Table of Contents
The Faction Paradox Website
The Story so Far
- Blood Ties: Inside the Grandfather's House
- Crimes Against History: The Definitive“ Faction Timeline”
- Faction Armour: Some Design Notes
- The Eleven-Day Empire:A Tour of the Capital
- The Interview: Lawrence Miles on Language, Literature and Lying to the Audience
- My Review of THE ANCESTOR CELL by Lawrence Miles
- Coda: Off-Cuts and Afterthoughts
Images
The Books
Non-Faction Books
These books predate the first Faction Paradox book, The Book of the War. Within these books are mentions of the Faction or the agents of the Faction :-
- Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles (1997)
- Unnatural History - Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman (1999)
- Interference: Book One (Shock Tactic) - Lawrence Miles (1999)
- Interference: Book Two (The Hour of the Geek) - Lawrence Miles (1999)
- The Taking of Planet 5 - Simon Bucher Jones and Mark Clapham (1999)
- The Shadows of Avalon - Paul Cornell (2000)
- The Ancestor Cell - Stephen Cole and Peter Anghelides (2000). (Lawrence Miles has stated that the events of The Ancestor Cell will be ignored in all of the Faction Paradox spin-offs.)
- The Adventuress of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles (2001). (The book does not feature the Faction, but introduces the character of Sabbath who subsequently made appearances in the Faction Paradox audio adventures.)
- The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin (2005). This is not part of the Faction Paradox story arc, but further explores the destruction of Gallifrey and Grandfather Paradox.
Faction Books
The Book of the War
Published by Mad Norwegian Press: http://www.madnorwegian.com
- The Book of the War
The Definitive Primer to the Faction Paradox Universe
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 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 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
Published by Mad Norwegian Press: http://www.madnorwegian.com
- This Town Will Never Let Us Go
The First Full-Length Novel in the Ongoing Faction Paradox Series
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 being 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 would seem to be 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.
A study in ritual, politics, pop culture, time-travel and urban horror, This Town Will Never Let Us Go also happens to be the first book in the ongoing Faction Paradox novel line. The series continues in 2004 with Of the City of the Saved… by Phil Purser-Hallard, and The Warlords of Utopia by Lance Parkin.
Of the City of the Saved...
Published by Mad Norwegian Press: http://www.madnorwegian.com
- Of the City of the Saved...
The New Novel in the Ongoing Faction Paradox Series
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.
Warlords of Utopia
Published by Mad Norwegian Press: http://www.madnorwegian.com
- Warlords of Utopia
Rome never fell. Hitler won. Now they are at war. 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 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.
This is the third original Faction Paradox novel.
Warring States
Published by Mad Norwegian Press: http://www.madnorwegian.com
- Warring States
Takes place in China, 1900, and concerns Cousin Octavia (the Faction Paradox member responsible for the fall of the Thirteen-Day Republic, as told in The Book of the War).
—-
Dead Romance
Published by Mad Norwegian Press: http://www.madnorwegian.com
- Dead Romance
Widely acclaimed as a sci-fi epic, Dead Romance by Lawrence Miles has been out of print for a few years but finds a new home in the Mad Norwegian stable.
Initially released by Virgin Publishing, the book features Christine Summerfield, a young Londoner/drug-user who happens upon Christopher Cwej, an agent for some higher powers. Together with Cwej, Christine finds herself stalked by Sphinxes, confonts the true nature of Cwej's employers and much, much more.
Erasing Sherlock
Published by Mad Norwegian Press: http://www.madnorwegian.com
- Erasing Sherlock
On a fine October afternoon in 1882, Rose Donnelly, maid-of-all-work, disguises herself as a boy in order to follow the callow, yet brilliantly determined Sherlock Holmes in his pursuit of a thief.
Through narrow alleyways and cobbled lanes wedged between Whitechapel, Bethnal Green and the broad back of the City, she's led into deeper territory - worlds he knows well. So well, in fact, that he nearly has her collared on her first time out.
Still, Rose learns he has a bolt hole somewhere in Spitalfields. He speaks a smattering of Yiddish. He has a talent for picking pockets. He's a genius with the deceptively simple disguise.
It's a thrilling start. It's for her doctoral thesis. Or so she believes.
Newton's Sleep
Published by Random Static: http://randomstatic.net
- Newton's Sleep
War on Earth presages War in Heaven, and denizens of 17th Century England are caught up in a struggle between fallen angels.
—-
The Recordings
The Faction Paradox Protocols
Published by BBV: http://www.bbvonline.co.uk
Audio CD Productions from BBV Volume 1: The Eleven-Day Empire“, Volume 2: “The Shadow Play”, Volume 3: “Sabbath Dei”, Volume 4: “In the Year of the Cat”, Volume 5: “Movers”, Volume 6: “A Labyrinth of Histories”.”
- The Eleven-Day Empire: 'The doomed end up dancing on the walls while the Faction prepares for war…' — The Unkindnesses discuss the future over dinner; the Sontarans decide to give extinction a push in the right direction; Justine gains an opportunity by losing her 'closest friend'; Godfather Morlock makes his last appearance in Parliament, and spots a trap just in time to walk into it; the founder of the House leaves a legacy; and the doomed end up dancing on the walls while the Faction prepares for war.
- The Shadow Play: 'One Great House falls while another one rises…' — Justine finds out how well she fits the glass slipper; a baptism of fire turns into the agony of diplomacy; Miss Lolita gives a lesson in the correct use of weaponry; General Kine discovers that it's easier to disarm a Sontaran than a Cousin; Eliza becomes an accomplice to vehicle theft (on a grand scale); and one Great House falls while another one rises.
- Sabbath Dei: 'An arrangement's made in blood while Justine flirts with treason…' — Faction Paradox re-introduces itself at Buckingham Palace; Mr. Sabbath of London plays cards with a lady of questionable birth; a society party is interrupted by a quite fashionable subterranean horror; the King of England demonstrates a remarkable new war machine; justice finds itself a new body to wear; and an arrangement's made in blood while Justine flirts with treason.
'Let's be honest: it's the stupid questions in life that get the best answers. For example, here's some history for you. See what you make of it. 'On September the fourteenth, 1752, the English lost eleven days out of their calendar. It had to happen, sooner or later. England's calendar was eleven days out from the rest of Europe, so the great thinkers of the day… that'll be the philosophers and the civil servants, you know the type… they decided to put the date forward by a week and a half. The people went to bed on September the second, and when they woke up it was the fourteenth. Simple. So, the obvious question - the stupid question - is: what happened to the missing eleven days? 'Those great thinkers I mentioned probably wouldn't have had an answer to that, which is a shame, because the answer's this. The missing days were taken by Faction Paradox.
- In the Year of the Cat: 'New alliances are made while the Faction suffers one more casualty of War…' — An automaton provides a lesson in astrology; a monster is revealed to be sleeping in the royal bedchambers; the city's prostitutes prove that they know a thing or two about the Higher Powers; the trial of Grandfather Paradox is reconvened; Eliza fights the country in order to save the world; and new alliances are made while the Faction suffers one more casualty of War.
- Movers: 'Two Messiahs collide while the Spiral Politic sees its greatest ever prison-break…' — Two schoolgirls find themselves bothered by pagan monsters; the assorted cut-throats, marauders and war criminals of history come under new management; the (self-proclaimed) most dangerous member of Faction Paradox is let loose on the universe; young Justine witnesses a puzzling vision of beauty; Godfather Sabbath gives a new meaning to the term 'witch-hunt'; and two Messiahs collide while the Spiral Politic sees its greatest ever prison-break.
- A Labyrinth of Histories: 'The Great Houses send in the troops while the bearer of the Grandfather's shadow takes on the world…' — An arms race in under three minutes, courtesy of Cousin Shuncucker; the Godfathers make an unlikely wager; a criminal mastermind explains her grudge against the Faction, or at least one particular member; Justine gets blooded and learns the rules of the hunt; the minotaur in the library introduces himself; and the Great Houses send in the troops while the bearer of the Grandfather's shadow takes on the world.
'Well, that's not really a big surprise, is it? Out of all the Great Houses… the Great Houses being the ones who've made it their business to look after space-time in general, the ones who've insisted on running history behind the scenes since before us poor human sods crawled up out of the oceans… out of all the Great Houses, Faction Paradox was the only one that really knew how to step over the line. I mean, while the others were all busy with their time machines and their nice shiny bits of technology, the Faction was busy calling on the spirits of eternal darkness and sacrificing raw virgins, just for a laugh. So when the Faction's people got themselves thrown out of polite society and kicked off the old homeworld, they needed somewhere else to set up shop. Which is why they took those eleven days out of English history, and locked them in a little bubble of time outside of the rest of the universe, where almost nobody else could get at it.
'And of course, that was where we all lived. In the Eleven-Day Empire. In a little ghost-city that back in the real world would have been called London. In a timezone all to ourselves, where the buildings were made out of shadows and the sky was the colour of blood twenty-four hours a day. Cut off from the other Houses, and cut off from the rest of history, at least until the elders needed to pop out and recruit some new family members from the universe outside.
'So. Think of this story as the answer to a stupid question. The story of Faction Paradox, the story of the Eleven-Day Empire, but most of all the story of Cousin Justine. Just one of a thousand little Cousins who'd been drafted into the family estate.
'Justine's the important one here. Try to keep that in mind.'
The True History of Faction Paradox
Published by Magic Bullet Production: http://www.kaldorcity.com/
Audio CD Productions from Magic Bullet Production
Coming to Dust
Naples, 1763. The Great Ape of Posto di Forragio is on show, an exhibition to amuse jaded foreign tourists. However, there are three Englishmen who recognise that the creature is no mortal beast, but a harbinger of ancient evil from before the time of the Pharaohs– and one which may presage the return of something thought long buried. — To prevent this, they must turn to Cousins Justine and Eliza, the mysterious representatives of the Faction Paradox– but any dealings with the Faction Paradox always come at a price.
The Ship of a Billion Years
The confrontation between Cousin Justine of Faction Paradox and the Egyptian deity Sutekh has left the adventurers leaderless and Justine herself a prisoner, enslaved by an ancient and powerful being on a billion-year cruise across the universe. — As Eliza and the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini go to desperate lengths to locate their lost companion, and Justine becomes embroiled within Osirian court politics, neither knows that they are on a fateful collision course towards a final clash with Sutekh himself…
Body Politict
Facing a divided Council and fighting a nine-hundred-and-twenty-front war across time and space, the War King sends Ambassador Mortega from the Homeworld to the Osirian Court, to combat the new power that has risen in their midst that challenges the might of the Great Houses. Meanwhile, by gathering the complete biodata of Osiris, Justine plans to resurrect the only Osirian capable of standing against Sutekh the Destroyer. But the forces at work on the Homeworld may soon intervene fatally in Justine's plans…
Words from Nine Divinities
As Sutekh makes a bid to seize the throne of the Osirian Court, Justine and Anubis put their plan into motion. But is the power of Horus himself enough to prevail against the might of the Destroyer? On the Homeworld, the War King has decided, against the wishes of half the Council, to bring Faction Paradox back into the fold– a move which may play directly into the hands of the maverick hybrid Lolita, and bring chaos to the Great Houses…
Ozymandias
Guided by a recurring vision and a fragment of poetry, two adventurers take the first steps onto a journey which will lead them to an alien world of nightmarish architecture, insect civilisations and strange women who are much more than they seem… For on this planet, a tribunal is assembling– a tribunal which will decide the final contest between Horus and Sutekh, and with it, the fate not only of the Osirian Court and Faction Paradox, but of the universe itself.
The Judgment of Sutekh
Trapped on Mars, two explorers find themselves pawns in a deadly power game between Faction Paradox and Lolita. The final battle between Sutekh and Horus threatens to tear the fabric of space and time to shreds. At the end of the day, one side will be victorious-but which will it be?