Essays
Notes, fieldwork, and longer arguments on wifi horror, consent, and the technologies shaping near-future life.
Cyberbeige: dystopia without the punk
30 June 2026Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash Subscribe now ──────── ◇ ──────── One thing science fiction always seems to get wrong is just how numbing dystopia really is. William Gibson had a novel more or less finished around 2016. Then the US election happened and he threw the timeline out. He told an interviewer his whole se
You Wake Mid-Sentence
14 June 2026Fieldnote 04: My personal storytelling curriculum. I’ve been building and following an in-depth modular course on the history and structure of storytelling. These Fieldnotes are the long-form supplements, one essay per section, written to stand on their own. This is Section 4 of the orientation module, and it asks the
The Same Moment, Twice
12 June 2026This is Section 3 of the orientation module, and it takes apart the first piece of craft advice anyone ever gives you: What is the real difference between showing and telling, and why is "show, don't tell" so often wrong? To make the difference visible, I am going to give you the same small moment twice, once shown and once told.
The Order I'm Telling You This In
8 June 2026Fieldnote 02:Moduel 0 - Story vs Discourse I’ve been building and following an in-depth modular course on the history and structure of storytelling. Check it out at my author site (ajwiadrowski.com ). These Fieldnotes are the long-form supplements, one essay per section, written to stand on their own. This is Sec
The King Died, and Then the Queen Died
5 June 2026Fieldnote 01: My personal storytelling curriculum. Okay, I have something else to talk about. I’ve been building myself a deep, self-directed course on the history and structure of storytelling, working through it module by module. This Fieldnote is the first of these long-form supplements: one essay per question
The Fictional Dr Heart
27 May 2026CONTINUITY_CONSTELLATION/TCP:01_TCM/PRELUDE/THE_FICTIONAL_DR_HEA RT Continuity Year 0 ──────── ◇ ──────── The Fictional Dr Heart The seat was in row F, on the aisle. She had taken it twenty minutes early because the ro
Edison’s Candle: An AI Allegory
26 May 2026Subscribe now WORKSHOP · ESSAY 02 A. J. Wiadrowski · 26 May 2026 There is a structure forming in creative work right now. AI floods the free tier. Human craft retreats behind paywalls. The readers who can pay get the human work. The readers who cannot pay get the AI version. Stock photography is already there
Why we are making the wrong argument about AI, shown through four ways creatives can use AI
14 May 2026WORKSHOP · ESSAY 01 A. J. Wiadrowski · 14 May 2026 I’m almost 40. I grew up without the internet. I started high school on dial-up and graduated four years later with broadband. The Matrix came out when I was twelve and changed my perspective on sci-fi forever. I watched the transition from MySpace to F