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...
Latest
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...
week 20 / 2025
Firing up the neutron beam, slicing through the materiality of the text—WEEKNOTES straddles the disciplinary spectrum like Slim Pickens straddled the bomb!
This week, facilities are toured, art is produced, projects are revealed... and houses are haunted?
unknown pleasures: an interview with Cameron Tonkinwise (part 2)
In the second part of my interview with Cameron Tonkinwise, we discuss Transition Design, prefigurative politics, dramaturgy, narratology, imagination, and... urban cycling as filtered through the philosophy of Georges Bataille?
week 19 / 2025
Counting the beats, coming in on the one—WEEKNOTES rock the rhythm 'til the tune says stop.
This week, we're up in the mountains with Olga Tockarczuk, and down in the valleys of art.
week 18 / 2025
Dodging drunk kids, spurning pagan conflagrations—WEEKNOTES marches into May with flags unfurled!
This week, the grid goes down, but the work goes on.
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 37 / 2025: a room of one’s own
It’s been wall-to-wall logistics around here this week, as I’ve been moving in to a new studio/office space...
week 36 / 2025: at the intersection of three things
I've been going on about this "narrative prototyping" thing for ages now, but how does it differ from science fiction and/or design fiction? Well, since you asked...
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...