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 5 / 2026: pots and kettles
Reading round-up: exploring what might happen when Medicare meets de-fi and prediction markets; why “innovation” culture would benefit from a more sincere engagement with the darker end of science fiction; and narrative techniques for simultaneous explanation and estrangement.
week 4 / 2026: baleen and blubber
Reading round-up: seeing monsters in the (geo)political mirror; the paradoxical essence of “community”; the enantiodromia of a far-right Euro-federalism; Melville's Moby Dick considered as science fiction.
week 3 / 2026: pulp and pith
Reading round-up: the long game of fashion brand narratives; hints of a revivalist Romanticism; the magickal power of naming things; and the creation of history through the storying of the dead.
week 2 / 2026: ... and the circus leaves town
Reading round-up: Rodney Brooks reassesses his own AI predictions; Dan Wang holds forth on China (and everything else); Bruce Sterling reports from the depths of the multitool rabbit-hole; an anthology of stories in homage to J G Ballard.
week 01 / 2026: the medium is the maxxage
Reading round-up: the (temporary?) end of completion; the four laws of media; the failure of USian political science; and the end-game paths of the risk-maxxing paradigm.
week 52 / 2025: minimum viable
Bare bones from the skeleton crew.
week 51 / 2025: tearing away the caul
Reading round-up: the performative shaming of “performative reading”; the post is the product; the illusion of inevitability; and maximalist manga-monster steampunk-fantasy strangeness.