134 days remain (includes audio)
134 days remain (includes audio)
A big WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? update.
The following is an update about WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? that Sci-Fi Comedy collection I have been working on.
Hello everyone,
Just wanted to keep you up to date.
Who Killed The Humans? is going quite well, albeit slower than I had wanted.
Working in the shadow of Who Built The Humans? (and at that same time, publishing a new edition of WBTH so I can get it into stores, and then doing all the distribution and admin to get it stocked physically in B&N and Waterstones, and then finding podcast people to talk about it and sort out conventions and interviews) has been an adventure in itself. It’s not easy for small presses to get through those big shiny doors, so I figured I’d give it a go before my book comes out this time, rather than after.
I have a few email addresses for important people and I am going to try to set up an event or two in Manchester (UK) as a book launch. If I can’t get a bookstore, I know a Sci-Fi bar that will definitely say yes.
How it’s going.
The crystalline shape of WKTH is growing quite nicely, and I think I am on track for the release date of 3 Feb 2025.
That is 134 days away, at the time of this email (22/09/2024).
Before then, I want to do things a little differently.
What the series is about.
The Who Built The Humans? series is a comedic and existential series of stories, rant-poems, and novellas which pose new answers to the big questions that form the titles of each book. Who Built The Humans? It could have been alien archaeologists creating world-dreams for research, or we could be a nightmare a robot is having, or we could be a vanity project by a very bored teenaged God, something to impress that girl he likes.
We could also be a genetic weapon, a vessel for demons to travel around in, or punching bags for sentient crystals.
All of these conclusions are true. All of them are in the series.
Why be normal?
In publishing, one of the secret goals nobody talks about is normalcy. You are supposed to come up with ‘comps’, lists of other books your book is like. Usually these have to be recent, so you can impress publishers and agents by proving you read stuff. You’ve got to stand out, but not too much. Got to be new, but not too new. They want another version of that thing that sold last week, so if you’re skipping a few generations in the evolution of literature (I myself am becoming a crab that can eat time (another story in WBTH)) then you might struggle to be recognised, not just understood.
So I went about doing it myself.
The goal.
With Who Built The Humans? my goal was deliberately weird. I wanted to create a massive 'best-of' collection for a dead sci-fi comedian who was not actually dead. The idea was that on the surface the book would look like a collection of someone's best stories, collected together here only because they were of similar quality. But inside it would be a different beast, a complex network of eleven intersecting universes, each of which was written specifically for that book, so that they clicked together perfectly, harmonising like the ingredients in a cockail that you could pour into your skull vent, if you had one of those, which you probably don't.
It was a strange idea, one which several smart friends told me I could make more money from if I split it into multiple books (and I since have, making the vintage author’s journey backwards like the time traveller I am). But I had a grand vision for WBTH. I wanted a book that was not just fun, but valuable.
I wanted to make Science Fiction more accessible.
To people with ADHD, who might sometimes get lost in the meandering prose of other books
To people on train journeys, who, after reaching their destination, found themselves slipping away from the books they had to put down
To people with lives like yours, lives which don’t give you days upon days to pore through a dense Science Fiction text
The solution to these issues, for me in 2020, seemed pretty simple.
I would write a book that was many books and one book at once.
It would make sense no matter which way you read its components.
And, if you are one of the lucky people who find the time to read it front-to-back, those eleven universes would coalesce into a bigger, more beautiful, more hilarious story.
Because they talk to each other. As you consider hopping from one cosmos to the next, you might find the beginning of one story directly satirises the ending of another. Characters and concepts sneak between the pages, making re-reads of Who Built The Humans? as rewarding as re-playing your favourite video game.
ADHD-friendly Science Fiction.
This attention to value in literature is what I think sets me apart from a lot of the industry at present. I am not interested at all in cheap thrills. I know you’re smart, you’re probably smarter than me, and my books should respect that.
They should also accomodate for the lifestyles of modern readers. Sometimes at events people almost apologise for not having much time to read the book they just bought from me. I don’t mind (you can always use your psychic abilities to see how happy future you is, and write a review on their behalf). But jokes aside, most people do struggle to put time aside for writing, and I considered that when making these books.
Give me more attention please, said the shiny rectangle of doom.
I don’t see other writers as competition. We all have our audiences, and often those audiences overlap. We are in this together.
Who I see as competition is Netflix, video games, dating apps, eBay, all those other things you could be doing in your house whilst your bookshelf gathers dust.
Books, I think, could be more fun. Some of them are quite dry, and these newer forms of entertainment are pretty entertaining. Some people prefer movies to books, and I wanted to write a book that might feel like a movie. The WHO BUILT THE HUMANS series is designed to feel a bit like you’re watching a handful of shows simultaneously, as many of you probably do.
I know I do.
So where am I going with this?
Who Built The Humans? was a new type of book. I invented it during 2020, and I called it the NOVELTHOLOGY. It is a book which is simultaneously simple and complicated, a machinery of literature which can creak and clank and shift and shuffle to adapt to your specific circumstances.
Ten minute train ride? Read one of the silly Sci-Fi poems.
Three hours in the bath? Here, I brought you an existential crisis.
The concept was inspired by the ‘tracks’ I built into experimental poetry in 2015 with the invention of the COLLAPSOR, which I will get into another time.
All you need to know is that under the sleek and shiny surface, the Who Built The Humans? series is designed so that every reader’s experience of it is different.
Read a bit before it comes out.
I want a similar feeling for Who Killed The Humans? but with a bit more fanfare upon its release. For that reason, I am selecting some stories that are going into the book and releasing them once they are done, before the full book comes out.
Hologram Kebab was one such story. It appears in the new edition of WBTH as a teaser story (alongside the new afterword), will be in WKTH, and was published on its own on Amazon in April 2024. It’s since enjoyed a few moments in the top 10 sci-fi comedies.
The next story to emerge from WKTH will be Mycelial, a Sci-Fi horror I wrote last year.
You might remember an early draft from my Substack. The story follows a mycelial network that develops sentience and decides to take over the universe. Standard Phillip Carter stuff. It was my most popular post, came second place in a writing contest (the name of which I forget) and then got picked up by Cinnabar Moth press for one of their brilliant anthologies.
My exclusivity agreement with them ran out just over a month ago, so you can expect Mycelial to appear again soon.
Until then, it would be fantastic if you checked out WBTH or WKTH. At this point, the WKTH pre-orders on Amazon are hugely important to boosting the book’s popularity.
On Amazon, you should only ever be charged the cheapest price a few days before release. That means if I reduce the price after you order it, you’ll be charged the lower price.
Paperbacks are also good. The newer editions’ covers fit together.
