A Great Year for Historical Fiction

MEMO FROM THE PUBLISHER IN CHIEF, NTROPBOOKS, JANUARY 31, 2110.

It was, I am pleased to report, another great year for historical fiction.  The bestseller charts over the last twelve months have been dominated by Alrick Moloney’s saga about the life and times of a typical British family in the years between 2050 and 2090, entitled Floods, Earthquakes, Solar Flares,  Suburban Riots and School Fees. And this year’s Booker Prize winner Why My Life Lacks Quiddity  by Martin Amis was a tour de force realist exploration of the angst and anomie experienced by a middle class family in Islington after becoming infected by the zombie plague and was written, of course, by a third generation cyborg reincarnation of the son of the great novelist Kingsley Amis. 

At NTropBooks we are proud of the fact that we are the only company in the UK publishing fiction online, or indeed at all (after the regrettable but necessary abolition of paper in the 2080s.)  However, since the recent re-collapse of the global economy and the reintroduction of the barter system, we have been forced to introduce a series of radical cost-cutting measures.  All our writers are now paid in groats, which are genetically engineered goats that produce alcoholic milk; and we are delighted to say that not a single one of our writers has objected to this new system. And our fantasy imprints and science fiction imprints have now been abandoned, since modern readers have no desire to read such nonsensical, far-fetched tales of impossible and unlikely events. 

The readership for epic heroic fantasy novels, in particular, has declined to zero, following the invasion of Earth by falcata-brandishing warriors from a parallel dimension in 2075.

Crime novels, however, are still flourishing, though we do not publish them, and nor does anyone else; however the underground market for stories about smart detectives solving elegant locked room mysteries is buoyant, especially among members of the literati, the Italian and Martian Mafia families, and the military AIs.

We are pleased at the modest success of our numerous movie and TV tie-in books, though sadly none of the movies or television dramas made it into production, because of the budget cuts imposed by the World Government and its commendably astute ruling elite, namely Ba’aaiif__ee, and Quwiiiszz-+, who are managing the Earth’s affairs on behalf of their people back on whatever alien planet spawned them.

And an exciting new development is our series of literary novels tailored for niche minority groups who have, hitherto, been neglected or patronised by ‘genetically normal’ genre writers. Thus, we have the magnificent Nae Blud the Day by Dominic Impaler, a stream of consciousness tale of a day in the life of a Glaswegian vampire welder. We have The Satanic Shoe Diaries by Lilith Hellspawn, a witty chicklit comedy about girl demons and their obsession with designer footware.  And we have the thought-provoking Hairy by Sharon Landis, a coming-of-age story about a werewolf from the rougher end of Battersea and the ghastly class prejudice she encountered when she went to Oxford (where she studied Classics, made lots of friends, and eventually, after being acquitted of eating her tutor, left to get a job in the City.)  

We are hoping that next year – provided those wretched Incan prophecies don’t come true, and assuming also that the Galactic War between the Throlls and the Bardars is once again averted – will be even better for us here at NTropBooks.   We love books, even really arid boring books of the kind that we find ourselves publishing these days; and we fervently believe,  despite our minimal download tallies and complete absence of customer feedback,  that you love them too!