Also Rises

Orbital Operations for 31 May 2026

Author

Warren Ellis
May 31, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

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Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. The first version of this newsletter ran over 2000 words and fuck me who has time for that when summer is here and we all have to get up and do things? So I’m putting this in the scheduler, grabbing my notebook and a drink and going outside to work and be judged by the mancub.

In this letter:

  • New

  • The News, with Lordess Foudre

  • Collide

  • Thought For The Day, with AJ Brady

  • astra apocalypse audio

  • Deliberate Disconnection with Rain DeGrey

  • Todd Blackwood’s Graveyard Gallery

Your weekly prep for a creative life in a weird world from Warren Ellis, an author from England who writes books and stories, graphic novels and television. Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe here for free.

OPERATIONS

NEW

PROJECT LOST SIERRA is being polished up ready for solicitation, and we are awaiting the new cover for reprint project PROJECT WALLOPS. I am now into the writing of novelette/novella PROJECT SODA SPRINGS - technically it’s contracted for 7500 words, but as it’s an ebook I can run long if I want. Waiting on notes for prose serial PROJECT BASEL, and waiting on the first pages of PROJECT SHANKILL for this newsletter. And awaiting being onboarded by the network for the putative tv project based on one of my works that I am an EP on. Which amounts to... a lot of fucking waiting, for the most part.

I’ve let all this run for a while, because, as previously noted, my focus has been shot due to the amount of Real Life happening around here. But it’s time to do what you have to do when you find yourself waiting on ten different things to happen or not. Which is to do something else.

Sitting around waiting for a bunch of different projects in train to eventuate or not - because any project can die at any time, even after it’s been MADE - is a slow and arduous way to go insane and end up with nothing. The thing to do is always to do something else.

Picasso may have been a nightmare, but one of his lessons was always to make something new every day. He HATED getting up in the morning, whined and complained about life and work and fuck this why even bother, everything is terrible... and by two in the afternoon he’d be painting.

Picasso spoke to other artists about this, and his position was always the same. Every new drawing represented an opportunity: a sale, an idea, a door opening, the beginning of something. So you should do a new drawing every bloody day.

And you know what he said about his work? “I too often tell myself: it’s not quite there yet, you can do better.”

The only way you can get somewhere new is to do something new. The only way to create new opportunities is to do something new.

The News, with Lordess Foudre

Find more Lordess Foudre work at her Instagram and Substack.

COLLIDE: Jerome Eyquem + Warren Ellis: 01.05

Jerome Eyquem is an artist and writer: here are his releases on GlobalComix.

ORBITAL

astra apocalypse audio

Did you ever watch the film AD ASTRA? Odd film. There are some really off scenes in there that absolutely don't match the rest of the film at all. The "moon pirates" bit, for example, which is insanely jarring tonally and really makes massively fuck-all sense, and the bits with Liv Tyler that look like they were shot in a day. Worse, the really interesting bits, like Tommy Lee Jones' mad monologues, get totally buried.

The crux of the matter reportedly involved 20th Century inserting voiceover narration very late in the post-production process. In Gray’s original cut, Brad Pitt’s McBride never delivers interior monologues at all. Additional action sequences were also added and, reportedly at Pitt’s insistence, flashbacks featuring Liv Tyler as McBride’s ex-wife were inserted as well.

Imagine this scenario: your algorithm has pulled up a background YouTube video, or maybe a podcast. Unbeknownst to you, hackers have embedded inaudible sounds in it, designed to hijack your smart speaker or phone’s AI assistant — meaning the cybercriminals can now access your private photos, bank accounts, or any other personal information you’ve hooked up to your AI system.

In the event of an imminent nuclear apocalypse, we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. This site tracks this indicator in realtime. The current emergency level is reported on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being an indicator of a likely imminent apocalypse.

A thought: the idea of a digital public square is gone.

Apparently I have a copy of this in the post, from the author, via my literary agent:

I enjoyed this bit from the blurb I found:

Is it a comedy? Is it a dramatic warning tale for all concerned citizens of the planet? Or is it a pile of rambling, self-indulgent nonsense that will make you feel dirty after you read it?

Or all of the above?

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY with AJ Brady

TITAN:

I think about petrol station forecourts sitting on top of massive petrol reservoirs. I wonder what they would look like when they burn. When I think of the word “reservoir” I imagine water and rain. I imagine a world where it rains petrol and it’s captured in reservoirs. Maybe you could do that on Titan, where it drizzles hydrocarbons. Imagine being able to light reservoirs on fire.

On Titan, there are petrol monsoons falling every thousand years or so. Metres of petrol flooding the planet. Imagine being able to ignite the rain. Imagine a world burning.

I like to think about that.

These are the collaborations between myself and painter AJ Brady. Sometimes she sends me an image and I respond to it in text, sometimes I send her a piece of text and she responds with an image. Find her work at brady-pictures.com and her Instagram.

DELIBERATE DISCONNECTION: A Year In The Wild with Rain DeGrey

Artist, writer and educator Rain DeGrey moved to the wilderness after a lifetime in California and this is the record of her discovery of the land and the seasons. This is her newsletter.

Todd Blackwood’s Graveyard Gallery

Todd Blackwood is the creator of NOSFERATU: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. See more of his art on his IG.

If you want to work together this year, or if you’re doing something creative you want more people to know about, or if you think there’s something Orbital Operations should be covering, hit reply to this newsletter to shoot a note to the office.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

I keep a digital writer’s notebook and you’re invited to read over my shoulder.

Listen. I post there once a day, pretty much, and every day you’ll see a handful of things you didn’t know you needed to know, and a brief update on what I’m doing if you’re into that. Like a more condensed yet more confused version of this newsletter. And if you click over there, you’ll see a big black button on the bottom right reading SUBSCRIBE, which you can click on to have that daily note sent to you as a free email. Some days you might get two or three, if I’m catching up on logging stuff? But mostly once a day.

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MANCUB

Okay, I’m off to make cherry sorbet and spin up an ice cream base I made out of coconut cream, before I hunt down my Merrell barefoots and get my shit together. You go and do something good for yourself, because you do actually deserve it. See you next week.

W

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