About Max
The person at the desk
I'm a software engineer by trade and a reader by temperament — the sort who finds the workings of a library, a university, or a railway quietly thrilling.
Sphereworld grew out of that temperament. I spend my days building systems that have to actually work, and I've come to love the machinery of civilization for the same reason: institutions, engineering, trade, and scholarship are how large groups of people accomplish things that no individual could. I wanted to write fantasy that felt the same way — fascinated by how a world holds together, not just by who is fighting whom.
I read widely and history most of all. I'm drawn to the long view: how knowledge accumulates, how ideas travel, how a place changes over centuries. Those are the questions Sphereworld lets me play with, at a scale and with a freedom that the real world rarely allows.
This site is where I think out loud about all of it. If any of it resonates, I'd be glad of your company.