The Unnameable Architecture Of Time

Orbital Operations for 6 April 2025

Author

Warren Ellis
April 06, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

In partnership with

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta, where I am in the middle of figuring out my workflow until end of summer and figuring out my garden plan until end of autumn. Both of these are largely about calculating space. Right now, it looks like I have space for new jobs and possibly don’t have as much room in the garden as I thought. Both processes tend to be about jamming things in until they fit I once knew a guy who introduced me to the concept of “assisted fit.” If the thing doesn’t fit in the hole, hit it with a hammer until it does. Time is usually the thing I’m hammering into gaps.

My days feel longer now, in a good way. There’s still never enough time for everything I want to do, mind you.

In this letter:

  • Don’t die

  • The Human Bullet and HP Lovecraft

  • Elsewhere

  • LTD

Letters about the creative life by Warren Ellis, a writer from England. Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe here for free.

OPERATIONS

DON’T DIE

Longevity influencer and freeze-dried elflord Bryan Johnson is getting a lot of attention lately, both for his life-extension rituals that put Ray Kurzweil’s in the shade, and for things in his personal and professional life. I was interested in what Johnson’s doing, just like I’m interested in most edge cases, right up until he started selling his pre-packaged meals, vasty supplement stacks and his special super ffs olive oil. (Also the disturbing level of concern he has over his penis.)

I remember having a friendly argument with someone at The Economist once, who said life extension wouldn’t be solved without the profit motive, and I asked what sort of person wouldn’t open-source the cure for death.

That said: Bryan Johnson did produce some useful takeaways that are free, and they go like this:

Get enough sleep. “Eight hours” is a myth, everyone is different. Figure out what works best for you, figure out what helps you get enough sleep, and stick to it.

Eat less shit.

(And buy the best extra virgin olive oil you like and can afford. It’s good for you but don’t go nuts. With food, always go with the advice of chef and legendary bon vivant Keith Floyd - buy the best ingredients you can afford and do as little as possible to them.)

Get some exercise. Even walking works for some, if you’re able -my daughter and I share a genetic quirk of losing weight when we walk more, while my partner has trekked on foot across Mongolia and seen no change. And work on your balance, if you’re non-disabled.

That’s it. That’s his pitch. Everything else is sketchy biohacking, sadness and hucksterism.

(To be clear, I don’t have an issue with sketchy biohacking as a spectator sport, but I’m not buying into it for four hundred quid a month and - like Johnson himself, by his own admission - being permanently hungry)

Here’s my pitch: live your damn life and don’t die hungry and full of regret.

A message from our supporters this week:

Turn Your Ideas Into Profit

With Lulu, you can:

  • Print high-quality books on demand

  • Sell directly to your audience using ecommerce plugins

  • Retain 100% of your profit and customer data

  • Get paid immediately

ORBITAL

THE HUMAN BULLET AGAINST THE WORLD

It was right here. And if you looked at the country as a map – if you thought of Texas as the grip and Florida as the magazine clip and the Northeast as the barrel – America was a gun.

A new long short story by Benjamin Percy, and that lovely moment where you can just relax and be told a story by a master thriller writer. Especially one who's having fun with the form.

Walker didn’t need anything. When his wife said, “What about a suit? You said you wanted to get fitted for a new suit. You said the old one was too tight,” he said, “Yeah, but when do I ever wear a suit?” and she said, “You never know when there’s going to be a funeral.”

Here's the bit. Guy gets shot in the head. Wakes up from his coma six months later, convinced that it was his family who died when in fact they were uninjured and he was the only one who took a bullet. And he explains to his therapist that the last six months unfurled very differently - his family are dead and he became an avenging vigilante. His doctors insist that the bullet in his head lit up his brain for six months and he dreamed that entire alternate timeline in his coma. But that timeline is very, very detailed. Which is true?

A writer is in control of their tool when they can lay down a phrase like "the soft basin of his elbow" or "The same lies slid sideways." I tore through it in a single sitting, and it held me on the precipice of its truth the whole time. Marvellous.

And a round of applause to this interesting outfit Neotext for putting this sort of thing out into the world. You can buy it direct from them right here.

As a “basic element of horror,” for example, he cites “Any mysterious and irresistible march toward a doom.”

Michel Houellebecq is a professionally controversial French novelist. I haven’t read any of his books - very few of them look appealing to me. But I came across this, and wondered why that guy, of all people, would write a very long essay about HP Lovecraft. And it’s actually really good.

By forcefully introducing the language and concepts of scientific sectors that seem to him to be the weirdest into his tales, he has exploded the casing of the horror story.

Because sometimes reading an author examining another author leads to a useful dissection of method and effect. And Houellebecq is great on Lovecraft’s approach and vision. I mean, that bit I just quoted? That defines the last hundred years of weird fiction in one line.

At no point does it edge away from the other side of Lovecraft’s reputation, and makes a fair case for his having had a second and more massive mental breakdown during his time in New York City, his normative-for-time-and-place casual racism exploding into xenophobic psychosis. The terrifying, unhinged language he uses in his letters during that period is clearly recognisable as the language used upon his return to Providence and his commencement of his central works.

Racial hatred provokes in Lovecraft the trancelike poetic state in which he outdoes himself by the mad rhythmic pulse of cursed sentences; this is the source of the hideous and cataclysmic light that illuminates his final works.

(Also worth noting is that Houellebecq himself has been up before the beak on charges of inciting racial hatred, and in recent times even the current head of the French National Front have called his public statements on race and culture “excessive.”) (1)

“Attack the story like a radiant suicide, utter the great NO to life without weakness; then you will see a magnificent cathedral, and your senses, vectors of unutterable derangement, will map out an integral delirium that will be lost in the unnameable architecture of time”.

And yet, this outsider art has become part of mainstream culture. Houellebecq is good on why it appeals, and how it works. If you’re interested in Lovecraft, weird fiction, or perhaps even just fiction, I think it’s well worth the couple of hours it takes to read. I actually found myself slowing down while reading it, turning its big ideas around in my mind to see all their facets.

Here’s the best bit for me: I didn’t know until I read this book that Lovecraft kept a commonplace book where he listed story ideas, and that it’s been preserved and transcribed. (2)

Caveat: the translator’s notes at the end are full of comments like this:

In the French edition, Houellebecq quotes at length from a first-person account by Lovecraft of his delight on seeing the New York skyline for the first time. However, neither (Lovecraft scholar ST) Joshi nor I were able to find any evidence of this quotation in Lovecraft’s writings.

It is possible that Houellebecq is a Lovecraftian mad narrator himself.

Now: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast, DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM. 2025: FELL: FERAL CITY new printing, THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition, the LIGHTS OUT Anthology.

OTHER

ELSEWHERE

I read this week that some people who do newsletters are launching “sub-publication” newsletters that are bulked out with (labelled) AI writing.

Angela Winter’s ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN ASMR / 30th March 2025. Brilliant.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

Morning Computer, for good things first thing in your day.

This letter has been zapped to you via and is sponsored by Beehiiv:

Let’s get serious

What’s the mark of the world’s best, most growth-minded newsletter creators? They’re all on beehiiv.

Why? Our entire platform exists to help serious content creators scale faster. We’re built for those who are ready to take their content and build it into a behemoth. 

It’s why we offer a no-code website builder. It’s why our ad network matches you with global brands like Nike and Netflix. It’s why we never take a dime of your subscription revenue. And it’s why Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ashley Graham trust us to connect with their huge fan bases. 

It’s all to put your hard work in front of more people. So if you’re ready to build, ready to grow, and ready to make the world take notice, beehiiv is ready for you.

And that’s me done. Gotta go take a chainsaw to a tree. It’s getting weirder out there every day, and sometimes the best thing we can do is take control of our own environment, even if it’s something as small as taking the top off a jagged old tree to let some more light in. Take care of yourself. See you next week.

W

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

to your email system’s address book or contacts.