In November:

In five issues, for Avatar Press. I think of it as the third leg of a superhero-fiction trilogy, following BLACK SUMMER and NO HERO. This one is much more of a science-fiction piece.

…in the world of SUPERGOD, superhumans are the ultimate expression of the Messiah complex, and scientists can build Messiahs who will fly down from the skies to save the world. No-one thought about how they’d save the world — or even if they’d want to. So begins the apocalyptic tomorrow of SUPERGOD — the story of how supermen killed us all and ended the world just because we wanted to be rescued by human-shaped things from beyond Science itself. Take every superhero comic ever published, shove them into a nuclear-powered blender, soak it in bad vodka and set the whole thing alight — and SUPERGOD will crawl out and eat your brain.

SUPERGOD: praying to be saved by a man who can fly will get you killed.

Avatar love their variant covers, god help them (because people buy the bloody things.) So in addition to the standard cover for #1, seen below, there will also be the wraparound GODVISION variant cover and the extremely pure and pious CHURCH OF SUPERGOD variant cover.

SUPERGOD is a nice funny story about everyone dying. It will make you feel warm as if the last sunset on earth were in your tummy.

(above scene does not appear in comic)

Four issues, in January 2010. Not steampunk. An Electrical Romance of a Pirate Utopia Thwarted.

It’s what Fridays are for.

Hotly-tipped online sf magazine JIM BAEN’S UNIVERSE is dead.

Popular online speculative-fiction magazine FARRAGO’S WAINSCOT is dead.

UNIVERSE reportedly paid very well, and charged a subscription fee. WAINSCOT paid only a small honorarium, and was free to read.

WAINSCOT, according to the link above, will be mutating and dividing into new online and print projects.

UNIVERSE is closing in early 2010, dealing respectfully with authors and subscribers alike, but is clearly not going to mutate into anything.

Now live at the WIRED UK website. You can also, of course, find it in the current print edition of WIRED UK.

Problems of the future. Designing a transport hub for the loading and traffic flow of pharma capsules built to deliver drugs directly into the heart of cancer tumours, using carbon fullerenes and working on the nanoscale, where communication between building and vehicle will have to be conducted via coded protein transfer because you’re below the limit at which radio waves can be transmitted or received…

Issue 75 of ICON magazine, on release now, features an interview between

…radical architect François Roche, graphic novelist Warren Ellis and blogger Geoff Manaugh – sci-fi, ghosts, Kinder eggs, the apocalypse, cannibal guerrillas, they cover it all.

It was just an insane amount of fun.

(link)

1. preaching to the choir, 2. let’s get focused, 3. foot long, indeed, 4. articles of faith

"Clouds lit by Manhattan’s buildings, as seen from Williamsburg Brooklyn. NYC."

"Fourteen":

Because Wil Wheaton made me look at this first thing in the morning. He will pay.

Lau Nau. Film by Sami Sänpäkkilä.

Good night.

I need… a TubeSat.

Planet Earth has entered the age of the Personal Satellite with the introduction of Interorbital’s TubeSat Personal Satellite (PS) Kit…. best of all, the price of the TubeSat kit actually includes the price of a launch into Low-Earth-Orbit on an IOS NEPTUNE 30 launch vehicle. Since the TubeSats are placed into self-decaying orbits 310 kilometers (192 miles) above the Earth’s surface, they do not contribute to any long-term build-up of orbital debris. After a few weeks of operation, they will safely re-enter the atmosphere and burn-up. TubeSats are designed to be orbit-friendly. Launches are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Total Price of the TubeSat Kit including a Launch to Orbit is $8,000!

A… thing by Sean Hexed. It is really quite brilliant. A series of mucky little cartoons about Things. A collection of funny monstrosities. A Gross Of Goblins.

Discovered on the Webcomics Summer Clearing House at Whitechapel.

Check out Barry Hensey’s blog.

See if you notice any similarities.

Like the design.

And the content. And the mailing list called "Transignal." And the message board called "The Machine," which does sound a little similar to my old message board The Engine, and currently has a single post on it taken from Whitechapel. And the posts copied straight from here. And… well, everything.

Barry Hensey, whoever and wherever you are… please be nowhere near me. You creepy fucknut.

EDIT: and within an hour, he’s switched to what looks like a default theme. Much of the other creepy stuff remains.

The beautifully-produced London-based magazine FILAMENT has a problem.

Explicit images of women are available at any newsagent, but Filament, the world’s only magazine featuring male pictorials designed for the female gaze, is finding itself between a rock and a hard place when it comes to printing explicit images of men.

Filament only prints explicit images when these are of high photographic and erotic quality, and clearly designed for women – we won’t ever be putting hard cocks on every page. The problem is, all the printers that a small, independent magazine like Filament can afford have said they won’t print images of the male of the species in a state of obvious arousal. Reasons given include that printing these images may cause offence to ’women’s groups’.

If they can sell another 300 copies of FILAMENT #1, they’ll have the money to switch to a printer that isn’t terrified of the cock, and then they can

make history and print (we’re pretty sure) the first explicit male pictorial in a British women’s magazine.

Link to the fundraising page. And, here, a link to the purchase page. Obviously, click around the site and have a nose at it. I thought it was a lovely object, and I know Niki enjoyed looking at it, although there was, to her taste, a distinct lack of morbidly obese beardy men with all their hair burned off.

I’m told that the chances are good that, if they can switch printers, the first such pictorial will probably be shot by Lex Machina, whose work I’ve shown here on the site from time to time. So, if you can help, you can feel good about that, too.

Matt Jones, Russell Davies and I spent yesterday constructing schemes. Or, as we’ve taken to calling it, "avant-tharging." Hence, nothing happened here yesterday. But this is tomorrow.

Good morning.

At bleedingcool.com:

Comics creators who are also performers:

• Afua Richardson, singer
• Paul Pope, DJ
• Alan Moore, vocalist
• Robert Crumb, guitarist
• Antony Johnston, musician
• Kieron Gillen, “Bez”

On my internet spiderhole tonight:

* Online SF Magazines: Your Choices – what online fiction-centric sf magazines do you recommend right now?

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Captain Future – the latest reinvention challenge for artists, open to all.

* The three biggest reasons music magazines are dying.

* My PATSY WALKER Dream – an ancient short essay I wrote and recently rediscovered while rummaging around on old websites.

* The Rozz-Tox Manifesto – features a cool photo of Philip K Dick.

You all know Mer from COILHOUSE, right? This was, I guess, last week at San Diego? While I was on a plane being kicked around the mid-west by storms, probably. Amanda Palmer is as good as ever, and I’ve always liked this song — but I have to say, Mer really does tear it the fuck up on this one. Please enjoy Amanda Palmer and Meredith Yayanos performing "Missed Me" in San Diego on July 24, for the benefit of the CBLDF:

Call for debate on killer robots

Finally got around to listening to Zola Jesus’ debut album THE SPOILS last night. I am reminded, delightfully, of mid-period Danielle Dax. More later, as I’m a bit pushed right now, but this stuff is really worth a listen. This is her myspace page. And this is a short promotional piece shot by Natasha Araya-Schraner:

For people wanting to send me to their sites, wanting to email stuff or tell me about new music or send me tips or whatever, I’ve set up a Gmail account that I’ll check once or twice a week: warrenellis [-at-] gmail com. This isn’t, I stress, my main email account, and it’s not for asking me when some comic’s coming out. Always interested in new music, new art, new connections, new madness etc.

If you need to contact me about writing for print or web, please contact my agent Lydia Wills using the link in the righthand menu bar.

If you need to contact me about anything involving film, tv, games or other things that move, please contact my agent Angela Cheng Caplan using the link in the righthand menu bar.

If you (for god knows what reason) wanted to send me something physical, the best solution right now would probably be to send to my literary agency in New York City.

Warren Ellis
c/o Lydia Wills
Paradigm
360 Park Avenue South
16th floor
New York
New York 10010

I don’t have a solution for people living closer to me as yet. Otherwise, it’s probably easiest to find me via my message board Whitechapel. I leave Twitter on most of the day. MySpace got really slow, so I usually only check it once a day, but I can be contacted through it. I ended up having to reactivate my Facebook page. I keep an occasionally updated notebook/commonplace book at Tumblr.