Huge news for my books
A much overdue announcement
Who Built The Humans? is now in Waterstones and Barnes&Noble
It’s finally on their systems, and it’s not just the old version that Amazon has, it’s the new version, formatted in glorious new 5.5 by 8.5 print. This slightly smaller trim size, combined with the inclusion of a bonus story, means this eleven-universe book is now 450 pages thick, which is about the right thickness for you to build a shed with them if you really wanted to.
As you can see, the covers line up to make one big image. There’s a story being told here, an implication of a larger universe.
What do readers think?
In case the image didn’t load on your browser, here’s the text.
★★★★★
“An astonishing creation, filled with conjecture and supposition. I can honestly say that I have never read anything like this before. [...] 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, never pandering to any temptation to “dumb down” instead urging the reader to expand their own knowledge and awareness.
This is not a by-the-numbers or trope-driven book following some predetermined and predictable formula but rather an exercise in intellectual science-fiction. It is not the easiest of books to read and understand making all the more worthwhile for it but neither is it so convoluted as to be incomprehensible.
I definitely look forward to reading more by Phillip and highly recommend this to any reader wanting more than genre-written pulp.”
-Independent Amazon reader review
So, people like it.
What is it?
Who Built The Humans? is a collection of 11 Sci-Fi and Comedy universes that blends big questions with silly humour, mixes in some dark alliterative comedy poems about the end of reality, and even lets its audience pick how that particular universe ends.
The book is filled with Time Travel, Artificial Intelligence, Psychic crystals from other dimensions, and shapeshifting crab-men.
It’s weird, basically.
Since publication, the writing has been compared to Isaac Asimov, Douglas Adams, Frankie Boyle, and Brian Aldiss.
Everything you’ve seen so far in this newsletter; Comedy, Sci-Fi, Poetry, is included in this book and it works beautifully together.
Becuase I spent four months of the development time making sure that you could read the chapters in almost any order.
Because it is more than an anthology.
It is more than a novel.
It is a cocktail of strange ideas and flavours.
It is a Novelthology.
Each of the 11 universes plays off another, creating what I envisioned at the time as a musical score made from stories. It was not enough to put a collection together of loosely connected tales, I wanted to produce something genuinely original. I wanted my serious time travel stories to have a sort of intertextual roast battle with the stories about gods and aliens. I wanted the beginning of the book to start off unsettling, with the line “The first brought their dead in briefcases.” showing readers that this was not a normal book, and it was only going to get weirder.
A musical score made from stories
I wanted the final story to end on a dark, solipsistic note in a standalone universe that would later turn out to be set within my wider work.
I wanted to burst onto the literary scene with a book so daringly original that the people who usually review books in newspapers by calling them ‘brave and original’ would probably explode into neon pink flames like a Doctor Who villain given a logical puzzle to solve.
I wanted to show the world, all at once, that I was comedian author poet, and that I didn’t want to split myself down the middle just to appease algorithms, publishers, or marketing teams. I wanted to be, and would continue to be, multifaceted. That’s also what this newsletter has been about.
I taught myself cover design so I could get the perfect cover, the exact one I had imagined when the book first arrived in my head in 2019.
My biggest fans have read the book three or more times, discovering something new each time.
Because this isn’t throwaway literature. No. I wanted to create something lasting, something that thanked the people who believed in it by holding an absurd amount of value within itself, an amount of value that some people think is impossible to fit into one book.
I wanted to prove those people wrong.
Books can be clever and funny at the same time.
I wanted the stories to interact differently depending on which way you travelled through my multiverse, so the end of each chapter gives you a choice: Move to the next page, or hop to the next chapter of that particular story.
Because the next chapter of each story is never on the next page.
It was designed this way to give you the agency to channel-hop between cosmoses, without accidentally spoiling anything. It’s like watching several series’ on Netflix. You never mix them up because they’re different, and it’s really easy to watch an episode of one, feel like watching another, and press a button to jump between them.
In the eBook, you can actually press a button to jump between them.
And in the paperback it’s intuitive, easy to navigate, and even comes with a second index at the back to show you which stories connect to each other.
So read it once, twice, three times, and you’ll have a different result.
It’s mind-bending, original, and a lot of fun.
(which makes it hard to market, but I have no regrets).
And that’s not all. Whilst WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? was a standalone novelthology, my readers really wanted me to make another one. Lucky for them, I was already working on it by the time the first came out. I kept this second book secret until relatively recently, as I wanted to be sure it was doing something new to the new thing I invented.
Who KILLED The Humans? is a darker, funnier sibling to WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? and it will come out soon. I’m currently gathering funding for it.
So, whilst WKTH isn’t out yet (it’ll come out when it’s funded) WBTH is available right now in paperback and eBook in most places.
The original isn’t leaving Amazon, but this new version (and new formatting size) makes it easier for bookstores to order copies, which means you can call your favourite bookstore and request copies.
The bonus story in this new edition is called Hologram Kebab and is a dark sci-fi comedy about a breakup. I think you’ll like it.
You can buy WHO BUILT THE HUMANS pretty much anywhere on linktr.ee/phillipcarter.
Want to see WBTH in your local bookstore?
Call them and ask for this.
Book title: WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? - SPECIAL EDITION
eBook ISBN: 978 183 8112 134
Paperback ISBN: 978 183 8112 172
Author: Handsome ginger man with beard, sort of looks like bigfoot
Q: What’s new in WBTH-SE?
a new afterword about my first ever sci-fi stories I wrote when I was 5
the short story Hologram Kebab is included as a bonus story
new formatting and cover
Q: Is the hardback still coming?
A: Yes. This will be illustrated, but as it’s my first hardback book and I do all the clever behind-the-scenes stuff myself, it might take a while. I plan to release it at the same time as the WKTH hardback so they can enjoy the same advertising.
Q: Audiobook?
A: Working on it. I know how much some of you like my voice, so I am doing the audiobook myself. I’m making one of my poetry books into an album later this year and if that goes well, I’ll know I can manage a bigger book. I’ll be working on this in the background.
Great review, Phillip!
I love the covers! They are so original, colourful and unique.
I had forgotten I had purchased the ebook at Apple. 🤦♀️ Brought it forward to read it soon.