A Constellation of Things I Enjoy Thinking About

• Star Trek NM-001star

  The belief that humanity figures it out. That optimism is a radical act.

• Dune NM-002star

  Civilizational thinking, religion, ecology, and politics across thousands of years.

• Foundation NM-003star

  What if you could predict the fall of civilization and do something about it?

• Star Wars NM-004star

  The hero's journey with a galaxy as the backdrop. Mythology that went mainstream.

• Warhammer 40K NM-005star

  Grimdark taken to its logical extreme. A warning dressed as entertainment.

Closer in

• TNG NM-006planet of Star Trek

  The idealist version: diplomacy over firepower, curiosity over conquest.

• DS9 NM-007planet of Star Trek

  Star Trek asking harder questions. What does idealism cost in a war?

• Culture Series NM-008planet of Foundation

  Post-scarcity civilization explored to its fullest, most troubling extent.

• Garviel Loken NM-009planet of Warhammer 40K

  The tragedy of a true believer discovering the system was never worthy of belief.

• Robute Guilliman NM-010planet of Warhammer 40K

  What does it mean to rebuild an empire that should not have existed?

• Galactic Empires NM-011planet of Foundation

  The recurring trope: scale, decline, succession, and the cost of ambition.

• Adrian Tchaikovsky NM-012planet of Foundation

  Hard SF using biology and evolution as storytelling tools.

Deeper still

• Jean Luc Picard NM-013moon of TNG

  The model of principled leadership under impossible constraints.

• The Player of Games NM-014moon of Culture Series

  Banks showing that a game can be a civilization's mirror.

• Klingons NM-015moon of TNG

  A warrior culture that became a lens for honor, tradition, and identity.

• Borg NM-016moon of TNG

  Collectivism as existential horror. The loss of the individual.

• Cardassians NM-017moon of DS9

  The most politically interesting faction in Star Trek. Bureaucratic evil.

• Arrakis NM-018planet of Dune

  The world as constraint. Ecology shaping religion, economy, and empire.

• The Spice NM-019planet of Dune

  The resource that controls everything. A parable about oil and power.

• Trantor NM-020planet of Foundation

  A planet entirely consumed by city and administration.

• Hari Seldon NM-021planet of Foundation

  The man who predicted the future, and had to decide what to do with it.

• Yoda NM-022planet of Star Wars

  Power wearing the mask of humility. Wisdom as misdirection.

• Knights of the Old Republic NM-023planet of Star Wars

  Star Wars as morality play, where identity and destiny are genuinely contested.

• Imperium NM-024planet of Warhammer 40K

  A civilization that became the thing it fought. The cost of survival.

• Tolkien NM-025star

  World-building as an act of grief. He was trying to give England a mythology.

• Lord of the Rings NM-026star

  The epic that all epics are measured against. Profound sadness in the winning.

• Silmarillion NM-027star

  Tolkien's actual masterpiece. Most people bounce off it. Their loss.

• Game of Thrones NM-028star

  The deconstruction of fantasy heroism, and what that costs the story.

Closer in

• Middle-earth NM-029planet of Tolkien

  A world detailed enough to feel real. The prototype for all secondary worlds.

• First Age NM-030planet of Silmarillion

  The age of gods and catastrophe, where Tolkien's mythology breathes.

• Númenor NM-031planet of Silmarillion

  Tolkien's Atlantis. Pride, fall, and flood.

• Elves NM-032planet of Tolkien

  Immortality as burden, not gift. The grief of watching the world change.

• Gondor NM-033planet of Lord of the Rings

  The keeping of the flame. Civilization against the long decline.

• Valar NM-034planet of Silmarillion

  Powers bound by rules they could not violate. Restraint as tragedy.

• Old Valyria NM-035planet of Game of Thrones

  The civilization that fell off-screen. Power and ruin in absence.

Deeper still

• High King Fingolfin NM-036moon of First Age

  The most heroic act in Tolkien: a doomed charge against a god.

• Beren and Lúthien NM-037moon of First Age

  The love story at the heart of Tolkien's mythology.

• Fall of Gondolin NM-038moon of First Age

  The city that fell. The original tale of a hidden kingdom destroyed by pride.

• Eru Ilúvatar NM-039moon of Valar

  The one god who set the music going and stepped back.

• Ainulindalë NM-040moon of Valar

  Creation through music. The most beautiful cosmogony in fiction.

• House Stark NM-041planet of Game of Thrones

  The family the story uses to break every rule about heroism surviving.

• Aegon's Conquest NM-042moon of Old Valyria

  How Westeros began: with dragons rewriting the rules entirely.

• The Wall NM-043planet of Game of Thrones

  A border that became a civilization. Fear institutionalized in stone.

• Marvel NM-044star

  At its best, a 60-year argument about what power should cost you.

• DC NM-045star

  The mythological version. Gods pretending to be heroes.

Closer in

• Avengers NM-046planet of Marvel

  What happens when every myth is put in a room and forced to work together.

• X-Men NM-047planet of Marvel

  Mutants as metaphor. The civil rights movement in impossible choices.

• Deadpool NM-048planet of Marvel

  What happens when the protagonist knows he's in a comic book.

• Justice League NM-049planet of DC

  The Olympian ideal: a pantheon of gods holding back chaos.

• Green Lantern NM-050planet of DC

  Will as power. The idea that belief is the strongest force in the universe.

Deeper still

• Mutants NM-051moon of X-Men

  Every minority experience compressed into one metaphor.

• Infinity Saga NM-052moon of Avengers

  A 10-year narrative arc that justified the entire MCU experiment.

• Lantern Corps NM-053moon of Green Lantern

  The emotional spectrum mapped to factions. Fear, hope, rage, love as forces.

• Blackest Night NM-054moon of Green Lantern

  DC's best crossover. Death itself as a supervillain using grief as a weapon.

• Secret Empire NM-055moon of Avengers

  Captain America as a fascist. Comics confronting the fragility of symbols.

• Roman History NM-056star

  The blueprint for everything: institutions, collapse, ambition, and what comes after.

• Bronze Age NM-057star

  A connected world that collapsed completely in 50 years. Still unexplained.

• Mesopotamia NM-058star

  The first cities, first laws, first myths. The original experiment in civilization.

• Ancient India NM-059star

  Philosophical traditions so deep they're still being unpacked.

• Egypt NM-060star

  A 3,000-year civilization that made permanence into an obsession.

Closer in

• Roman Empire NM-061planet of Roman History

  How a republic became an empire and what that transformation actually cost.

• Roman Republic NM-062planet of Roman History

  The political experiment every modern republic is trying to recreate.

• Early Cities NM-063planet of Mesopotamia

  The moment humans first decided to stay. What that choice created.

• Trade Routes NM-064planet of Mesopotamia

  How ideas moved before the internet. Silk, spice, and everything after.

• Civilizational Collapse NM-065planet of Bronze Age

  The recurring pattern. Everything complex enough eventually breaks.

• Medieval India NM-066planet of Ancient India

  Empires, mathematics, astronomy; often missing from Western histories.

• History of Religion NM-067planet of Egypt

  The operating system of civilization. Myths that built and justified everything.

• Mauryan Empire NM-068planet of Ancient India

  India's first great empire. Ashoka's pivot from conquest to governance.

Deeper still

• Babylon NM-069moon of Early Cities

  The city that invented the idea of a city worth conquering.

• Ur NM-070moon of Early Cities

  One of the oldest cities on earth. Ziggurats and ziggurat politics.

• Indus Valley NM-071planet of Ancient India

  Advanced plumbing before Rome. A civilization we still haven't deciphered.

• Samudragupta NM-072moon of Mauryan Empire

  The Gupta emperor who was simultaneously a conqueror and a poet.

• Solar System NM-073star

  Eight planets and we've only seriously visited one.

• Space Mysteries NM-074star

  The anomalies that keep cosmologists awake at night.

• Space Science NM-075star

  The only field where the questions are as good as the answers.

• Aliens NM-076star

  The possibility that changes everything else about what we think we are.

Closer in

• Black Holes NM-077planet of Space Mysteries

  Where physics gives up and becomes philosophy.

• Nebulae NM-078planet of Space Mysteries

  The nurseries and graveyards of stars. Beauty at incomprehensible scale.

• Planetary Science NM-079planet of Solar System

  Every planet is a different answer to: what can a world be?

• Fermi Paradox NM-080planet of Aliens

  If the universe is full of life, where is everyone?

• Cosmic Scale NM-081planet of Space Science

  Numbers so large they become a spiritual experience.

• Boötes Void NM-082planet of Space Mysteries

  A 330 million light-year hole in the universe. Almost nothing there. Why?

• X-Files NM-083planet of Aliens

  The mythology that made UFO folklore feel like it deserved serious treatment.

• UFO Folklore NM-084planet of Aliens

  Mass cultural imagination about contact. More interesting as sociology than science.

Deeper still

• Moons of Jupiter NM-085moon of Planetary Science

  Europa, Ganymede, Io: each a world. Liquid oceans under ice.

• Saturn Rings NM-086moon of Planetary Science

  A temporary feature of the solar system. We got lucky to see them.

• Interstellar Space NM-087planet of Space Mysteries

  The void between stars. Voyager 1 has been crossing it for decades.

• Cosmic Microwave Background NM-088planet of Space Science

  The afterglow of the Big Bang. We can still see the birth of the universe.

• Extraterrestrial Life NM-089moon of Fermi Paradox

  The statistical argument alone makes the silence terrifying.

• Faster Than Light NM-090planet of Space Science

  Physics says no. The imagination says: what if.

• Stoicism NM-091star

  A philosophical framework I return to for clarity, discipline, and perspective.

• Epistemology NM-092star

  How do we know what we know? The question that destabilizes everything else.

• Civilizations NM-093star

  Why do some ideas and structures persist and others collapse?

• Mythology NM-094star

  The operating systems of every culture before they had ones.

• Long Timescales NM-095star

  Thinking in centuries and millennia changes what you consider important.

Closer in

• Marcus Aurelius NM-096planet of Stoicism

  An emperor writing philosophy for himself. Meditations as private practice.

• Systems Thinking NM-097planet of Epistemology

  Feedback loops, emergence, and why fixing one part breaks another.

• Knowledge Limits NM-098planet of Epistemology

  The hard boundary between what we can know and what we can only believe.

• Human Nature NM-099planet of Stoicism

  Is there a fixed human nature? What the answer means for ethics and politics.

• Institutions NM-100planet of Civilizations

  The structures humans build to outlast themselves, and what they become.

Deeper still

• Meditations NM-101moon of Marcus Aurelius

  Marcus's private journal. Written for himself, resonating two millennia later.

• Virtue Ethics NM-102planet of Stoicism

  Character over rules. The Greek idea that who you are matters more than what you do.

• Logos NM-103planet of Stoicism

  The Stoic principle of universal reason. The cosmic order beneath the chaos.

• Historical Cycles NM-104planet of Civilizations

  Vico, Spengler, Ibn Khaldun: civilizations as organic things that grow and die.

• AI Systems NM-105star

  The infrastructure layer that is rewriting what software can do.

• Agents NM-106star

  Programs that reason, plan, and act. The next frontier of software design.

• Automation NM-107star

  What happens when the repetitive work disappears. What comes next?

• Worldbuilding NM-108star

  The intersection of imagination and systems design. My favorite kind of thinking.

Closer in

• Agent Memory NM-109planet of Agents

  How agents remember, and why memory is the hardest part of agency.

• Knowledge Graphs NM-110planet of Agents

  Structured meaning at scale. The way machines learn what things relate to.

• RAG NM-111planet of AI Systems

  Retrieval-augmented generation: the architecture that gave LLMs long-term memory.

• Complex Systems NM-112planet of AI Systems

  Systems where the interesting behavior emerges from interaction, not design.

Deeper still

• Institution Design NM-113planet of Worldbuilding

  How you build structures that outlast their founders and resist corruption.

• Tooling Philosophy NM-114planet of Automation

  Tools shape thought. The philosophy embedded in what you use matters.

• Infrastructure NM-115planet of Automation

  The invisible layer that everything depends on. Most interesting when it fails.