Latest

week 13 / 2025

Dusty with fragments of citation and punctuation, blinking in the sudden light—WEEKNOTES emerge briefly from the word-mines! This week, the nose goes the grindstone, and Toffler goes to China.

week 12 / 2025

Up and down the west coast with a head full of viral fog, over the bridge and back to a melancholy melody—WEEKNOTES keeps moving, even when they don't feel like it. This week, the fort is held, and Scandinavian history is scattershot.

the scenario doesn’t know it’s a scenario: an interview with Madeline Ashby

Few folk are better equipped to understand the art of worldbuilding from both sides of the futures/fiction border than Madeline Ashby, who has a fully justified reputation for excellence in both aspects. Find out how she does it!

week 11 / 2025

No ornate ironies and allusions this week—just a pared-down back-to-basics WEEKNOTES, because I am sick as a dog and it's all I can manage.

week 10 / 2025

There and back again, running the risk and riding the rails—WEEKNOTES takes a trip to That London. This week, the Chronoberg Chronicle meets its moment, and Discworld trumps Middle Earth in almost every way.

of system and story: how narrative-based futuring expands the planner’s toolkit

What use is story in the context of serious, grown-up planning? It's the best way of finding out the flaws in your existing system model—let me tell you why.

week 09 / 2025

From dead giraffes to post-apocalyptic monastics—WEEKNOTES lays it all out on the sidewalk, and lets the kids watch, too. This week, the world is (so much) more-then-human, and fiction is (so much) more than a signal of its author's morality.

week 06 / 2025

In February the sun returns slowly, like a scorned but needy god, and we prostrate ourselves before it with offerings of incense, firstborn lambs and WEEKNOTES. This week, finish lines are approached asymptotically, and the eschaton is retrospectively re-immanentised.

week 05 / 2025

Past the old oak pillar and up the concrete stairs—that's where you'll find the WEEKNOTES, at least until the free beer runs out. This week, shells are haunted, and implausible worlds imagined with an uncanny thoroughness... oh, and a short story is published, too.

week 04 / 2025

Slipping on the bison-skin cloak, dancing around the fire in the lowering light—WEEKNOTES will banish the unquiet spirits which ail you! This week, the train remounts the rails, and the deep past is as alien as the far future, while also as familiar as childhood itself.

week 03 / 2025

The sun slouches out from behind the shoulder of the castle—and WEEKNOTES bask in a brief moment of winter morning light. This week, the incubator inducts a new egg, and the English language is instrumentalised.

week 02 / 2025

The winter is deep and dark, and the forest is frightening—but we've fire on which to cook the quarry, and light by which to write the WEEKNOTES. This week, the hunt is begun once more, and the optimal forsworn.

week 01 / 2025

I did not spend this week sat in a bosky grove, reading aloud a saucy missive to my BFF and a nosy goat... but, truth be told, it might have been better if I had? This week in WEEKNOTES, a well-known lesson is relearned the hard way, and darkness descends upon the academy.

week 52 / 2024

Wandering around the city graveyard, gloved hands deep in the pockets of your long, dark coat—old goths never die, they just start writing WEEKNOTES. This week, biology is hacked (and punked), and a gold-rush refused.