week 27 / 2025: on models and literacies "All models are wrong, but some models are useful"—so the saying goes. But how are they wrong, and how are they useful? And what does that mean for thinking about futures?
week 26 / 2025 The hollyhocks stretch toward the sun, and WEEKNOTES wanders the backstreets to bask in their colours... This week, a fictional bishop transmigrates, and the Green Revolution is reassessed.
week 25 / 2025 The sun sinks behind the prow-stone, and WEEKNOTES sail on toward the summerland... This week, a solstice is observed, both figuratively and literally, and the up/down axis gets an airing.
week 24 / 2025 WEEKNOTES is on something like a holiday—so not much to see here for anyone but the serious completists!
week 23 / 2025 Making stories while the sun shines, enjoying the music of the muezzin—WEEKNOTES aspires to feline reincarnation! This week, Eid is celebrated vicariously, and the philosophy of cats is revealed as a contradiction in terms...
week 22 / 2025 Trekking through the wilderness of story, traversing the desert of the Real—WEEKNOTES wander where they will. This week, warfare is conducted through comics, and Canada goes its own way...
week 21 / 2025 Hanging pictures on the wall / who can say when WEEKNOTES fall? This week, pictures are exhibited, and the devil rides out...
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
week 34 / 2025: the machine stops When life gives you lemons, make a lemonade-flavoured parable in place of the more considered content that you'd have written if you'd not lost the time to dealing with the lemons.
week 33 / 2025: how much is too much? Or, phrased differently: what do the IPCC's climate change scenarios have in common with the Star Wars franchise?
week 32 / 2025: conspiracy culture There's nothing like looking at the disposable popular culture of three decades previous for reminding you that there's nothing new under the sun, and that history moves in waves rather than an arc.
week 31 / 2025: churches of futurity What can we learn about futures from thinking about them as if they were faiths or fandoms? Quite a lot, if you ask me...
week 30 / 2025: in defence of magickal thinking Divination and foresight are a deal less different than some practitioners in either camp would have you believe—both address questions of strategy through the sensemaking process of storytelling. Perhaps you'd like a free trial by way of demonstration? Then roll up, roll up, and step this way...
week 29 / 2025: rifts in the schismatrix Here's another way to look at the difference between science fiction and fiction-for-futures: the former is art, the latter is artifice.
week 28 / 2025: the concretisation of metaphor The tools of science fiction can be put to use in the storying of scenarios, but in such cases, they are means to a somewhat different end. How might we usefully describe that distinction?