New Matter

Orbital Operations for 5 April 2026

Author

Warren Ellis
April 05, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. I’m writing this on Saturday morning. I have had a staggeringly unproductive and sleepy week, which I doubt I can completely blame on the clocks springing forward. So I’m sending this collection and then going outside to pot up some plants for a couple of day so I can start Monday better equipped to enact my various plans, schemes and responsibilities.

Watch me fail to grow all these seeds this year!

In this letter:

  • the news, with Lordess Foudre

  • Deliberate Disconnection with Rain DeGrey

  • Todd Blackwood’s Graveyard Gallery

  • the usual other bullshit

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.

THE WORLD SERVICE

BASTARD FARMS

This was the headline of the week, and I thought it was an April Fool at first:

After operating in secrecy for years, a startup company called R3 Bio, in Richmond, California, suddenly shared details about its work last week—saying it had raised money to create nonsentient monkey “organ sacks” as an alternative to animal testing.

But there is more to the story. And R3 doesn’t want that story told.

MIT Technology Review discovered that the stealth startup’s founder John Schloendorn also pitched a startling, medically graphic, and ethically charged vision for what he's called “brainless clones” to serve the role of backup human bodies.

We are now very much living in the period where the world feels like something I wrote in the late 1990s.

Tobacco plant biohacked to produce DMT. I mean, seriously. I used to talk about us all living in The Science Fiction Condition, but I didn’t think it would be MY science fiction. I’m so sorry.

Failures so far on the Artemis II lunar flyby - one toilet, and two instances of Microsoft Outlook.

Here’s a new term I learned: superionic matter.

The interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune could be home to a previously unknown state of matter, according to new computational simulations by Carnegie's Cong Liu and Ronald Cohen. Their work, published in Nature Communications, predicts that a quasi-one-dimensional superionic state of carbon hydride exists under the extreme pressures and temperatures found deep inside these outer solar system bodies.

Superionic materials occupy an unusual middle ground between solids and liquids—one type of atom remains arranged in a crystalline framework and another becomes mobile.

“Previously unknown state of matter.” That’s fucking mad.

What comes after Ozempic? Python blood.

Michael Bay is denying he’s making a Skibidi Toilet movie, but reporters beg to differ.

Skibidi Toilet (stylized in all lowercase) is an animated web series created by Alexey Gerasimov and released through YouTube videos and Shorts on his channel, skibidi. Produced using Source Filmmaker, the series follows a war between toilets with human heads coming out of their bowls and humanoid characters with electronic devices such as cameras.

The series depicts a conflict between Skibidi Toilets—singing human-headed toilets—and humanoids with CCTV cameras, speakers, and televisions in place of their heads. The Skibidi Toilets, led by G-Toilet, overtake humanity. Warfare soon develops between the toilets and the alliance of Cameramen, Speakermen, and TV Men, which escalates into a constant arms race.

Never forget: we have already lived through the cinematic period where Sir Patrick Stewart played The Poop Emoji.

Here’s the work of Jan Erik Waider:

And finally: “dark point” holes within light waves may move faster than light, bypassing general relativity because they are massless and seem to carry no information. The grace note: these “dark points” are “darker than darkness itself.” The darkest things in the universe are hiding inside light.

The News, with Lordess Foudre

Find more Lordess Foudre work at her Instagram and Substack.

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.

Troy Nixey let me know about this Kickstarter project:

Earlier this year, a Major Comics Distributor™ decided to solve their Bankruptcy Problems™ by stealing a bunch of our Funny Books™. We've put the fight in paper form.

CONSIGNED is a 160-page, full-color comics anthology gathering the artists, writers, maniacs, and luminaries of the Living the Line extended family — horror stories, slice-of-wild-life diary comics, essays, Golden Age wrestling comics, visceral horror manga, painted art comics, pinups, and a healthy dose of Charles Dana Gibson. All under one Gustave Doré cover — with a variant cover by Brandon Graham.

Designed by Matt Battaglia and Sean Michael Robinson. Printed on uncoated art book stock. Delivered to your mailbox May 2026. A one-off one-time event.

Never heard of Living The Line before, but they seem to have interesting broad tastes. It’s worth hitting the link just to see all the art - there’s some amazing-looking stuff in there. And anything Troy Nixey does is worth your attention anyway.

This letter has been zapped to you via Beehiiv , which now includes limited podcast hosting in its plans. If you want to do more than four episodes a month, you’d still be better off going to Libsyn or something. As they say: “No download-based pricing. No per-episode fees. No storage caps that force you to pay more as your catalog grows.”

So if you’re on Beehiiv or thinking about Beehiiv, this might be worth factoring in.

Take a break. Just five minutes. Look up, find some light, find some air, and just switch off for five. It’ll help keep you around, and we need you around. See you next week.

W

I’m represented by Angela Cheng Caplan at the Cheng Caplan Company, David Hale Smith at Inkwell Management and Joel VanderKloot and VanderKloot Law. Please add

to your email system’s address book or contacts and move this email to your primary inbox so that I’m not digitally homeless. Thank you.