Sign in Subscribe

strategy

week 43 / 2026: chips and dips

week 43 / 2026: chips and dips

The microprocessor supply chain is the apogee of economic globalisation—so you should plan for it failing, or being broken on purpose, fairly soon. Also: drawing a (fuzzy) line between the didactic telos of narrative prototyping and science fiction as literature, with Wells and Verne as exemplars.

week 39 / 2026: utilities and utilitarianisms

week 39 / 2026: utilities and utilitarianisms

Path dependency in infrastructure is not just a hardware issue, and Effective Altruism (for all its failings) fills a gap identified by its critics. Plus: form echoes function in the writing of Stephen Jay Gould! And the Gothenburg book fair is inimical to the authorial sensibility!

week 37 / 2026: time and motion

week 37 / 2026: time and motion

In this instalment, we examine the perceived acceleration of time’s passing, tour the tawdry campus of a failed secular techno-guru-cult, and poach processes from a wide range of writers. Plus: Iain Banks, Charlie Stross and the history of space opera!

week 30 / 2026: here and elsewhere

week 30 / 2026: here and elsewhere

In this episode: contemplating the end of the Western cosmopolitan urge; hanging with the New York neoLuddites; and Silicon Valley’s highly selective readings of science fiction. Plus, G K Chesterton!

week 26 / 2026: filtration and modulation

week 26 / 2026: filtration and modulation

Take a peek inside to find a strong point of view on point-of-view, to learn the differences between writing for the page and for the screen, and to consider the importance of abeyance in our dealings with futurity…

week 22 / 2026: fathers and sons

week 22 / 2026: fathers and sons

After the hourglass has been overturned, there is a period during which the sand must resettle itself before the flow of time can become regularised once again. We are living through just such a period.

week 19 / 2026: centres and edges

week 19 / 2026: centres and edges

The openings of stories, and the titles we give them, have a huge effect on how they land with the audiences—but as always with stories, it’s an art rather than a science. Plus: in praise of living and working at the edges.