Polyversity paperbacks are roughly the size of old Penguin paperbacks (10.79 x 17.46 cm).
They'll fit into your pocket, or your handbag. They've got your back.
Kings of Infinite Space - Zali Krishna
Hellopanda Meltykiss is heading downtime. Away from the singularity at Les Pyramides. Away from the old people and the fusty black books that constitute the game they call Lens Flare.
But when you’re a King of Infinite Space, can you ever truly escape from the sheer claustrophobia of ultimate power and those transfigured creatures that wield it? Things that were once human but now manifest as a flock of birds, or a borough of London.
Crisis is breaking out, everywhere, everytime, or possibly only at midnight in Paris at the turn of the new century. Whichever century that is. Whichever Paris that is. White goods are falling from the sky. And somewhere beneath the wreckage, Soma Jones is moving towards his final goal.
Strength of Water - Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
"Strength of Water is a beautiful work of horror and speculation, of politics and fantasy, of deep compassion, outrage, and unflinching investigation into the nightmare of identity."
-- Michael Cisco
"What a novel. What an end. I'm saying this with no exclamation, but in the only tone it deserves: the annoying, almost whisper of respect and appreciation."
-- Anna Tambour
Now available in paperback from lulu.com
contraFLUX - Mark Bolsover
In contra FLUX... we are carried (carry ourselves) through digressions, diversions, and obscurer corners of the European city... towards seeming epiphanies(?) and banalities, nested (parenthesised) within each other; a palimpsest of graffiti and neo-classical facades -- moments caught (arrested) whilst in-from motion.
Mark Bolsover expands and contracts the boundaries of the text, opening hints and vistas... closing down glimpses on the edge of suggestion, to bring us to (non?)places where punchlines proliferate, and urban movement is suspended...
‘Bolsover has done something wonderful… highly charged, psychological, experimental poetry at its best. The imagery is sublime… [a] totally unique voice.’
Matt Duggan, winner of the Erbacce & Into the Void Prizes for poetry, on IN FAILURE & IN RUINS—dreams & fragments
Now available in paperback from Lulu.com
Open Polyversity Three
The third of our Polyversity Press journal of irregular studies featuring comics, art, music, poetry, non-fiction, short fiction, shorter fiction, shortest fiction and recipes from:
Arwen Xaverine Bennett,
Mark Blacklock,
Mark Bolsover,
Adrian Carter,
Steen Comer,
Edmund Davie,
William Ellwood,
Phillip Raymond Goodman
Zali Krishna,
James Knight,
Anthony Nine,
Clive Nolan,
Christina Scholz,
Dan Sumption,
Brian Turner
and Paula Turner.
Paperback available from lulu.com
Sine Cygnet & Signifier - Zali Krishna
Vera Singh is a phenomenal sax-slinger with more high-end footwear than Imelda Marcos. Her flatmate Manda is a trapped career writer, churning out volume after volume of the exploits of Dumara of Terra.
Their odyssey from the coastal town of St Eia, in an imaginary ruritanian state called England, carries them together and apart through the granular micro-balkanised nations of The Continent, and out into places barely-sketched and implausible.
And Soma Jones? Where does he come into this? And where is the library van than he stole from Penwith County Council? Can any of the answers be discovered in the unravelled VHS tapes of Sir Rey Queller, Reluctant Bodhissatva?
We must ask ourselves how can we distinguish between the sine, the cygnet and the signifier. Perhaps we will find the answers to this riddle amongst the greenhouses and Portakabins of Glassgarden.
Open Polyversity Two
Open Polyversity Two is the second issue of our Journal of Misc Studies. It contains fiction, poetry, comics, photography, collage, drawing, an essay on art education and many other diverse materials.
Contributions from: Arwen Xaverine Bennett, Adrian Carter, Edmund Davie, Andrew Demetrius, Simon Drax,Stefan Eichler, Phillip Raymond Goodman, Zali Krishna, Phil MFU, Kev Nickells, Clive Nolan, Michael Radcliffe, Christina Scholz, Dan Sumption, Brian Turner, Paula Turner and Karl MV Waugh.
Open Polyversity One
Open Polyversity is a Journal of Misc Studies. It contains fiction, poetry, comics, photography, collage, drawing, an essay on art education and many other diverse materials.
Contributions from: Arwen Xaverine Bennett, Adrian Carter, Edmund Davie, Andrew Demetrius, Simon Drax, Richard Fontenoy, Melanie Georgiou, Phillip Raymond Goodman, Steve Hiddlestone, Zali Krishna, Solomon Kirchner, Clive Nolan, Zoe Plumb, Christina Scholz, Dan Sumption, Brian Turner and Paula Turner.
Paperback available from Lulu.com
The Narthex - Zali Krishna
Rayne Keller is back from outer space.
To understand why she is hurtling back across the cold parsecs, ascii-ised and dancing upon the head of a pin, and what is the meaning of any of the ballet of symbolic violence that occurs in the fabled arcology of Embelyon, we must look back to events that took place on a rooftop in Caesarea Philippi many centuries before.
And to understand why several veterans of the Helicopteur Police found their way to that same rooftop, we must interrogate the smashed head of Imperator X, that is rumoured to be found beneath the Costcutter at Elysian Quadrant.
All of this aside: what does all of this have to do with the wayfarer Soma Jones, and the former psychogeographer Maurice Donne? Is it related to the relationship between the singularity up-time at Les Pyramides and the deep-nested realities of The Empire of Parentheses?
Who is writing who?
Some clews are provided within.
Nebula || Information - Karl M V Waugh
"these patterns echo spiral across every triangular point every intricacy engraved heat wave front hexagonal oil bubbled economy fracture split love of bubbling enclaves love found system shock soft entrance locked into jaw spoken rituals of never forgotten spirals meant for every blood found on the bare stage afterwards, the dressing room abandoned"
Nebula || Information is a suite of twelve studies in prosody that elide the cosmic and domestic leaving fractures and traces in their wake.
Dashanka Junction - Zali Krishna
Soma Jones is waiting for a bus. Countless iterations ago he was shot with an ascii-iser by a mysterious woman called Wilhelmina Carrow. And it’s the end of the world. Again.
Reduced to his component phonemes, Soma Jones undergoes an aeon long journey back to critical reevaluation through utopias and lost backwaters. Places that are not places locked into a gridlock terminal gravity around Dashanka Junction.
Civilisations come and go. Identities rise and fall. Nested within each other like matryoshka dolls. Fractally recursive and each claiming to be the centre of the universe.
Which layer of the onion is this?
How deeply parenthesised is the world?
Cafe Nonstop - Zali Krishna
Cafe Nonstop hangs geostationary at 540 kilometres above the surface.
Flight delays can be hell but when your boat is coming in from a far star, a delay can turn into a career. As a passenger waiting at Cafe Nonstop you find yourself at the bottom of the social pyramid and the exit signs keep shifting.
Cafe Nonstop is no-choice adventure where you are not the hero. You are not aware of who you are and you have no idea what you are doing here.
And there’s 540 kilometres to fall.
Dun Da De Sewolawen - Christina Scholz
On the world of Kobaïa, Siri and her friends Dewa and Toli are sailing away.
They are sailing away from their parents who they have outgrown, they are sailing away from their civilisation that is only a handful of generations old, and which in its turn has sailed away from the fear that was their original homeworld.
Across the undêm and alone, an electric ritual awaits them: a leviathan of the deep and a darkness that took Siri’s own brother many years ago in its black tentacles.
Out there in The Heart of Silence.
Dun da de Sewolawen is the tale of rites of passage and bonds of friendship in the tradition of Hayao Miyazaki and Christian Vander. It is also possibly the only existing example of Zeuhl literature.
Listen to Christina Scholz reading a chapter from Dun Da De Sewolawen.
Near Andromeda - Zali Krishna
Somewhere out near Andromeda is a world of dusty parking lots in the sun. Dusty and mostly empty because it is easier under local conditions to manufacture car parks than to manufacture cars.
Near Andromeda is a set of utopian gospels from the end of the human project. It is a set of compact parables about who we are and where we are going.
Near Andromeda is a handful of love letters to everything that we might have been.
In the tradition of Olaf Stapledon, Stanislaw Lem and Douglas Adams. Near Andromeda laughs at the abyss, grins in the face of the apocalypse, and explains everything you will ever need to know about the refrigerator as a duelling weapon.
Listen to Near Andromeda - The Radio Series For the Eyes on YouTube!