimosas.

TODAY:

We are living in a time of great change and great boredom and at the intersection of chaotic change and mind-numbing boredom lies insanity.

I really need to get around to buying a full subscription to 8ball one of these days.

I got given a digital copy of this and am looking forward immensely:

View this post on Instagram

OPERATIONS: really need to crack a broken ten-page section of script today
STATUS: 💀💀💀
READING: THE QUEEN’S AGENT: FRANCIS WALSINGHAM AT THE COURT OF ELIZABETH I (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:

THINKING ABOUT: adding to the notebook system. Also the systems novel.

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

Comments closed

melt: 7feb26

Published February 7, 2026 by Warren Ellis

^{Ragnar Axelsson}

Day… 9? 10? 35? Of this appalling plague. Managed to summon the energy this morning to do the newsletter, and that’s tapped me out.

TODAY:

Russian Startup Allegedly Uses Brain Implants to Turn Pigeons into Surveillance Drones

You know what? That on its own has convinced me to turn the internet off, open a bottle of Fraoch and read a book.

Accessions:

I read a sample of this last year, and yesterday I got a ping to tell me it was on sale. Fits right into winter reading.

THE GANG OF THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+)

READING: THE ART OF WAR, Sun Tzu (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:

LAST WATCHED: lots and lots of news

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

Comments closed

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.

Comments closed

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.

Comments closed

17jan26

Published January 17, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Abruptly stopped feeling like winter at all. It’s like 9 or 10 C out there today.

I’m posting this late because I’ve been trying to assemble flatpack storage boxes to collect CDs into so that I have a little more space in the office to throw shit out so I can get new shelving in here to unpack all the CDs into. Which is a ridiculous vicious circle because I have nowhere to put the boxes I’m filling CDs with. We’ve been living here more than thirty years and we’ve filled the fucking place. And the kid moved out a dozen years ago, so it’s just the two of us and three cats. Very much reaching that “what if I just put the cats in boxes, put them outside and then threw a lit match into the house” point.

TODAY:

Robert Jenrick’s move is massive – but could it cause a bigger fight on the right?
You have to love the headline writers at Futurism: Astronauts’ brains are being displaced
New Microsoft patch makes Windows PCs refuse to shut down

TELEMETRY:

Pontiac Spirits (ghost mix) by The Besnard Lakes

Ted Gioia, a writer I only recently discovered, produces 25 propositions about what he calls The New Romanticism.

Accessions:

Molly Crabapple’s new book finally entered pre-orders for Kindle, so I bought one now for delivery in April. It is getting some great blurbs and early shouts.

I recently read da Empoli’s THE HOUR OF THE PREDATOR (notes to come), which was very good, so when I saw WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN on sale I snapped it up.

HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY, Molly Crabapple (UK) (US+)

THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli (UK) (US+)

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore’s TRAGIC MAGIC just released – my CD copy will be in the post next month, apparently, but I’ve grabbed the mp3s down and they’ll be stuffed onto a SD card for my mp3 player sometime this weekend.

OPERATIONS: picked up a new consult job yesterday – the next thirteen days are rammed and I need to move faster.
STATUS: Slept better, but now it’s time to resume the work of properly disconnecting from the phone in the evenings. Trying to hunt down my old cookbooks – where the fuck did I put the Faviken and Noma books? Everything in the house feels very chaotic and disorganised and I don’t have enough hours in the day. Need to make more blood orange orangeade tonight – herself has discovered she likes it with elderflower tonic.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Ultimate Calm, currently
LAST WATCHED: MOONSHINERS: MASTER DISTILLER. Three episodes. Because I unashamedly love that fucking show.

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

Comments closed

16jan26

Published January 16, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Hello from out here in the Thames Delta. I haven’t written here in a few days, so I’m attempting to make a fresh start with a single daily note for a while.

TODAY:

Iran authorities demanding large sums for return of protesters’ bodies, BBC told
Danish archaeologists find a strikingly well preserved merchant ship from the 1400s with features only ever seen in illustrations.
Europe deploys troops to Greenland: not a headline I particularly expected to see this century.

TELEMETRY:

Yesterday I discovered that Slavoj Zizek has a Substack newsletter.
Herself hates my &SONS workwear-styled gloves (currently on sale!) so I’m reading Permanent Style’s guide to gloves even though I’m fine with my gloves and they will probably outlive me
In ‘Funeral for a Tree,’ Steve Parker Etches Bird Song into Playable Oak Records

Accessions:

I was bad at the start of the year and bought myself a few books in Kindle sales. I presume they both do what it says on the tins.

THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)
THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenburger (UK) (US+)

OPERATIONS: production has been, frankly, fucked this week. I have a script to land and I still need to rebuild the template for the newsletter. Two weeks into the new year and I’m at least four weeks behind.
STATUS: Haven’t been feeling my best and it’s been one of those weeks here where nobody seems to want to allow me the sole uninterrupted use of my own (very tired) brain. Best night’s sleep in a week – 8hrs 7m.
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.

Comments closed

EDIBLE AND MEDICINAL WILD PLANTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND, Robin Harford

Published January 5, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Handy Xmas gift. I let the garden largely alone last year, but this year it requites intervention, sowing and planting, and I want a lot of flowers and edibles (both of which have been getting increasingly difficult to raise), so I’m hoping this will help.

EDIBLE AND MEDICINAL WILD PLANTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND (Amazon)

Comments closed