Mad Norwegian Press

Mad Norwegian Press was the first company licensed to publish prose Faction Paradox stories. They published Faction Paradox books beginning in 2002 with the release of The Book of the War and ending in 2006 with the release of Erasing Sherlock.

Title	Author	Publication Date	Synopsis
The Book of the War	Edited by Lawrence Miles	17 September 2002	The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic. The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it. Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage... assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable. The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect." Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past...
This Town Will Never Let Us Go	Lawrence Miles	September 2003	From up here you can see it all, hear it all, taste most of it and feel the rest when the electric lights and the satellite signals prickle against your skin. The town, from midnight to six, marked out in headlights and the flash-fire of a culture in War-time. Seance-messages written in the patterns of the road signs, and ghost-transmissions scrambled into the background noise of the traffic. Animal scent-signals from the fried food stands. All describing something, buried under the tarmac and the street-geometry. Down there, a girl in a fake-bone mask is working on a ritual to bring it to the surface. A popular performing artiste with a navel stud and serious identity problems is finding herself stalked - literally - by her own image. An ambulance crewman is about to find his own way of getting involved in the War. And bringing them all together, in one neat little urban mythology, there's Faction Paradox - part cult, part subculture, part pop phenomenon, and part criminal syndicate, either watching-without-being-seen or simply not existing at all (at least until someone invents it). Assuming they're not wholly imaginary, the archons of the Faction seem like the only ones who know what this town really is - what every town really is - and what's bound to happen when it wakes up.
Of the City of the Saved...	Philip Purser-Hallard	April 2004	For Humanity, the War is over... We all remember Resurrection Day. Even now, three centuries later, we cannot forget that awakening: our bewilderment, our terror and our joy. Each of us had experienced death, imagining ourselves bound for oblivion, Heaven or Nirvana, according to taste. Instead, we found, each member of the many human species - from tool-wielding australopithecines to posthuman philosopher-gods - had been harvested, gathered here by the Founders' unfathomable technologies. Reborn in our countless immortal bodies, we were given the freedom of the City of the Saved. A single conurbation as broad as a spiral galaxy, she has been our sanctuary from the ravages of the War. That monstrous conflict between inhuman cultures cannot touch us here: we live our afterlives beyond the end of time, in perfect safety. We may be certain, therefore, that these rumours of a murder (the brutal stabbing of a City Councillor, no less!) are nothing more than lurid fabrications. The supposition that the murder weapon is missing, or that it could have been - as hysterical conjecture has claimed - a "potent weapon", capable of injuring a Citizen within the haven of the City, is equally absurd. The idea that a guerrilla war has already begun in one of our less harmonious enclaves need not be dignified with refutation. Please go about your business, Citizens, as normal. We are perfectly safe, here in the City. Humanity has never been safer. Of the City of the Saved... is not a novel of violence and political intrigue, set against the backdrop of humanity's last resting-place. There is no evidence that it is the second in the series of original Faction Paradox novels.
Dead Romance	Lawrence Miles	November 2004 (originally released in 1999 by Virgin Books as part of the New Adventures line, reprinted by Mad Norwegian press)	"All right, let's start with the basics. The world ended on the twelfth of October, Nineteen Seventy..." I don't know why I'm writing this. It's not like anybody's going to read it. At least, nobody who cares about the fact that I'm a desperate, dying, 23-year-old human being who's just had the whole of history taken away from her. To whoever's out there, to whatever's left, this is the way things were, just before the end. This is the story about the last days of London, about murder and love and waking up in the ruins, about all the people buried in the wreckage... I'm lying, obviously. This is my story. This is what I was doing, when October the twelfth came. Because, let's face it, I'm the only one who really matters. I'm the only one who got out alive.
Warlords of Utopia	Lance Parkin	November 2004	Marcus Americanius Scriptor's memoirs of the war between every parallel universe where Rome never fell and every parallel universe where Hitler won the Second World War have long been regarded as the definitive account of that turbulent time. Scriptor's life story, from his early life among the housesteads of an obscure province to his role in the ultimate confrontation with Nazism, was intimately connected with the major political and social developments of his time. His highly personal record of events was praised even in his own lifetime for its honesty and intimacy, as well as for capturing the scale of a war that consumed thousands of worlds. This exciting new translation of a classic work of military history is accessible to new readers and existing students of the War alike.
Warring States	Mags L. Halliday	June 2005	The Year of the Metal Rat has brought with it greed and self-preservation. The Everlasting Empire is dying, eaten up from within, and the young upstarts Britain and Russia are circling like carrion-birds, for crows of every nation are equally black. The peasant-sect of the Righteous Harmonious Fists attacks all foreign devils. In the capital, the ancient heart of the Empire, the Europeans are besieged by the Dragon Empress' army and the blood of a thousand Christian converts runs in the gutters. When there is War in Heaven, there is War in the Land. A dagger can be concealed in a smile and this House of Paradox smiles often. Its servant here carries grief like dead petals in her hands and wakes the ancient spirits. Their anger makes the sky weep blood, and we shall all pay dearly for her trespass.
Erasing Sherlock	Kelly Hale	December 2006	Seeking: Maid of all Work. Master of Arts required. She thought she was there to observe and document the methods of the twenty-five-year-old Sherlock Holmes before he gained notoriety-- Rooftop Robber Strikes Again! A barely noticed automaton; quiet, efficient, and unobtrusive-- The partially clad body of a young girl was found Sunday morning at the London Dock. A remarkable opportunity for research in the field-- Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera, Perola, premieres at the Savoy Theatre. Bestowed upon her by a benefactor who has sold his soul-- American Oil Tycoon, Henry Barstow, has begun annulment proceedings on behalf of his daughter Lady Henrietta Holbrook. Lord Merrill Holbrook's whereabouts still unknown. For a technology that only works if the devil he sold it to is sufficiently entertained. Dr Grimsley Roylott of Stoke Moran arrested in connection with suspicious deaths of his stepdaughters, Julia and Helen Stoner. The life of Sherlock Holmes is being written by another hand-- Woman held captive for forty days, rescued. White slave gang suspected. And maid must become master if she wants to survive-- Krakatoa explodes with a force of 1,300 megatons. Thousands perish. Because the devil loves a spectacle. The more blood, the better.

Random Static

Random Static was the second publisher of Faction Paradox books, immediately after Mad Norwegian Press. They published their first and only Faction Paradox novel in 2008. Several other novels were developed at Random Static, but none of them were finished until after Random Static lost the license.

Cover	Title	Author	Publication Date	Synopsis
	Newtons Sleep	Daniel O'Mahoney	January 2008	Don't tell her what it was like. Don't tell her how you had to dig your way out through heavy layers of clay to reach the fresh air, because that would distress her. Don't tell her about the box, because that would confuse her. And don't tell her about the light, because that was sacred. Lately cannonballs have flown their arcs, leaving the crystal sky unbroken, while on Earth their traces are all too visible. Yet though Heaven has never seemed so far away, the divine is terribly closer. War on Earth presages War in Heaven; the struggle between the holy houses of Christ and their eternal Adversary has erupted among the living. These are the signs of the last days: in 1651, a dead angel is found in a tree in Lincolnshire and a nymph rises from the waters of Kent; in 1642, a dying man is miraculously healed in the grave; in 1665, uncanny skull-masked doctors descend upon a plague house; in 1683, the French secret service unveil mirrors that show the futures; in 1671, Aphra Behn - she-spy and poetesse - infiltrates a gathering of alchemists; in 1649, the English kill their king, and history begins...

Obverse Books

Obverse Books is the current publisher of prose Faction Paradox stories. They published their first Faction Paradox book in 2011 with the short story anthology A Romance in Twelve Parts, and their first novel was Against Nature in 2013. Obverse Books is the first company to publish Faction Paradox stories without direct involvement from Faction Paradox's creator, Lawrence Miles, as a result of his decision to step away from the series. However, the first few books began development at Random Static, and therefore had influence from Lawrence Mile's editing.

Title	Author	Publication Date	Synopsis
A Romance in Twelve Parts	Edited by Stuart Douglas and Lawrence Miles	31 May 2011	'What's that? Did I hear you ask what romance has to do with anything, little Cousin? You do surprise me. Why Romance is Story itself, nothing less than that. Romance is the tale with which a cunning man winkles out a widow's secrets and an honest one breaks his beloved's heart. Romance locks us away and sets us free, brings us great pleasure and also great pain, is the thread which binds all other stories together. Dear me, little Cousin, I expected better of you...' - Godfather Valentine, Dresden, 1928
Tales of the City	Edited by Philip Purser-Hallard	1 June 2012	Beyond the end of the universe exists a city the size of a galaxy, packed with every human being that ever lived, from the first Australopithecus to the last posthuman, resurrected in a city in which nobody can die... or rather, that used to be the case. The first ever City of the Saved short story collection, edited by the man who created it for the Faction Paradox Book of the War, Philip Purser-Hallard.
Burning With Optimism's Flames	Edited by Jay Eales	31 January 2013	I can remember asking him, 'What are the stars? Where do they come from?' He would tell me that the stars are burning worlds, caught forever in their unending flames, raging, roaring against the night. They look out beyond their fragile spheres for places of calm and serenity to shine their brightness and bring life. He would clasp me around the shoulder and say that we were like stars. We had to use the energy within us to defeat the cold spaces, to turn away the dark things that dared to destroy life. We had to find our own calmness and serenity even when it was denied us. I don’t think I understood him then. I was too small, and my brother never spoke in the concrete terms that my brain could comprehend. Looking back on it, though, I think that's when P.J. began to burn. - Intermediant Izzy Ring, The Heaven Facility
Against Nature	Lawrence Burton	March 2013	Every fifty-two years, the God Xiuhtecuhtli - incarnate for the purpose as a young Mexica male - would give himself in sacrifice in order that the universe should be renewed and the passage of time would continue as it had done before. Those born to other cultures and other eras might be forgiven for their failure to appreciate this great and selfless act. It was therefore strange that such a profound understanding should arise in one so far removed from the heart of this world, both veteran and victim of the terrible, endless war in heaven, a man the Mexica knew briefly as Coahualxiu bearing a death wish the size of creation...
More Tales of the City	Edited by Philip Purser-Hallard	1 June 2013	Beyond the end of the universe exists a city the size of a galaxy, packed with every human being that ever lived, from the first Australopithecus to the last posthuman, resurrected in a city in which nobody can die... The second City of the Saved short story collection, edited by its creator, Philip Purser-Hallard, and with new stories - and one extraordinary poem - from many of Obverse Book’s favourite authors!
The Brakespeare Voyage; or, the Fourth Wave Boys' Book of Whaling for Universes	Simon Bucher-Jones and Jonathan Dennis	November 2013	"The Tribunal Decision in the matter of the Great Houses vs. Scarratt is as follows. That the orders lawfully issued to the said Scarratt were deliberately ignored, as recorded in Scarratt's own thoughts, as recorded through the media first of the recording circuits of his timeship and then of the biodata retrieved from exhibit A."
Tales of the Great Detectives	Edited by Philip Purser-Hallard	1 October 2014	The City of the Saved houses every human being who ever lived... but some of its immortal Citizens need more. For the Remakers, one fiction above all exerts its fascination: a character existing in countless interpretations, many of them now recreated in the flesh and in business together as the Great Detective Agency. These are their tales. In the Agency's annals, the City's many Sherlock Holmeses solve the Case of the Pipe Dream, experience the Adventure of the Piltdown Prelate and explore the strangely clichéd Mansion of Doom. A Watson falls in love; a Moriarty goes missing; and Holmes comes face-to-face with his arch-nemesis, the sinister Dr Conan Doyle...
Liberating Earth	Edited by Kate Orman	January 2015	The human race had every opportunity. We blew it, darling. Take two Cousins from Faction Paradox. Give them a world - the Earth, for example - and give them the power to change that world's history as they see fit. Then stand back and watch what happens... Just what would happen if a couple of Cousins used our planet as their personal game board? As they create one alternative reality after another, twisting history and reality into knots, only one outcome is sure: whoever wins, the human race loses.
Head of State	Andrew Hickey	June 2015	"When the seventh head speaks, the War will end..." In 11th century Arabia, Shahrazad tells her final story, on the thousand and second night. In 19th century Britain, Sir Richard Burton is sent on the most important mission of his life. In 21st century America, a serial killer is stalking a Presidential campaign. And the hero has been written out of the novel. "...and the true War will begin."
Furthest Tales of the City	Edited by Philip Purser-Hallard	31 October 2015	Even the secular afterlife created for humanity by the Secret Architects has its limits - and there will always be those Citizens who chafe against those limits. Environmentally, culturally, biologically, cosmologically, politically, experientially, some will always seek to go further. For instance... A group mind facing the troubling truth of resurrection. A comatose giant with human inhabitants of its own. A civilisation re-enacting an impossible apocalypse. A woman with negligible human ancestry out on the dating scene. A cult who inhabit the deep infrastructure underlying the City. A fictional adventurer starved of the risks his narrative craves. These are their tales.
Weapons Grade Snake Oil	Blair Bidmead	17 January 2017	"There she goes. Running flat out. Little Sojourner. Not really dressed for a sprint. Moves pretty fast for a woman of her age though. She's carrying something. Hard to see from this far away. Maybe, if we moved a little closer. Sojourner has a gun in each hand. She swings them, awkwardly as she dashes across the gravel. Barefoot. Her evening dress looks a mess. That backpack looks heavy. There's a sheen to her dark skin. But, look; it isn't sweat. It's blood. That isn't a pattern on her dress either. That's blood too. Her braids are spraying a trail of red in their wake. That's a lot of blood. It's not her blood."
Tales of the Civil War	Edited by Philip Purser-Hallard	10 February 2017	War has come to the City of the Saved. Once immune from harm, the resurrected Citizens of the universe find themselves once again most terribly fragile - and just as in the universe, too many of them now strive to take advantage of the fact. In this unfamiliar City, the resurrected must revive the long-forgotten skills of their original lives. Knights, courtiers, detectives, killers, nurses, adventurers, spies, the afterlives of all will be irrevocably changed by the Civil War.
Spinning Jenny	Dale Smith	25 November 2017	One snowy night in 1854, Elizabeth Howkins arrives in Strines. Back in the place where the gods took her Bill from her, all those years ago. But now, she has learned their secrets. Now, she knows their weaknesses. Now, she is ready to exact her revenge. But Elizabeth isn't the only visitor to Strines. Major Webber and his team have tracked her to the four corners of the Empire. In Strines, they are determined that she must meet her destiny, in the name of the Queen. And something about the upcoming conflict has attracted the attention of someone with their own plans for the chaos to come. No less than the resurrection of that old, doomed, time-travelling voodoo cult, Faction Paradox...
The Book of the Enemy	Edited by Simon Bucher-Jones	23 January 2018	The Great Houses hold chains that bind time and space. They are the Namers and the Makers, of all that is. Their power is incalculable. And they are at War. But the nature of their Enemy has always been shrouded, in mystery, in enigma, perceived through mirrored labyrinths seemingly constructed as much by the Great Houses as the Enemy. Why? Perhaps now the secrets of the Enemy can be revealed. Or perhaps not. Experience the ravaged memories of those who have met them in War.
Stranger Tales of the City	Liz Evershed	12 March 2018	The knights hospitaller have just woken to a second life in a City the size of a galaxy. Two strangers from a far-distant future are flung together on Resurrection Day. A window-seller visits a claustrophobic suburb and finds it full of mystery. A Remake gunslinger seeks a new role from the one he was always meant to play... In this, the sixth anthology in the City of the Saved series, we meet a host of human and not-so-human characters getting to grips with life in the afterlife: alien adoptees with no previous experience of human cultures; Citizens permanently missing and not merely misplaced; priestesses of long-forgotten religions; posthumans with their own baffling version of the Civil Tongue; a viral strain of humankind that has never known community... The City is full of strangers and these are their tales.
Hyponormalisation: A Faction Hollywood Production	Jonathan Dennis	9 December 2019	War Eternal, on Earth as it is in Heaven, but when the approval ratings for the war are down, who can the military industrial complex turn to?
Vanishing Tales of the City	Kara Dennison	9 December 2019	A court with no ruler. A diary with no author. A party at which the guest of honour may never have existed. Six new stories explore mysterious disappearances from the City of the Saved... and the familiar faces who step in to take their places.
The Boulevard: Volume One	Edited by Stuart Douglas	1 June 2022	The Boulevard (Faction Paradox: Location Unknown) More formally, The Boulevard of Alternate Brutalities, the Boulevard is a Faction Paradox prison. Physically, the Boulevard is, as the name suggests, a single broad street, stretching for an unknown distance in both directions, and lined on one side with a dense forest of oak trees. Facing this forest is the prison itself, which is comprised of buildings lifted from throughout history at the moment of their destruction. This lifting extends to the street immediately outside each building, giving the Boulevard a patchwork appearance, and leading one time travelling visitor to describe the Boulevard as a 'funky Frankenstein's Monster of a place'. Behind each doorway on the Boulevard there is a cell, containing a single prisoner. Each cell can extend to encompass anything from the traditional square concrete enclosure with barred windows, to an entire planet. It is believed that the Boulevard is controlled by an appointed Godfather and a cadre of Cousins, assisted by guards taken from certain of the more aggressive Lesser Species. Although there has never been any formal proclamation regarding the purpose of the Boulevard, it is believed that the environment of each cell is tailored to the punishment - or, possibly but implausibly, the rehabilitation - of the individual imprisoned. [from Apocrypha to The Book of the War]
Inward Collapse	Lawrence Burton	5 April 2023	‘Their weapons are bonded to their shadows. This guy’s weapon of choice is something called an Avro Vulcan XH588 bomber, which itself goes to show we’re well into the Faction’s Vegas residency years with this bunch.’ If there’s one thing worse than the point at which a culture disappears up its own arsehole, it’s the point at which a culture disappears up its own arsehole in search of dinner; and it probably shouldn’t be such a huge surprise that those who eventually took it to the level above the next level in this respect should trace the horribly distended thread of their ancestry back to the Great Houses. Thankfully we were several million zeroes beyond the known limits of history and what an ingrowing culture elects to do in the privacy of its own self-sustaining belief system is mostly its own business, at least until someone else comes snooping around, because there will always be someone; although for once this isn’t even their story.