Available Summer 2026
Peter Howell’s new fantasy sci-fi comedy
It’s a novel about science and about art, and how we see them as opposites but need both to survive
Art always knew he was somewhere else, but why did it have to be here?
Art was on the run. He’d caused an unfortunate explosion in the chemistry labs, and security was after him. So when Majesty offered him a way out, he didn’t hesitate. The slip tonic tasted of nothing in particular, but the effect was immediate, and he found himself spatially close by, but in a different universe entirely. This was a world split from top to bottom, the left hemisphere housing the scientists and the right, the artists, with only the bridge at Colossum linking the two. And this uneasy state of affairs would have no doubt continued, if Side Carr hadn’t separated the Stick from D A T A in the Chamber of Relics.
The Three States
1
2
3
The Third State was a universe where nothing ever amounted to anything in particular, and you could spend all day waiting for a bus only to discover it had turned into a bowl of apricots.
Side Carr had crossed between universes through a small fissure in the lake floor, and he now crouched by its mouth with countless other entities, drawn like moths to one of the few fixed points in their tortured universe.
On the edge of the circle, where the blue light from the fissure ebbed away into an inky darkness, evolving shapes emerged. A monstrous mouth transformed into a lamb and then a picket fence. A barbecue and a row of petunias passed by, intertwined as if they were courting.
There, too, was Little Madam, still wearing the same low-cut dress with gathered sleeves that she had worn on her eighteenth birthday.
© Peter Howell 2026
Of course, there are countless universes, but these are the three we are most concerned with here.
The First State contains our own dear planet.
The Second features a world split vertically into two hemispheres. The left is occupied by scientists who are too busy measuring things to realise what a shit show they’ve created, while the right hemisphere is populated with artists. They were banished to the eastern mountains after the war and eke out an existence, knee deep in artwork. without anyone to mend the plumbing.
And the Third State? That’s no picnic,…
