An exploration of Alien Minds.
Including my own.
The joke in the subheading of this email was foreshadowing. Because today is a rare day. You’ll be getting another email later tonight, announcing my brand new Manchester Fringe Sci-Fi Comedy show!
PHILLIP CARTER’S AWKWARD RE-ENTRY
Here’s the promo image.
It’s a standup comedy show about alien abductions, hologram kebabs, and time travel. It also contains some bits of WBTH1, a flash forward to WBTH2, and readings from my new comedy poetry book (currently titled LOVE POEMS FOR PEOPLE I HATE).
Everything connects.
The comedy in that book gets dark and weird. I’ll be opening a top secret comedy group soon for anyone who wants to see a sneak peek. I’m thinking of calling it Carter’s Comedy Cave.
The show is an hour long and blends science fiction, dark standup comedy, and poetry about sucking door handles into a coherent blob of weird.
I told you it would get weird round here.
But before then, I wanted to share some weird stories. Today, Fiction Friday returns to realphillipcarter with a rare digital bookshelf, one I have created and curated myself.
So I can guarantee the stories here are going to be close to my own in weirdness.
If you’ve read my short story Mycelial, you will know a deluxe edition exists which contains a bonus B-Side version of the story, alongside a 500 word deep dive into how I created that weird world. That version is available on the link above, but the free shorter version is in the below bookshelf.
Alien Minds.
Alien Minds is my own brainchild. I was inspired by the brilliant response Mycelial got from all of you and from the wider Substack community. It gave me the energy to speed up my writing and add more stuff to my paid and free tiers, but above all that, it gave me an idea.
People like mind-bending stories.
But they are hard to find.
So, a simple solution. I logged into my Bookfunnel account and set up my own digital bookshelf. This is called ALIEN MINDS and is only for stories where one intelligence meets a stranger, almost alien intelligence. How that happens is different in each story, but they are all weird.
And I was strict about the books, too. Not only did they have to match the brief you’ve just read, they also had to not include any ‘AI art’ because let’s be honest, it usually looks shit. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.
So, this list is narrow in scope, meaning there aren’t hundreds of books on the promo. But that’s the point. If you want weird, mind-bending stories about strange discoveries, alien conversations and ancient encounters (written and illustrated by humans), then this is the promo for you.
Text to copy if button doesn’t work:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/alienminds1/yv67cwzu5q
But that’s not all.
Now I could stagger the lists I join so I have something to post each Friday, but that feels like a lot of emails to me. So, I’ve joined two this week.
This one I didn’t make. Someone else made it. It’s called VILLAIN MENACE and is specifically for scary bad guys.
Naturally, I put Plennimb from MYCELIAL here too.
I like specific lists. I don’t get as many new subscribers, but I do meet people I can have interesting conversations with. And that is far more important.
Thanks for being here. If you’re not already subscribed, please consider it. It’s free, and unlocks some exclusive short stories right away.
You can also pay to subscribe if you want to help me build my evil empire.