Are these synopses any good?
You can shape how the world sees my books
It’s true. You can help me alter the way the world will see my next book (Who Killed The Humans?) by helping me figure out which synopsis for Who Built The Humans? is the best.
In this post, I’ll show you my three synopses, and ask which one is your favourite.
As thanks in advance, I’m working on making another of my short stories free, and I’ll email you about that sometime soon.
Same applies to some poems. Making a mini collection.
Who Built The Humans? is a weird book. It’s a mix of Sci-Fi and dark surreal Comedy, which is then spliced with fifteen long and alliterative comedy poems that bridge the gap between the genres, whilst providing the only predictable rhythm in the book. You see, the comedy poems show up once in every three chapters, the other chapters being fragments of ten other universes, some of which are long enough to be novellas themselves (such as Lucy’s Universe).
A smart marketing person would have told me to publish it as multiple books, and perhaps I should have, but I wanted to create a multiverse. The stories are not merely collected for the sake of collecting them, each and every one of them was written specifically for WHO BUILT THE HUMANS?
Originally, I was going to have one or two stories from university in the book, but as they weren’t written for it, they didn’t fit the tone. Perfectly good stories (that I still need to publish) but not a good fit for the book.
That’s the overview.
The puzzle.
I’ve got three distinct synopses for WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? between retailers. I have a favourite, but I want to know what you think is best.
It’s important to me to get your thoughts on this, because you’re my target audience. You know more about this book thing than I do, so if you could, please help me pick a synopsis which you think is the best.
Pick the one you think is the most exciting, and select it on the poll at the end of this email.
You can also say if you like or dislike a particular synopsis at the end of it.
Synopsis 1
47 stories. 11 universes. It's up to you which way to go. Will you save the humans from extinction, or be an instrument in their downfall? Will your adventure be serious, or silly?
★★★★★ "whether you're into Douglas Adams or Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein, there's something in here for you."
From godlike alien squid running their own pirated copy of a game called 'Earth,' to psychic crystals with a hunger for cartoonish violence against anyone called Susan, Who Built The Humans? is a relentless exploration of weird Science Fiction and even weirder comedy.
And it's so much more. The eleven universes in WBTH can be read front-to-back or in any other order, yielding new connections, jokes, and insights with each delirious reread, becoming a book that changes shape each time you pick it up.
★★★★★ "Carter writes like a madman and that is truly the only way these stories could have been written. Just like the scribblings of a mad genius"
Part comedian, part author, all sasquatch, Phillip Carter brings a "devastatingly acidic wit" and an oversized forehead to the literary scene. Crashing out on Earth in his makeshift starship, he brings us stories about everything from time travelling crab-men, to perversely poetic accounts of plutonian probing practices. Then, without a moment's hesitation, he launches into a dark new reality where robotic beings chew through slabs of solid time, spirals off into a pocket dimension where a little boy called Gord tries to unwrite his own story, and finally lands on the last planet at the edge of the universe, where two reptilian scientists discuss the implications of a devastating discovery. All of which is contained neatly inside Who Built The Humans?
This is a huge build-your-own-adventure book for anyone with a twisted sense of humour. Because in this book, you get to decide Who Built The Humans?
(and if you like, you can also decide what kills them).
★★★★★ "Incredibly weird, laugh out loud funny and very clever."
★★★★★ "An astonishing creation, filled with conjecture and supposition. I can honestly say that I have never read anything like this before. The scope is Universe wide and simultaneously microscopically small and incredibly intense. Phillip Carter has taken the philosophical idea that all of reality is but the dream of some immense cosmic being and dragged it kicking and screaming into a new existence [...] Phillip also infuses the book with an acerbic devastatingly acidic wit compounded with a bone dry sense of humour. The author's obvious intelligence shines through in both the creative imagination and the beauty of the language."
★★★★★ "Alien architects, infant gods, and your run-of-the-mill tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists are just a few of the people you'll meet within these 47 stories [...] The thing I love most about Who Built The Humans? is the writing style. The cadence of the story telling is absolutely stunning."
Synopsis 2
Featured in SPSFC3, ComicCon, and in the Manchester Fringe (where it was adapted into a stand-up comedy show about alien abductions), WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? is perhaps the weirdest, funniest Science Fiction book you'll read any time soon, unless you're from the future and you read the other one.
Stood in our time machine, we gaze out upon delusion-inducing spacesuits, time-travelling shapeshifters, reptilian archaeologists, and reality-breaking machines. Looking further, we can see the glitching edges of a simulated world trapped inside a robot’s nightmares, the fraying timelines of a dying cosmos beset by time-eating crustaceans, and a weird little man called Tin foil Tim, whose alien abduction diaries get adapted into the wrong kind of movie.
And it only gets weirder from here.
Part novel, part anthology, Who Built The Humans? is a mind-bending mixture of weird concepts and weirder characters that complement each other like the flavours in a fancy cocktail. You alone get to decide how that cocktail tastes, as at the end of most of the forty-seven chapters you are given a choice: Move onto the next chapter of that particular universe, or dimension-hop your way into a new reality. In this way, Who Built The Humans? becomes a different book for every reader.
What kind of book will it be for you?
Perfect for fans of Douglas Adams and Frankie Boyle, Who Built The Humans is an adventure into quick-witted and acerbic Sci-Fi silliness that is cleverer on the inside. If you like your Sci-Fi with an existential edge, or your comedy with a dark twist, this is the book for you.
Synopsis 3
This special edition includes HOLOGRAM KEBAB, a short dark sci-fi comedy from Phillip's second collection, WHO KILLED THE HUMANS. It also comes with a new introduction and new afterword.
★★★★★ "highly recommend this to any reader wanting more than genre written pulp.” - Independent review
In the first universe, Lucy, a superintelligent afterlife simulator, vows to bring the humans back from extinction, even if it means losing herself in the process.
In the second, Nori Furukawa reverse-engineers an alien time machine, Bill Bines searches for his missing sister, and Darlene plots to MURDER Lax Morales, the founder of Virtualism, earth‘s new simulation-based cult.
In the third, reptilian archaeologists search through the rubble of an ancient civilisation, hoping to find a way to reignite dead stars before their planet freezes to death.
And in the fourth, the fate of the universe is up to you, as your choices determine how this universe ends. it’s a build-your-own-adventure story for adults with a twisted sense of humour.
And this is just four universes out of eleven.
Which one will you visit first?
The poll
Your vote will be anonymous. They always are.
And if you like bits from some of them, but want to cut other bits out, let me know.
But why?
The reason I made this poll is because I want to clean things up. I am well aware of my capacity for over-engineering. When I play Minecraft I will often get stuck walking around between projects, never finishing any one of them. I wanted to build a castle once, and I got carried away and made a machine that produces 10,000 moss every seven minutes instead. I still haven’t got a use for it all. I guess I could make a giant green pyramid.
This kind of meandering over-engineering of projects is fine if you’re a content creator (I also do gaming comedy content on twitch streams and youtube, by the way) because you always have stuff to film, but it’s not so great if you write books, which tend to need endings.
I’ve managed to train myself into writing about 500 words a day on average, without sliding away into starting new projects, but synopses are still one of those things I admit I am not good at. So, not being good at them, I include constantly revising the things as part of my process.
But I want to stop.
I want to focus on the next few books. And hopefully this post will show me what style you prefer. Using the results of this poll, I will settle on a tone for future synopses, which will help me when I pay for marketing the books.
You are my target audience, a crowd of around 1200 people who like science fiction, comedy, and poetry. Your interests range from fashion to quantum physics, and I am very glad you are here.
Thank you for taking part!
-Phillip
The first synopsis is too wordy and excessively complimentary, much like what you read with sensationalist media critiques on a bad film. It puts me on edge.
The second and third are much more concise (thank you!) and deliver enough diversity and a punch to be intriguing.