Door one
The Book
Genies were created to give humans superpowers. Then they became bored, and discovered tricks.
Book One is complete. It is a comic novel about mischief that turns out to be a form of care, told in a voice that talks directly to the reader and refuses, until very late, to admit that it is about anything at all.
Positioning
| Category | Adult crossover fantasy. Written for teenagers and adults, and entirely readable aloud to children. The tradition it belongs to is a British one. |
| Comparables | Terry Pratchett's warmth with The Little Prince's questions. In the games world it has been described as Untitled Goose Game, if the goose had a philosophy. |
| Status | Book One complete. U.S. copyright 2018. Substantial Book Two material drafted. Bulgarian editions exist. |
| Shape | Stands alone, with clear series potential. The world also lives as a game in prototype development. |
| Author | George Gold. |
What it actually is
A comedy that keeps its meaning in the consequences rather than the paragraphs.
The Genies were built as a gift to humanity, got bored waiting for humanity to become interesting, and turned to mischief instead. They cannot touch our world. Everything they do, they do through the subconscious: salt reached for instead of sugar, a key left on a table, a doorway that empties your head of the reason you walked through it.
What the book slowly reveals is that a trick is a hole punched in an automatic life, and that people who are living automatically are exactly the people a small interruption can rescue. The Genies are not trying to raise anyone's consciousness. They are trying to amuse themselves. They are doing the first thing by accident while doing the second on purpose, and the book finds this very funny and, eventually, quite moving.
The rule the book obeys everywhere, and which the game inherits: never act directly. Start small, with something apparently unrelated. Go trick by trick. An improbable event is not a miracle, it is engineering with a sense of humour.
The philosophy is never announced. It arrives late, inside a consequence, after everyone — including the Genie — has misunderstood what the joke was doing. The last thing the book does is explain what fills the ninety percent of every atom that human physics calls empty. The Genies have a scientific name for it. They also have a shorter one.
Excerpt · the opening
In the very beginning, Genies were meant to help people and enhance them, to give them "powers" coming from other realms, other dimensions. In a way, people would have been superhumans working with the Genies. But their story took some unexpected turn, well several actually.
First, Genies became really bored with early humans. They wanted to help mankind apply telepathy, but the Neanderthals had barely any thoughts passing through their mind other than what to eat, when to sleep and how to NOT listen to their wife who had just discovered how to speak and was already abusing that skill. Early humans' most abstract thought back then was: "Can I outrun this dinosaur and reach my cave before it eats me?" Some people would argue that when there were dinosaurs, there weren't yet people. Well, let them argue.
So, Genies were getting bored by the hour. This was quite common as since they came into existence they were very joyous, smart, always laughing and very intelligent creatures. That is why in order to spice up their lives and relieve the boredom, Genies started playing tricks on humans.
The Genie City, Book One — A Creation Story
The wider archive
The city has neighbours, and they are already written.
This matters for one reason only: an agent looking for a single novel will find one, and an agent looking for a world that can carry a career will find that too.
Book Two
Substantial drafted material, including the expedition that shrinks three Genies to the size of quarks to find out where change actually lives inside a human being.
The Devil City
The Devils, who were issued red bodies, hooves and horns without consultation, accept themselves unconditionally, and would like a word about it.
The Demons
Merciless helpers who work exclusively in the Atomic Reactor of Feelings. High alchemy of the emotions, a complete taxonomy of human feeling, and a terrible public-relations problem.
The Mixer and the Cube
A location system already built for adaptation: a purple corridor, an inverted world you can walk on the sky of, and a cube of five spirals that is entered by changing perspective rather than opening a door.
What is being sought
Representation by an agent who sees the expandable world, and not only the one novel.
The full manuscript, a synopsis and sample pages are available on request through the usual channels. Film and adaptation rights are undivided and unencumbered.