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28sep26

Published September 28, 2026 by Warren Ellis

First day of reset. Index cards, paper, pens.

The deli was randomly closed – fuck you, Dan – so I stopped in at the Pipe of Port for the first time since it reopened. It’s a basement bar/restaurant that’s been in Southend since God was a boy.

Fried cauliflower, hummous, vegetables, pomegranate and smoked salmon. Rain would approve of everything but the salmon.

OPERATIONS: I got two pages done and sent before I went out to lunch. I have some copying over from a notebook and some scripting to do, and I really need to reply to some emails…!
STATUS:


READING: RED SHEET, James Ellroy (UK) (US+).
LISTENING: right this second, HAPPINESS, Paavoharju + Joose Keskitalo. Making a conscious choice this week to listen primarily to CDs.
LAST WATCHED: Mock The Week, I think. I’m glad it’s back. Now I want some cable channel to bring Frankie Boyle’s New World Order back.

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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retired: 1jun26

Published June 1, 2026 by Warren Ellis

After losing several hours yesterday to running every fix and check I could think of, I came to the sad conclusion that this laptop, a T580 from 2018, is now starting to fail and therefore must be sent to live on a farm. This machine has had its keyboard replaced twice over the years and kept on chugging, but now its chipset is dying. So I caught the end of the Lenovo May sale by a whisker and ordered a new ThinkPad. I doubt the new machine will have the durability of this faithful monster, which I will be sad to retire.

June already.

New newsletter went out yesterday.

TELEMETRY:

A biotech startup called Bexorg is doing something that sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of a cyberpunk novel — or from the script of “RoboCop,” for that matter.

The company is extracting human brains just hours after their owners died and then hooking them up to specialized life support machines, Science reports. While the masses of pink mush no longer host electrical activity, most of their key functions remain intact, allowing scientists to test experimental drugs, such as potential treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, like never before.

You’d hope that the disembodied cerebrums are most assuredly dead. But according to the reporting, an extracted brain hooked up to one of Bexorg’s proprietary life support machines, BrainEX, “hovers between life and death.” There’s no spark of consciousness, and yet the brains are kept running on an artificial lung, kidney oxygenate, blood, and other fluids.

Georgia Hart.

How to fold and read an “infinity book” – tried to embed the video here from two sources but no luck

Dan Henry 1939.

OPERATIONS: got the new cover for a graphic novel reprint currently codenamed PROJECT WALLOPS, so we will be headed to solicits shortly. I need to get a script off the desk today and then figure out how to zero out all the fucking money I spent yesterday
STATUS: I am physically de-teched until such time as the Google app that replaced the FitBit app is fixed to the point where it no longer hallucinates bicycles
READING: THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: a musician sent me her two new videos last night and I am playing them repeatedly today.

Also, THE ECHOING GREEN by Zachary Paul and Celia Eydeland:

And, while I was walking: MNMT 516: Conflation Port, because techno is good for walking.


LAST WATCHED: THE HOLCROFT COVENANT
DRINK: Flint Vineyard Rose

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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let there be light, for maybe seven minutes: 12feb26

Published February 12, 2026 by Warren Ellis

It has stopped raining for whole minutes.

As I write this, it’s darkening down again. I am still completely tapped out, which is getting really fucking frustrating now. So I’m going to leave this here and hope for a comeback tomorrow.

TODAY:

STATUS: 💀
READING: THE QUEEN’S AGENT: FRANCIS WALSINGHAM AT THE COURT OF ELIZABETH I (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Ambient Daily 48

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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It Stopped Raining Briefly: 4feb26

Published February 4, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Day 6 of the death plague. Not remotely at even half-power.

TODAY:

There’s a new Shackleton record. I thought he’d retired.

OPERATIONS: managed to get a script out yesterday, need to get 8pp out today, but I suspect the day will get in the way. Had to process some foreign right and film-related stuff last night and follow up on some production schedules.
STATUS: apparently I am going out for lunch, presumably so I can infect the outside world with The Death. I’ve ordered a case of beer as therapy.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+) (this book is going on forever)
LISTENING: Monument Waves 008 : Atomic Moog (live) podcast

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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1feb26

Published February 1, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I caught the mange that’s been circulating through the town. I am currently useless and will continue to be useless for a few more days.

New newsletter is out, includes notes on ai lobsters

TODAY:

Fashion writer/editor Tish Weinstock‘s newsletter is a riot.

There’s nothing like landing in LA to make you realise you’re definitely not as hot as you thought you were. In London, I rarely leave the house unless I’m going to dinner. i.e.under the cloak of darkness and wearing copious amounts of slap. And if, by some freak chance, I am out during the day, I won’t be travelling by foot, which means I’ll never be caught en plein air. But even if I was, because it’s so grey and depressing outside, I find that my wrinkles, bags and jowls tend to be miraculously, mercifully obscured. Well, not in LA, they’re not. Bathed in the golden light of the Chateau Marmont, I was reminded how old I really was: 185.

THE MEDIEVAL DRONE SOCIETY by Laura Cannell arrived and has been on repeat.

OPERATIONS: I did manage to get a foreword written for someone. But, honestly, I’m looking at that grindcore piece and thinking that’s not the worst idea.
STATUS: all is plague
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Ambient Daily 47 podcast
LAST WATCHED: BLOODSPORT. We rarely turn off a JCVD film in this house.

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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12jan26

Published January 12, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I blew off everything last night: made harissa lamb shanks with truffled mashed potato, then a jar of cold ginger tea, then a jar of blood orange orangeade. But it turns out I still can’t make hummus.

TODAY:

  • Here in the UK, Ofcom is “investigating” X over sexual deepfakes, which could lead to a fine of 10% of X’s global revenue, while Musk is appearing in public with Pete Hegseth, signalling a return to the Trump administration fold.
  • Erich von Daniken died. At least one generation will remember his weird books being on the shelves of every charity shop in the world.
  • Autofocusing eyeglasses. (which makes me smile, see STATUS below)

OPERATIONS: Today is scripting and figuring out my schedule for the next few weeks, because I am appallingly behind and need to sort myself out.
STATUS: My near vision has been slowly deteriorating over the last five years or so, and I’ve been needing very strong light to read some print. Herself saw me struggling to read a small-print label yesterday, and handed me a pair of her +2 reading glasses that were laying around, as an experiment. And suddenly holy shit. Mortifying. I held on to the glasses and spent an hour reading THE NOMA GUIDE TO FERMENTATION without needing a powerful reading light. I’m 58 next month and have just ordered my first pair of reading glasses. I am mortified, to be honest.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+) and THE NOMA GUIDE TO FERMENTATION (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:


LAST WATCHED: rewatching SMILEY’S PEOPLE on iPlayer

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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telemetry 25oct25

Published October 25, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Thank you Zoharum!

Notwithstanding the world being on fire, an ongoing global pandemic vascular disease that is being systematically ignored by governments, Nazis popping out of the woodwork everywhere, actual no-shit fractional trillionaires trying to colonize space in order to secede from the rest of the human species, an ongoing European war that keeps threatening to drag NATO into conflict with the rotting zombie core of the former USSR, and an impending bubble collapse that’s going to make 2000 and 2008 look like storms in a teacup …

I’m calling this the pivotal year of our times, just as 1968 was the pivotal year of the post-1945 system, for a number of reasons.

CHRONOGLYPH, Sougwen Chung. I love that word.

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