The Phillip Carter Show

As you may have heard, Ncuti Gatwa has been launched from Doctor Who with such speed that his local spacetime is slowing down.I wanted to briefly share my thoughts on this, because nothing bad has happened to authors who have had opinions before.Firstly, when I read “DOCTOR WHO AXED” in the papers, I was surprised to learn it was not merely the first three words preceding a list of people attacked by some lunatic general practitioner. Such is the state the UK is in at the moment (or perhaps the newspapers themselves, but that discussion would take up another newsletter entirely).Secondly, I saw this coming.Why?It’s not because Doctor Who got ‘woke’ (ask two people what that means and you’ll get two different answers) nor is it because this ancient show is being overshadowed by other shows in a world increasingly flooded with new entertainment.No, I think simply the writing is struggling, and I expected they might take a leaf from the book of politics and get rid of the prominent figure in order to usher in a new era, a new writer.It’s a sort of reset, a clever device written into the show’s lore so that it might continue indefinitely. They do this with Prime Ministers and Presidents too, by the way, when they want to quit and pursue their true calling as a vessel for the old gods, writhing and screaming on the marble floor of some sacrificial chamber deep below wherever it is your tax forms go to.Why I tuned outI stopped watching Doctor Who during Capaldi’s run, which irritated me as I loved the idea of having an older doctor again (my intro to the show was the apparently non-canon, but nonetheless brilliant Peter Cushing movie, Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.). It is still my favourite science fiction film.I really wanted to enjoy Capaldi’s run, but the decline in writing quality had really started with Matt Smith, where certain longer story threads felt like Eastenders in space, which would have been fine for a fresh new Sci-Fi show, but increasingly I felt the writers were losing track of what made DR WHO great, or even worse, losing track of what made the show DOCTOR WHO.It’s life force had been sucked out, and not in the good way.But there was one final flash of life before the end.In the season that ended it all sat my favourite episode of NewWho, Time Of Angels, where Matt Smith’s doctor went on a good old fashioned adventure into a crashed spaceship, fought off Weeping Angels (one of the best NewWho monsters) with gravity tricks, and tied into the wider Pandorica story arc, where time rifts were going around deleting things from existence.But, once that storyline was wrapped up (with Smith looping back to this episode during the season finale, saying an emotional goodbye to Amy Pond) the writing started to slip.The clone Amy storyline was unsettling, sure, but it became too heavy on the drama, and started to forget it was a Sci-Fi. I believe that this, coupled with a pressure from social media to produce lines of dialogue that worked as quirky tiktok soundbites, rather than working in the context of the wider show, is perhaps what has motivated Dr Who’s recent decline in quality.I think the same has happened to literature, too.I try to be an antidote to that.Still, the decline of Doctor Who doesn’t mean there are not brilliant episodes. I plan to watch Capaldi’s run eventually, and I actually tuned back in for Jodi Whittaker specifically because I thought her acting in Broadchurch was brilliant, but it is hard to watch Doctor Who now without realising you are watching a show.And that is precisely the problem.One of Jodi’s first episodes had a very lazily written American businessman doing business with evil space spiders, or something.Naturally, this Donald Trump fan fiction would later try to strike up a deal with the Daleks, who by the way, are genocidal aliens inspired by Nazi tanks.They (the Daleks) were conceived by writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in casings designed by Raymond Cusick. Drawing inspiration from the Nazis, Nation portrayed the Daleks as violent, merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens, completely absent of any emotion other than hate, who demand total conformity to the will of the Dalek with the highest authority, and are bent on the conquest of the universe and the extermination of any other forms of life, including other "impure" Daleks which are deemed inferior for being different to them. - WikipediaThere is a certain ignorance to Doctor Who now. There’s no longer that subtle sort of commentary you got with old SciFi. Now everything must have a lesson and it is not good enough for modern writers that this lesson is secreted carefully amid clever dialogue and storytelling. No, the audience is too thick for that, so let’s just put the lesson right on top, and maybe we don’t need to worry so much about the story itself.Yeah, forget the story.After all, what is a story if not a vehicle for a message?(it’s a story, obviously)I don’t much care about Ncuti vanishing from Dr Who because I don’t much care for his doctor. I saw a handful of episodes because I couldn’t find the TV remote to turn them over, and they were okay, but I don’t remember them.But I remember Eccleston’s gas mask aliens.I remember Matt Smith’s Dalek episodes.I remember these because the story was bigger than the message, to the point where you didn’t need to think about the message. You could derive it from the story, mine it from the script, sure. But you weren’t beaten around the ears with it.Bad writing is an insult to its readers.I don’t watch much TV these days. I wonder if my tastes have changed, but every time I see someone complain about ‘woke’ television or books, I am reminded that a lot of people -feel- what I am feeling, but they don’t have the time or vocabulary to hand to express it.It’s like those open mic poetry nights where there’s always someone telling you that racism is bad. You know racism is bad, so hearing them yell this into your face feels patronising.I don’t need Doctor Who to tell me dumping car batteries into the ocean (which I conceal inside the bodies of bears I’ve killed) is a bad thing for the environment.I need Doctor Who to entertain me.All else is secondary.Have your lessons, have your morals, sure. But don’t do your audience the disservice of treating them like they’re small-minded, hateful little people every time they tune in.Because one day they’ll stop and find someone who respects them.ENDBecoming a subscriber is free. If you’re already subscribed, you can upgrade for $5 a month (or $45 yearly) to unlock paid posts, exclusive content, and more. Or, if you’d rather watch me play Minecraft whilst telling jokes, click here.Thanks for reading RealPhillipCarter - Human writer! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to RealPhillipCarter at www.realphillipcarter.com/subscribe

Hello everyone,If you’re new, you’ve not heard of that big weird poetic sci-fi novel I have been writing forever, so I’ll start by telling you it is called THE STEPHANIE GLITCH and it is about reincarnation. The first novella is already up on Amazon, and there are going to be at least six more.It’s a big, weird story.Eventually it will be a big, weird hardback.And then a big, weird TV series.If you’re worried you’ll be lost today, don’t be. This excerpt happens a few million years BEFORE anything else in the book.PollsYou voted, I listened. Today’s post is Sci-FiAmmonoidea 1 The ammonite shunted itself backwards through the crags in the rock, expelling seawater from its hyponome. Once past the boiling volcanic vents, the spiralling creature secreted itself deeper in the rocks, hiding. Others had tried retracting into their shells, but it was not sufficient. Whatever parasites had escaped the leviathan from the Great Unreachable had no issue scooping live ammonites from their shells.The leviathan was a parasitised thing from which the hunters emerged. Even as its spheroid body slumped through the ocean they burst forth, launching themselves at frightening speed through the seawater from holes chewed into its giant body. The ammonite had seen its hulking form sliding darkly downward into the deep black trench below the ocean, and for reasons it could not understand nor express, felt drawn to that black pit which became the leviathan’s grave.But the hunters had not all left the body, and now she was down here, the ammonite had no choice but to find refuge among the volcanic vents and cave networks that littered this ancient, living rock. And so she pressed onward, spurting another jet of water, her shell hitting a stone wall, her heart feeling the harsh thump as its casing slammed into the ends of the cave.A light like a new sun erupted from one side. It was like the light from one of the vents, but stronger, whiter. It carried with it a coldness, not heat, and its movement was like that of a living being. The ammonite was afraid. The light swept over her, shining through the slim gap between the whorls of her shell, casting a spiralling shape against a far wall of the cave. She glimpsed this briefly with her right eye, noticing that this cave wall was flat, shiny, and that lines stranger than the sutures on her shell were woven here in intricate patterns upon the thing.One of the hunters screamed in the heat of a volcanic vent, its horrid voice resonating dimly out through the water until it reached the ammonite as little more than a memory of pain. She turned to face the dim noise, seeing it as a sheet of rippling white sound, and briefly saw the cumbersome form of the hunter as its pearlescent skin peeled away in the vent. Already roving pairs of Coccosteus were satiating their curiosity by tearing up this flaking, silverish skin as it floated away. The ammonite felt a rumble somewhere deep below. She propelled herself back again, tilting her body, and slotting into a crevice where the surviving hunters could not find her. Here she waited for them to inspect their dead companion, and watched as their strange limbs struggled to propel them through the water. The hunters were long and slim compared to the ammonite, their heads protruding not from a shell but from a torso to which was attached four long limbs. From this distance, secluded in the grey rock, the hunters looked like deformed Ichthyostega, those creatures who had ventured into the Dry World beyond ammonite reach, and had returned with strange vegetation in their mouths.But the hunters were not Ichthyostega, they were bigger, ganglier, and could create sunlight from strange lumps on their skins. Their heads, bulbous and impractical, held one solid compound eye beyond which was a strange luminescence. The ammonite kept watch with her left eye, trying to compress from these strange creatures a hint of their origin. Had the leviathan really fallen from above the Dry World, slipping into the oceans from the Great Unreachable? Or had it been something more earthly, perhaps a rock cast out from a large and undiscovered volcanic vent?ENDThe first novella in this series, THE STEPHANIE GLITCH, Killing A Universe, is currently available on Amazon »Here«The segment you just read is new, and will form the 0th chapter in the full book. I know that sounds weird, but trust me, I have plans.Author’s note:This twist in the story feels right to me, not least because the original cover design for TSG had a big ammonite on it, but because the theme of psychic communication across time is made more explicit here in this opener, long before we even meet Stephanie. And, having Stephanie stumble into her narrative almost as if she’s a secondary character in her own story* brings a real atmosphere and weight to her teenage angst that I don’t think could be sufficiently put across by merely telling you she feels that way.*This is a risk publishers and agents would hate, which is another reason self pub is better for writers like myself. I’ve also bought 100 ISBN codes so I need to make use of them. That was a big purchase.Even moreI can only afford to post little stories and excerpts for free because sometimes people will read them and then buy a bigger story, or a collection of stories. They might even buy a shirt. I have a few more of those on the way, all coming to the linktr.ee/phillipcarter linktree store.Free Sci-Fi Friday - last chanceThere are now four days left for the latest free Sci-Fi bundle I joined, after which some of the books might become a lot harder to find.I know I’ve posted on the official FFF newsletter already, but I thought I’d give you a chance here to jump onto it, too.https://books.bookfunnel.com/aprilfantasy/d19mgtidvi Get full access to RealPhillipCarter at www.realphillipcarter.com/subscribe

I’m bringing the satire articles back. I’ve missed them.Before we begin, I feel I must let you know I’ve used my sense of humour for this one, so it gets dark.Goths - The keystone speciesBritain is going through a depression. People, from the Arts and otherwise, are now enjoying claiming that Britain does not have a culture, that British people merely steal other cultures.But I ask, is that not a culture in and of itself?And, if true, can I get a pirate ship and a parrot?I want to address these fools who say Britain has no culture. We brits do have a culture, it’s just in a bit of a mess so it’s hard to figure out what is ours and what is the ex’s, and what the new guys have brought in. Britain is like an apartment in a global city. Only one guy applied for the flat we share, but he’s taking it in turns to nap on the kitchen floor with his mates. It’s odd.But it’s fine, I guess. We have Pulp and pies and Hugh Grant movies.Do come in. Don’t mind the mold, and the cover-ups, and the collapsing shopping centres, and the decay, and the layers of incompetence, and the manufactured schisms between us. And the violence. There’s a culture here, yeah, a few actually, but the original is so old it’s forgotten where it starts and where other cultures end, like the tragic end to a welding fetishist’s house party.Our identity was not obliterated overnight.There has been a death by a thousand cuts. Primarily, haircuts.At least, I think the modern Brit has a bad haircut.Otherwise why are they always covering their heads with hoods?The only ‘hoodie’ the goth Britain would have would be Death herself.So, considering haircuts, I came to a conclusion about the state of the nation.There was a time for glorious hair.That time is the past.But that time should also be now.Right now.BEHOLDGoths, the crows of the human species.The common ancestor to both Emos and Steampunks, Goths are a keystone species that for a very long time maintained the complex and fragile British ecosystem.Stalking cemeteries and the big Tesco alike, Goths had for a long time been the spiritual backbone to the UK. They were the corset that bound us together.Relentlessly persecuted by scumbags and dullards and d*******s alike, the Goths continued bravely, adding a Victorian romanticism to the decay of the yookay (I just learned that word). They reminded us that it was okay to dress nice, to wear pants which are not your most comfortable but which signal to strangers that you have the capacity to look after yourself even at the expense of getting hot squished balls.Now we are a country of train carriage open-panted ball-scratchers and maniacs.Where are the goths?Last I heard, they flew to greener pastures. America has a growing goth culture, which is probably the best place for it. Lots of pine trees, mist, lots of dead alien societies hidden under brutalist buildings. An aspiring Goth can really thrive in America, where the depression is a sort of mask you put on, rather than a constant genuine feeling that everything is fucked.It’s the difference between putting on a depeche mode album to voluntarily listen to samples recorded in derelict factories, and being forced to live inside one all the time and being told that complaining is probably criminal now.Perhaps the goths flew away on their lacy wings because this place isn’t safe for their ideas any more. Here in the UK if you talk even artistically about death there’s a risk the government might sign you up to be killed and have your organs harvested, so it’s just not worth the hassle now, unless you like the idea of being cast in resin and used as a paperweight for some vast demon that lives under parliament.That said, if you did have some organs removed it might help with the corset thing, so if the government could come up with a list of organs, that would be better than just taking all of them.Below image: Dead man in suit. He was the coffee boy for the government, they tested the new euthanasia machines on him. Seem to work, which is surprising since they are the only bits of tech actually made in the UK.So, we need to drill deeper. We need to do some psychological fracking.GothsGoth culture is in a way a response to the grimness of things, but it is also a poetic antidote to it. Yes, things die, and that’s kind of hot actually because we can prance around on tombstones that wouldn’t be there if things didn’t die. Goths have a special place in my heart because I am one, deep down. We share the same musical taste, but I can’t wear coordinated outfits because I am a comedian and have a genetic disposition to dressing like the lovechild of a clown and an English tutor.Anyway, the saving of Britain’s culture will, seriously, involve the reintroduction of Goth and other subcultures into the wild.We don't see them in shopping centres any more. Just puffer jacket-clad swordsboys and stolen telephone shops, and the SKY TV granny botherers.Whenever you see those, make sure to tell the meandering pensioners that the SKY TV they are selling is crap. Do it. It’s hilarious.So culture is stagnating. Everyone dresses the same. Driving past more than one bus stop at any time of day feels like you're stuck in a time loop.Black coat hood up shite trainers.Black coat hood up shite trainers.Black coat hood up shite trainers and a machete for some reason.Maybe a Peaky Blinders cosplayer every now and again, enough of a fashion jolt to remind you that Matalan still exists, that b*****d cousin to TKmaxx that only shows up for weddings, funerals, and court appearances, that devious triumverate of vomiting into an active fight in a hotel lobby and briefly distracting them before they return to punching each other in the head, knocking their singular brain cell from earhole to earhole.I may write a story from the brain cell’s perspective.[ this does not mean I don’t like Matalan. I quite like their suits. I would be happy to do a brand deal when this post goes viral. Thanks ]There should be people with hippy clothes stalking the coffee shops, people with big spiky purple hair ducking under vintage bookshop doors so low you’d be forgiven for thinking the Ancient Egyptians built them. There should be tomboys existing well into their thirties, scene kids posting horrendously noisy memes to the prototypal instagram. It should be 2016 again, and the student loans company or the government should be paying for these delightful after-eight themed cocktails I keep drinking.Okay, I get the looting thing now. I’d do some looting for some thin mints.Alas, I now I am employed, and I am now paying for them, precisely a decade after I was sat under fake vines, working my way through the menu like I’d get a special acheivement if I did it all in one night.I got half way, and unlocked the gift of teleporting into my mate’s bathroom.At some point we all got old. You probably don’t think I am old. I am 32, and from the handful of conversations I’ve had with my readers I have discovered that apparently that isn’t a very big number. But it feels big. It’s half a stack in Minecraft. I’ve got a lot done in that time, and I plan to do a lot more. But should I do it in the UK, or has culture really gone the way of the last goth, falling asleep at desk 49 in building 17, after working on case 987767? Has lady Britain got too many bloody deadlines to find time to put the eyeliner on? Has she moshed her last mosh?Has it all gone… wrong?“Yeah, I’ll come out tonight, maybe, but I’ve got a thing. There’s an issue with the Henson case. Yeah. Yeah. I miss the gang too. How is Harry? I knew they’d break up. Yeah, yeah I’ll call him.”And one by one the cuts to those strings that bind us come like lightning flashes in the dark, and one by one the neurons of our collective brain are severed. The sinew of groups and culture fall apart when everyone grows up all at the same time. And there is no playfulness any more, no youthful enthusiasm for the future.I hate to say it’s the phones. But it might be the phones.Back in the glorious peak of the goth days, phones had either an orange or blue screen. It cost £1.30 to look at a single boob, and you always regretted it. Now you can’t even get half a freddo for that much money, and the tits on those frogs are horrendous.We are too reliant on phones now.I have friends who call me from my front door, too anxious to knock, in case knocking will activate some quantum switch in my house, turning me into a serial killer.Jokes on them, phone signals do that. I’ve seen the leaked documents. I’ve seen the hole in Antarctica. The lizard people only lasted this long because they didn’t invent social media. If they want to see each other they have to hop in their discs and hover through those bloody wounds in spacetime which chew and bite and scream. They have to access hell to cross the dimensions between here and there. Sometimes they even have to go through Manchester.What do we humans do with our tech?We look at AI-generated fat cats inflating and flying around, whilst on the toilet. This is somehow less overwhelming now than talking to people.The modern world means we’re closer together, and those lines between subcultures are blurring. You’re apparently a goth now if you wear black eyeliner. That’s it. The definitions are being reduced until such a time that they are meaningless.My solution to this, obviously, is to bring an asteroid to Earth.You’ll have seen it on the news.My idea is that the asteroid will incite in the average person a gloom usually reserved for goths, and in doing so, will revive the spirit of goth.And with the spirit of goth alive and well, Britain will be saved.But let’s not save it yet, because its current state is good for songwriting.You can financially support my writing by becoming a Patron, and I’ll add your email to the Substack list of people with a backstage pass for paid posts here - as well as invite you to my writing and comedy discord.You’ll also, eventually, get an invite to an exclusive Minecraft world, where you can beat me with sticks (depends on the tier).I have been Phillip Carter, and you have been someone who is possibly called George. Get full access to RealPhillipCarter at www.realphillipcarter.com/subscribe

Yes, a double whammy. I’ve had this post in my drafts for a while, so I thought now is a good time to beam it out. It is a fitting preamble for my next Substack project… comedy.By the way, NSFW means NOT SAFE FOR WORK, as in, please do not show your boss this email unless you work somewhere cool and they have a sense of humour.A lot of writing these days is safe.Mine could be too.I could write some very fluffy, comfortable stories about eating yoghurt and peeling oranges and meeting new people from different backgrounds and talking to them in a cafe in a patronising tone and probably earn myself a favourable newspaper review calling it ‘brave’ but that would bore me.Why?Because I’m hardwired for novelty.I know what peeling oranges and eating yoghurt and meeting new people is like.I like to imagine my readers do too.So, if a lot of writing is safe, what’s out there in the beyond?Unlike ChatGPT, I don’t want to collect all human experience and blend it into some warm grey goop. I prefer to be more deliberate with my idea mixing.I prefer to discriminate.But don’t worry, this is the good kind of discrimination.This is the kind of idea discriminatin that gives stories a shape.The goal is to break stereotypes.Take poetry for example.When I tell someone I am a poet, I am often met with a look of utter dismay, as the person suddenly remembers the last poet they met. Pale, miserable, and with a black-purple haircut that looks like it was evolved as a defense mechanism against the evils of shampoo, the modern spoken word poet is a sinewy thing reminiscent of a nervous system sneezed out of its original body, given a strong artisanal coffee it pretends to like for artistic reasons, and kicked backwards through a thrift store.And it is indeed, a nervous system.(You can have that pun, spoken word poets, I’m done using it now)Just kidding, if you take it I will write scathing rhymes about you.The modern poet as an archetype is a thing that the modern reader doesn’t seem to want to be near. I’ve done the poetry circuits, and I’ve met a great many types of people, but the public perception still seems to be:Poet = Miserable = TediousAnd I never liked that.And upsettingly, it is reinforced by the way some poetry events go. Maybe it’s the location. Poets, being broke, often use spare rooms in pubs for their group therapy sessions where they talk slowly and sadly about their recent divorce. You know who else goes to pubs? Giddy, drunken people celebrating their recent divorce. This, of course, is a recipe for uncomfortable encounters.Perhaps the serious poets need an even safer ‘safe space’ to talk in.Or perhaps poetry itself is in some way, devoid of humour.Am I a freak for wanting to crack jokes in poems?I don’t think so.I studied Poetry at uni, getting solid Firsts the whole way through because I’m just so handsome and intelligent and handsome and my beard is nice, but I did sometimes bend the rules. I remember submitting one poem and being told “This is closer to stand-up comedy, isn’t it Phillip?” and they were right, it was.But it did rhyme.It was a poem about how I lost three pounds at the gym, buying a chocolate bar.It wasn’t a good joke, but it was an okay poem.Soon enough I realised serious poems about physics weren’t enough to keep me going. I wanted to tell jokes.I did my first stand-up poetry gig at my university’s Arts Bar, where in 2015 I told what is now a prophetic joke about freedom of speech in the Arts.That joke was four minutes of deliberate silence at the end of my ten minute set. It took three of those four minutes for anyone in the audience to get the joke, and I did it because I wanted to scare the crap out of myself. My worst fear back then was freezing in front of the audience.So what did I do to beat it?I purposefully froze in front of the audience.Stage fright died that night, leaving behind the widow of anxiety, who also died.The poem is called ON FREEDOM and if you’ve read WBTH, you’ve seen the paperback version hidden amongst the On-Series; a blackout poem made out of an old, pre-substack blog post I had written about going to uni.I wonder how the judges of SPSFC3 will feel about it. It’s an experimental one, but I think it makes a valid, vaguely sci-fi point. That being;censorship does not remove an idea from the world, it transfigures it, it mutilates it.And that idea of censorship is an inherently sci-fi one.Because to censor is to go back in mental-time and alter something.It is time travel.To rewrite history.It’s also gaslighting.So, after all this thinking and philosophising about comedy and poetry and the Arts and where I was in this vast undulating landscape of words and ideas, I came up with an equation that has served me in my poetry comedy career since.Poetry + Novelty + Comedy = FunThe novelty part is very important.I wanted to be a comedy poet, but I also wanted to tackle the subjects I felt were being silently shunned by the open mics. I have a tremendous respect for people who can get on stage and cover topics darker than ‘my girlfriend left’ whilst making the poem engaging, clever, and accessible.It is a privilege to walk into a free event and hear a long poem about a tragedy that not only is well-written, but which effects you.I wanted to do that, in a funny way.But not everyone will get it.My first experience of being heckled was after I read a brief poem about an imaginary working class activist who secretly wanted to sleep with the rich politician he claimed to hate so much. I thought it spoke of something deeper than what a lot of political poetry was getting at, that under all the software of ideology and gender and voting and favourite movies, we are still animals.But, alas, someone barked VOTE LABOUR in the middle of it.To which I replied,“I was going to, but now you’ve annoyed me, so I won’t.”This, was pre-Brexit, so I like to imagine that guy thinks it was his yelping that shifted the scales. In truth, I missed voting day because I was playing Minecraft.(For my American readers, a Tory is a member of our conservative party here in the UK. Some people liken them to your Republicans, but I have no idea).So, some poetry nights are a bit serious. Even the ones that start out with comedy people slowly devolve back to a game of whose ex was worst.And increasingly, I felt like I didn’t fit in.I’d already heard chants of “All Tories are Evil!” and “White men in Tophats ruined the world!” (real quotes) in poetry evenings, and I didn’t like that.I am a white man who owns a tophat. I look good in it, and I’ve not ruined much. Maybe that meal I burned that time, but not much else. I certainly didn’t take part in the industrial revolution or slavery, I was born a few years too late, unless you count sweatshops, which I also wasn’t involved in, unless you want to draw a wiggly, drunken line between me working in Primark at 17 and them owning a sweatshop or two. But I didn’t know at the time, I was too busy gaslighting my sexist manager into thinking a cat was stuck in the air vents (a story for another time).And I know some Tories. Some of them are decent people who just so happened to have voted for Brexit because they thought it was a good idea at the time or their finger slipped. Fair enough.So I don’t like the broad sweeps that modern poets take at people. I don’t like broad sweeps in general unless they are played for comedic effect.Example: My description of the modern poet above. We all know that not every poet is like that, but we probably have seen at least one. And that’s where the humour comes in. That, and in the description itself.There’s a satirical element to pretending to be grumpier than I actually am.Dark comedy really pleases me. I know it doesn’t please everyone, but it’s a rare treat to hear something this deranged put across so eloquently.Remember, this post is NSFW.That’s the sort of unhinged storytelling I love, and which I love writing myself. You’ll be seeing more of it soon.What jokes do you like? Get full access to RealPhillipCarter at www.realphillipcarter.com/subscribe

The future looms, some manic hyperobject of surreal story and heavy concept.Beep Beep.Your starship wakes you up… But it isn’t speaking in its usual voice…“It’s been a long while, captain.Let’s test your memory.Do you remember this banner?”“I… I mean… Phillip used it to signal something ahead of time. It’s nearly here… Two weeks.”“Two… weeks…”“TWWWWOOOOOO, WEEEEEKS.”The talking stops. You look outside the starship window, seeing my giant floating head. This isn’t too unusual, it happens at least once a week. But then, my head flips open, revealing the Numan inside (New Human, not to be confused with Gary Numan). It’s a gleaming chrome robot with copper eyes that stare through you, stare directly into some weird, parallel reality.Before you have time to react, an announcement is beamed forth from the holoprojectors behind my eyes. Eight digits rotate around a central point.0 9 0 8 2 0 2 3What could it mean?Well. I’ll make it easy for you. 09/08/2023 is my 31st birthday.And I am celebrating in a way only I would celebrate:I am bringing out new books.Yes, plural.Book 1WHO BUILT THE HUMANS?DELUXE EDITION HARDBACKIt took a while to find the perfect printer, but I managed. This luxurious hardback will contain exclusive bonus stories, extra content, chapter headings for each main setting and character created out of Lego (in partnership with my alter ego Grumblebricks), and a brick-built (yes, seriously) map of the entire multiverse from the Fragmented Multiverse series. Including new locations.I’m currently working on other things to sneak into it as well.The deluxe edition WBTH hardback will launch on Crowdfundr on 09.08.2023 and any orders for it will automatically be added to the total goal for another, bigger project.Can you guess what that project is?Book 2WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? TWO- Hologram Kebabs and Hungry HorsesNow, I’m not settled on the subtitle, but there are hologram kebabs and hungry horses, so it gives people a good sense of the tone.Coming out in Hardback, then eBook, and hopefully Audiobook, this sequel/prequel/everythingquel to WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? somehow manages to be more strange. It grabs the existing formula I invented, adds some shiny things, mixes it with some temporal anomalies, rattles the mixture, throws it in the air like a fancy cockail, and then brings it back down to Earth, where you can experience it. If you thought WBTH1 was weird, prepare yourself.Cyrstal Susan returns, as does Barry Binbag, who was definitely in the first one.Those strange fellows called Humans (who I invented) are bungling and scrambling and slumping their way through the pages of another epic tome. And, if you’ve been here on my Substack for a while, you’ve already seen glimpses of their adventure, for WBTH2’s top secret pen name was once Hologram Kebab, named after its first story.I am already 60% through the writing and the editing of it. I can confirm that it is deranged. How deranged, you ask?THE STORIES SO FAR* A poem so boring that the narrator couldn’t allow it to be in the book, and instead just narrates how many people die during its debut appearance at a poetry recital, which goes on for so long that the universe ends. The story then follows what happens after the universe ends, and the kinds of characters who survive the poetry-death of all time and space* A magical horse that s***s out scarves with government secrets knitted into them, as well as worrying cries for help* Self-replicating machines having an identity crisis* Talking mushrooms, and not the ones from Mycelial (but those too)* A secret society of clockwork conspirators* A surprise appearance from my pen name, the erotic wizard genius ROD GRASPER, who will assail your mind with stories about cattle mutilation* A time travelling cow (not related to the above story, honestly)* A time travelling tardigrade* A time travelling God, the God you met in WBTH1. Yeah, he survived the explosion, sort of, but not really. You’ll see* A parody of 1950s Sci-Fi called THE EVIL WILLY FROM OUTER SPACE which is exactly what it sounds like it is* A magical adventure to find a well-endowed elf princess called Buxomina, who sadly died long before the narrator got the job to narrate the story about her failed rescue* A story about a dimension-hopping kitten that isn’t funny, but actually one of my most emotional stories. It wouldn’t be a WBTH if it didn’t suddenly surprise you by being quite clever in between jokes* An action story with so much action, the book might rattle itself out of your hands and explode into glitter or something* A short story about a tribe of gorillas outsmarting aliensBut that’s not all. Since publishing the original WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? in 2020, a small crowd of people have been asking me ‘what happens next’ for various universes. Well, the answer is not far away. WBTH2 also includes:* A sequel to the ARCHITECTS universe from WBTH* A side story in the FURUKAWA universe (tie-in with EARTHLOOP)* A side story from the STEPHANIE universeIn the run-up to WBTH2 I will be releasing the smaller SEVEN STORIES SERIES book by book, to keep you all entertained whilst I do the chiselling. Each of these will contain one story that will later show up in WBTH2, as a way to advertise the epic collection to new readers. These three stories will take on a new shape in WBTH2, as they will be framed by (and will interact with) the other stories in the collection.As it stands, I am 63,000 words in.THAT’S STILL NOT ALLAnd there’s a change to the formula. WBTH2 will still be navigable in almost any order, but on top of that, you’ll be able to pick the tone of the next story you read.I will propose an idea, such as ‘what if mushrooms were sentient?’ and you, dear reader, get to pick whether to read a silly or serious response to the idea.It’s bold. It’s weird. It’s never been done before.Will it work? My top secret group of seven beta readers says yes.You can be added to that group soon, if you join the upcoming pre-order campaign. Launching, predictably, on the 9th of August, alongside the WBTH1 special edition hardback, on Crowdfundr.Both books will have an audiobook tier as well. Audiobooks aren’t easy to make, so I don’t know if I’ll reach the goal for them, but I hope I do! I’ve already had about 40 hours of practice in my home studio.Things you’ll find on the tiers:* eBook* Hardback* AudiobookAnd if you’re more into paperbacks, there will be an additional tier for a signed copy of WBTH1, in case you’ve not already got it. All purchases will be added to the total for WBTH2, even if they’re off-site. So, if you’re impatient, you can get one now by clicking the picture here.I’ve restocked!(If you know a cheaper postal service, let me know)WBTH2, the WBTH1 DELUXE HARDBACK, and WBTH1 signed paperback will all collect their funds together into a single crowdfunding pool that will create WBTH2. If that pool reaches a certain depth, I will most certainly be beaming audiobooks your way. If not, I’ll try applying for a business loan again, but as nice as I might look in suits, this is the best job for me.I’m good at it. I make the weird thing. You buy the weird thing. I spend money on making the next weird thing. Sometimes I give you a free weird thing to say thanks, sometimes that free weird thing connects to the other things.It’s a good system.So, that’s two books. But I promised you three.We now enter NSFW comedy territory…THE COSMIC COCK’SINTERGALACTIC COMEDY BOOK.As some of you may have noticed, I brought my comedy content back onto this main Substack because I got over that weird feeling that people who like my books might not like my comedy. I mean come on, my first (and so far only) big book is at least 50% jokes. So what was wrong with my brain?Science has yet to answer that question. So let’s ask another.Q: What is this new book?A: It’s a collection of comedy short stories, by Sci-Fi and Comedy authors.A top secret project for a long time, this book was actually first concieved in 2015 as ‘Planetary Overlap’ (a title I have since taken for my own use). I put it down because I didn’t know any funny Sci-Fi authors at the time, instead focusing my efforts on the very first Halfplanet project, a collection of art and poetry (and the odd short story) from students and professors at my uni. It was groundbreaking, weird, new. It placed established writers alongside newbies, giving both the confidence to look at their work with new eyes, knowing it was not just publishable, it was desirable.Privately I am planning more like it, this galactic comedy book is the beginning of something quite large.It took a long time to find the perfect writers for it. There’s a lot of contrast, a lot of talent, and an unreasonable degree of jokes. This is not a book to read if you need the toilet, but it is a book to read if your partner is asleep next to you and you want them to be grumpy in the morning because you woke them up by laughing, or going to the toilet in the bed.Trust me, that might happen. I already know one reader who suffered that fate with WBTH, now imagine if I was very picky, hunted down other funny people, and made them write brand new stories to make you laugh.That’s right, every single story in the galactic comedy collection will be NEW.That was the only rule.Oh, and they had to be funny as well.TWO RULES.So that’s it. That’s the end of this newsletter. I’ve announced three books. I’ve not mentioned Earthloop or The Stephanie Glitch or those reprints of my Sci-Fi Poetry books or the Rod Grasper short story series or the Comedy night I just founded or anything else. I’ve been well behaved. I’ve stayed on track.Hopefully you’re feeling almost overwhelmed, but in a good way, like a child holding a Lego store bag that’s bigger than they are.There’s actually more, but I’m at Substack’s email limit.Yes, there’s that much content on the way that it’s making Substack creak.See you soon.There will be more… Get full access to RealPhillipCarter at www.realphillipcarter.com/subscribe