week 43 / 2024
Walking home in the dark, racking up rejections like a sci-fi nerd at the high-school prom—be a lot cooler if it was WEEKNOTES, man! This week, it's all in bits, like a dropped vase.
Latest
week 42 / 2024
Peering at the concrete behind the tiles, hoping that the news isn't too bad—sorry, guv, looks like it's WEEKNOTES. This week, the energy management advice should probably have been read on Monday rather than on Friday.
lost prophets of the hockey-stick: an interview with Andrew Dana Hudson (part 1)
The first part of a long interview with solarpunk auteur and futurist-for-hire Andrew Dana Hudson, in which we discuss sci-fi, cli-fi, muay thai and wi-fi. (Actually, not those last two.)
week 41 / 2024
Showering five times a day in between reading magical-realist comic books of the late C20th—ay caramba, donde estamos con WEEKNOTES? This week, much kin has been made.
week 40 / 2024
Beached by fate but home at last, pouring out libations to the cackling gods of infrastructure... by Zeus, can it truly be WEEKNOTES? This week, "ready to go" gave way to "already gone".
week 39 / 2024
Arse aching from long hours on international trains, eyes itchy from infantile interior design choices—gor blimey, guv, it's WEEKNOTES. This week, we've only gone and been in bloomin' London, innit?
computer says yes: an interview with Georgina Voss (part 2)
The second part of an interview with artist, author and educator Georgina Voss, in which we discuss the role of humour and anger in narrating big, difficult things, and the aesthetic challenges of representing an international engineering scandal in words and images.
News
schedule adjustment notice
Hello, worldbuilders!
Just a quick note to let you know: it occurred to me this morning that my spending a bunch of time compiling weeknotes which don't get emailed to you, only to then spend a shorter amount of time two days later writing a short note alerting
hot in the city 2nite
Hello worldbuilders! It's 28°C in Malmö this afternoon, and it's reliably been around that temperature in the afternoon for close to a week now.
I quite like hot weather, really, but a lot of other folk are less keen—and I dare say I'
call it in, take it off
Hello, worldbuilders! It's been quiet here this last week, because around this time on the Sunday previous I started thinking "hmm, I don't feel so great", and by the evening I was feeling (as we Brits say) like death warmed over.
Hell knows what
less magic, more traffic
Hello, worldbuilders! It feels a lot like the roundabout just hasn't stopped spinning over the week just gone—and next week it's The Conference, which means the metaphorical carny will be reaching out his hairy hand to give it another good shove... which means there'
pass the vol-au-vents
Hello, worldbuilders! And welcome to those of you who've signed up in the last few days. Glad you could come—take a chair, get yourself a drink. How are things?
We've got no Actual Announcement this week; I would announce again that I've giving
the circus comes to town
Hello, worldbuilders! This is your weekly newsthingy... and we're gonna start with An Actual Announcement.
Talk and workshop: The Conference, Malmö, Mon 26th August 2024
I will be giving a talk entitled Wisdom for worldbuilders: fictions, futures, fandoms on the morning of Mon 26th August.
Said talk is
null but not void
Hello, worldbuilders! What's been happening at Worldbuilding Agency this week?
No essay or interview
Um, yeah—bit of an absence at the middle of the week, wasn't there? Sorry about that.
There's an interview in the pipe, but it's awaiting approval from
Weeknotes
week 44 / 2025: hermit walks the dunes
I'm running a three-day course on fiction-for-futures in January! In-person, on-site, and strictly limited to no more than ten participants...
week 43 / 2025: l'esprit de l'ascenseur
Marketing 101 advises that you hone your elevator pitch. I'm increasingly convinced that simplifying problems this way just makes them worse in the long run.
week 42 / 2025: reinventing the wheel
What’s the value of worldbuilding around the questions of a green transition, when participants could be spending their time developing products and services instead? I have answers!
week 41 / 2025: stuck in the middle with you
In which I channel my inner Inigo Montoya in an attempt to explain why talking about "technology" robs us of the sense of our own agency...
week 40 / 2025: the same river twice
This week, it seems I'm flagrantly mishandling Heraclitus to make a case for horizon-scanning...
week 39 / 2025: staying with various troubles
Utopias and dystopias are equally open to interpretation, as are all narratives of futurity. That's why, for me, the name of the game is to portray the messiness of hopes and fears alongside each other...
week 38 / 2025: player of games
I’m waxing philosophical this week, as I consider the potential utility of the “dark forest” theory of the internet to foresight. So please exercise your (potentially illusory) free will and click on through to follow along...