week 46 / 2024
Elbow-deep in your wardrobe, shaking the silverfish out of your winter jackets and coats—turn up your collar and face the WEEKNOTES! This week, shops have been worked, and solarities speculated upon.
Latest
think local, act global : an interview with Andrew Dana Hudson (part 2)
The second part of a long interview with solarpunk bannerman Andrew Dana Hudson. What was the Lucas Plan? What's worldbuilding good for? And where is my f*cking socially-provided jetpack? All these questions, and more, are answered within...
week 45 / 2024
Wandering the forest with a hatchet, carrying home a log poached from the royal game reserve—nay, forsooth, my liege, these were never your WEEKNOTES! This week, expectations were lowered, and thus overfulfilled.
week 44 / 2024
Facing the inevitable, like Don Corleone in a roomful of turn-coat lieutenants—certo non mi hai tradito per WEEKNOTES? This week, expectations are downrated, and essays are architecture.
case study: a practice-based perspective on participatory prototyping
How can a practice-based perspective inform a participatory prototyping project? This case study looks at the example of climate adaptation in an urban context.
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.
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.
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 35 / 2025: radio daze
Client work is keeping me busy this weekend, so perhaps you'd like to go listen to a recent podcast appearance?
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.