The Book of the War (novel)

The Book of the War was the first novel in the Faction Paradox series.

Edited by Lawrence Miles and written collaboratively by more than ten authors, The Book of the War was formatted like an encyclopedia, with a number of stories spread across multiple alphabetically-sorted entries. In each entry, some words were emphasised in bold to point to other entries with that name, enabling the reader to jump around the book and read related entries.

Publisher's summary
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…

Alt text
The War so far (in highlights); the location of the exact centre of history; the lo-tech way to break into the Eleven-Day Empire; the truth about gravity spiders; the dangers of investigating Violent Unknown Events; the art of breeding your own timeship; a short history of the various ends of humanity; the fate of the Grandfather's Arm; the secrets of removing yourself from history while still leaving yourself free to interfere; a brief interruption from the future; where to meet every human being who ever lived; how to bring your world to the attention of the Spiral Politic using 23,000 corpses; why the War-time powers never recruit celebrities; the problems of running a time-active brothel; on telling the difference between the afterlife and the trailer; banality as a weapon of War; the Faction Paradox guide to Hollywood; and how the Sixth Wave revealed the truth about the enemy without even trying.

Entries
This page lists the entries in the order specified in the "Design Specs for Advanced Users", which were published on a hidden page of the Faction Paradox website, rather than alphabetically as they appear in the book. Two errors were deliberately included in the "Design Specs": the nonexistent entry "Scarratt's Group" in "The A-Z of the War"; and the exclusion of an "Easter egg" entry which was not linked to in other entries and therefore unfindable except by reading in alphabetical order.
 * Parablox

The Core Entries

 * The Spiral Politic
 * The Great Houses
 * The House Military
 * The Celestis
 * Faction Paradox
 * Inset: The Faction Paradox "Family"
 * The Remote
 * Lesser Species
 * Yssgaroth

History of Faction Paradox

 * The Anchoring of the Thread
 * Armour (Faction Paradox)
 * Audience of the Ruling Houses
 * The Caldera
 * The Eleven-Day Empire
 * Fashion Paradox, London
 * The Gregorian Compact
 * History
 * The Imperator Presidency
 * Intervention
 * Protocols of Linearity
 * Loa
 * London (Eighteenth Century)
 * Godfather Morlock
 * House Paradox
 * Recruitment (Faction Paradox)
 * Ritual (Faction Paradox)
 * The Act of Severance
 * Sombras que Corta
 * The Stacks
 * Father Stendec
 * Tower Hill
 * The Unkindnesses
 * New Palace of Westminster

The History of Earth

 * The Analytical Engine
 * The Book of Enoch
 * Captain Sir Burton
 * George Gordon, Sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale
 * Ada Byron
 * Canon per Tonos
 * The Clockwork Ouroboros
 * The Eleven-Day Empire: The 1834 Attack
 * Ghost Clusters
 * The Grand Families
 * Grindlay's Warehouse
 * Grotesques
 * Karachi
 * Liber Sanguisugarum
 * Mal'akh
 * The Maltese Incident
 * The Mountains of the Moon
 * The Musical Offering
 * Napoleonic Era
 * The "Princess of Parallelograms" Letters
 * The Shelley Cabal
 * The Society of St. George
 * John Hanning Speke
 * The Star Chamber
 * The Walking Dead
 * House Xianthellipse
 * Robert Scarratt

The A-Z of the War
With the inclusion of the prior and subsequent entries, "Robert Scarratt" and "Jungle Children", this section includes one entry for every letter of the alphabet.
 * House Strategist Entarodora
 * The "Monsters" Coda
 * Xenoprediction
 * "You" Diversions
 * The "Probability" Doctrine
 * Confusion
 * Utterlost
 * Zero Time
 * Gravity Spiders
 * Time-thickening
 * Apportation
 * Women (Dressing Up As)
 * Nechronomancers
 * HEM (Highest Entropy Matter)
 * Ordifica
 * Intercreationals
 * Leviathans
 * Quintessence
 * Redemption Cult
 * Forced Regen Missions
 * D-Mat
 * Burlesque Devices
 * "Killerbots" (Autonomic)
 * Vaccinations (Temporal)

Houses and Orders

 * Jungle Children
 * Hauserkinder
 * "Justine's Story"
 * House Arpexia
 * Babels
 * Casts
 * House Catherion
 * House Ixion
 * Lethean Campaign
 * Order of the Weal
 * Chatelaine Thessalia
 * War Predictions: Chatelaine Thessalia
 * Zo la Domini

The History of the Homeworld

 * Closed Session (of the Ruling Houses)
 * Dronid
 * House Dvora
 * The enemy
 * The Faraway Declaration
 * The First Message from the Enemy
 * The Head of the Presidency
 * The Homeworld
 * House Lineacrux
 * The Nine Homeworlds
 * Noosphere
 * The Presidency
 * Protocols of the Great Houses
 * Regen-Inf
 * The Ruling Houses
 * Sex
 * Space (Five Famous Battles)
 * Timeships
 * Laura Tobin
 * Academician Umbaste
 * The War King
 * Inset: The War King's Inaugural Address
 * Carmen Yeh
 * Appendix III: Carmen Yeh's "Fantastical Travels in an Infinite Universe"
 * Compassion

The History of Posthumanity

 * Earth: History
 * Posthumanity
 * Praxis
 * Siloportem
 * Time-Travel: Posthuman
 * War Predictions: The Rivera Manuscript
 * Appendix IV: Notes on the Rivera Manuscript

The Academician's Story

 * Academicians for Game Logic
 * Academician Devonire
 * Grandfather Paradox (Representations)
 * The Grandfather's Arm
 * Kaiwar
 * Paradox Anxiety
 * The Thousand-Year Battles
 * Waves of the House Military
 * Appendix I: The Beginning of the War (A Chronology)

The Non-History of the Celestis

 * Anarchitects
 * Chaotic Limiter
 * Conceptual Entities
 * Fluxes
 * Gargoyles
 * Meme
 * Mictlan
 * Order of the Dragon
 * The Ottoman Purges
 * Sacrifice
 * Shifts

The Shift's Story

 * Beshielach
 * Dating War Era Events (Difficulties)
 * The Greater Autrobulan Franchise
 * The Lords Celestial
 * Memeovore
 * Planetesimals
 * Personality Reboots
 * Worldofme

The City of the Saved

 * City of the Saved
 * The Timebeast Assault
 * Former Citizen Verrifant
 * House Mirraflex
 * Lady Armourer Mantissa
 * Het Linc
 * Secret Architects (of the City of the Saved)
 * Uptime Gate
 * Amanda Legend Lefcourt
 * Gargil Krymtorpor
 * Ghetto of the Damned
 * Lord Foaming Sky
 * Order of the Iron Soul
 * Cousin Pinocchio
 * The Rump Parliament
 * Father Timon
 * House Halfling
 * The Piltdown Mob
 * Sons of Tepes

The Impaler's Story

 * Tirgoviste
 * Ulterior Worlds
 * Vlad III of Wallachia
 * Wallachia
 * Djinn
 * The Edimmu
 * Gragov
 * Lord Halved Birth
 * Investigators
 * Investigator Thirty-One
 * Mark of Indenture
 * The Poenari Relic
 * Grigori Efimovitch Rasputin

The Thirteen-Day Republic

 * Cousin-Thrice-Removed Anastasia
 * The Cult of Celebrity Death
 * Father-Twice-Removed Dyavol
 * The House of Lords
 * The Malachite Room
 * Cousin-Once-Removed Nadim
 * Cousin Octavia
 * The Red Burial
 * Removal of Members
 * The Thirteen-Day Republic
 * Battle of Valentine's Day
 * The Winter Palace
 * Witch-blood

Labyrinths

 * Biodata
 * The Diaspora
 * Eremites
 * Faction Precursors
 * Mrs. Foyle
 * The House of the Rising Sun
 * Labyrinths
 * The Remonstration Bureau
 * Voodoo Charter
 * The Venue Accords
 * Weaponstores (Remote)

The Ghost Dance

 * A'daltem Ano'nde
 * Cousin Belial
 * Catch-the-Bear's war bonnet
 * Ghost Shirts
 * North American Warrior Tribes
 * Nunaha'wu
 * Open Doors
 * Pai'ngya
 * Peyote Dream Runners
 * Sand and Snow Ammunition
 * Tenskwatawa
 * Appendix II: From the North American Journals of Cousin Belial

The History of the Remote

 * Anchormen
 * The Broken Remote
 * Fallahal
 * The Jallama Reed Transmissions
 * The New Young Gods
 * Remembrance Tanks
 * Shadow-Masks
 * Simia-KK98
 * The Viewers and Listeners Protocols
 * Wovoka

Faction Hollywood

 * Michael Brookhaven
 * Brookhaven's Follies
 * Christopher Rodonanté Cwej
 * Cwejen
 * Faction Hollywood
 * The Fat
 * The Gauntlet
 * GCI Processor
 * Hollow Spectaculars
 * Inset: Brookhaven's Ghost Kingdom: The Six Central Characters
 * The Hollywood Bowl Shooting
 * The House of the Seven Gables
 * The Mount Usu Duel
 * "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"
 * The North Los Angeles Cabal
 * Order of the White Peacock
 * Production Hell
 * "Through the Eye of Eternity"
 * Chad Vandemeer

The End

 * "Briefings"
 * Humanity
 * Nanotechnology
 * Ronald Bela Nevitz
 * Time-Travel: Biodata Principle
 * The Younger World Story

Coda

 * House Lolita
 * House Tracolix

Who wrote what?
Simon Bucher-Jones, Daniel O'Mahony, Ian McIntire, Mags L. Halliday, Helen Fayle, Philip Purser-Hallard, Kelly Hale, Jonathan Dennis, Mark Clapham, and Lars Pearson all contributed material to the book. Each contributors mostly worked on their stories independently, only discovering Lawrence Miles's added intersections with other stories once the book was released. It was deliberately kept unclear as to which authors contributed which entries, but later releases provided some clues.
 * As editor, Lawrence Miles was responsible not only for writing many entries but also for rewriting and interweaving the other writers' contributions. The "Faction Paradox Family" section was credited to him in the book's notes, and it had been previously released on the Faction Paradox website.
 * Simon Bucher-Jones contributed slightly more than any other writer besides Lawrence Miles. The final edition of The Book of the War included at least one entry by Bucher-Jones for every letter of the alphabet, including "Lords Celestial", which was interrupted by the Shift. Perhaps relatedly, the "Design Specs for Advanced Users" included a "The A-Z of the War" section which featured entries for many concepts also explored in Bucher-Jones' novels The Taking of Planet 5 and The Brakespeare Voyage, such as the Leviathans and Robert Scarratt, who was credited to Bucher-Jones in the acknowledgments of Weapons Grade Snake Oil. The Order of the White Peacock also appeared in The Book of the Enemy and early drafts of The Brakespeare Voyage.
 * Daniel O'Mahony came narrowly in third place for words contributed to the book. He wrote far more for The Book of the War than ended up in the final draft, and Bucher-Jones only overtook him in the final edit. He drew heavily from his rejected BBC Books novel proposals, saying "the entire plot of one outline is embedded in there somewhere, while a lot of the background for another became a major part of the Faction universe." The planet Lethe, mentioned in the entry for the Lethean Campaign, previously appeared in O'Mahony's Doctor Who short story The Parliament of Rats, itself a scene from a BBC Books novel proposal. He would later use babels, Thessalia, and the Order of the Weal in his novel Newtons Sleep. He stated that he had no involvement in Michael Brookhaven's filmography.
 * Ian McIntire introduced Carmen Yeh in his unlicensed short story Schrödinger's Botanist for the 1998 charity anthology Perfect Timing. The related entries were co-written with Mad Norwegian Press CEO Lars Pearson. He also contributed to the entry for the War King, including the detail of the unfolded hypercube on his desk, which was intended as a link to one of his other, ultimately-rejected entries.
 * Mags L. Halliday wrote about Anastasia and the Thirteen-Day Republic. She later used Cousin Octavia in Warring States.
 * Helen Fayle wrote the material about the Mal'akh, the Shelley Cabal, and the Star Chamber. Her fan award-winning The Book of Taliesin fanfiction series was inspired by Alien Bodies and depicted Simon Bucher-Jones' "version of what the 'Enemy' might have been".
 * Philip Purser-Hallard wrote the articles concerning the City of the Saved, which he had originally developed for his ultimately-unproduced Iris Wildthyme novel Iris Wildthyme in the City of the Saved. He later revisited the City in his novel Of the City of the Saved… and in Obverse Books' City of the Saved anthology series. He also wrote the entry for House Mirraflex, although Miles thoroughly rewrote it in editing. Purser-Hallard commented that he had not written the articles on Wallachia, Michael Brookhaven, Grigori Rasputin, or the Spiral Politic.
 * Kelly Hale, who herself is part Native American, wrote the entries concerning Cousin Belial and the Faction's Remote experiments on Native American warrior tribes. She later returned to Native America and Wounded Knee in Project Thunderbird.
 * Jonathan Dennis, who had previously written the story The Hollywood Life for the 1999 charity anthology Perfect Timing 2, created Faction Hollywood for The Book of the War. However, those entries also included major contributions from at least three other writers, including Lawrence Miles and Simon Bucher-Jones. Dennis also contributed one other full plotline and several miscellaneous entries. He later revisited Faction Hollywood in his stories Remake/Remodel and Hyponormalisation, and he co-write The Brakespeare Voyage with Bucher-Jones.
 * Mark Clapham and Bucher-Jones had previously explored the Celestis in their cowritten Eighth Doctor novel The Taking of Planet 5.

Unincluded entries
The book credits Lance Parkin, David A. McIntee, and Eddie Robson as writers who "wanted to play but whose material didn't quite fit anywhere". Additionally, Simon Bucher-Jones wrote two extra entries, "Protective Neotony" and "Instant Animals", for the proposed CD-ROM expansion of the book; after the cancellation of that project, he published the entries on his blog. Bucher-Jones returned to the concepts from "Protective Neotony" in his 2018 Faction Paradox short story The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale as the "Hausanthropic equations".
 * Parkin's contribution included an entry about his character Mister Saldaamir, who had previously briefly appeared in his novels Beige Planet Mars, The Infinity Doctors, and Father Time. Although it was excluded by Miles because "it wasn't very good", it was later published in the 2003 fanzine Myth Makers 13 and in 2021 as a standalone short story. It mentioned Last Contact, a concept mentioned in several of Parkin's stories connected to the War, including several charity anthology short stories, the unproduced novel pitch Enemy of the Daleks, and his book The Gallifrey Chronicles.
 * McIntee spoke with Lars Pearson about contributing but never actually submitted any material.
 * Robson's five submitted entries were published online by Niki Haringsma in 2017; they told a story about Faction Paradox's Father Katzmary, his "Minimediras Project", and his daughter Tanya Glassman. They also further explored the concept of the Nine Gallifreys and the character of Mother Festen. Robson would later reuse some elements of these ideas in his Bernice Summerfield audios Beyond the Sea and Resurrecting the Past, both of which involved the planet Maximediras.

Continuity

 * The Shift was a liquid life-form before it was transformed into a shift; it then received the Mark of Indenture and was enslaved to the Celestis. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
 * An interventionist member of the Great Houses was believed to have died as the fighting began on Dronid. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
 * Homeworld weapons like babels and casts were used on the planet Lethe. (PROSE: The Parliament of Rats)
 * Dronid was the chosen homeworld of the renegade Presidency. (TV: Shada, PROSE: Alien Bodies)
 * The Homeworld was plunged into crisis by the rise to power of a great Imperator, Morbius. (TV: The Brain of Morbius)
 * Chris Cwej was recruited as an agent of the Great Houses. (PROSE: Dead Romance)
 * A Homeworld colony was located on Simia KK98. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, Dead Romance)
 * Several groups of Gallifreyans left Gallifrey during or following Rassilon's rise to power. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Interference)
 * The Faction Paradox created the Remote on Ordifica. They reproduce through Remembrance Tanks. (PROSE: Interference)
 * Grandfather Paradox was imprisoned in the Great Houses' prison. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet, Interference)
 * House Mirraflex was an illustrious Great House. (AUDIO: The Conscript)
 * Investigator One was the Celestis' head field agent. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)
 * The Homeworld was ruled by six ruling Houses. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
 * Compassion was the first and only 102-form timeship. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
 * The Homeworld is ruled by Great Houses. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible)
 * House Lolita is an up-and-coming force in the War. (PROSE: Toy Story)
 * The Babewyn are connected to humanity's noosphere. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
 * The frontier in time exists beyond the edge of the Great Houses' noosphere in the posthuman era. (PROSE: Frontios)
 * An Arcadian faction of self-named "guardians" was mainly composed of survivors from Earth who established a new home on the nearest Earth-like world. (TV: The Ark)
 * Multiple Homeworlds were constructed during the War. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, The Taking of Planet 5, The Shadows of Avalon)
 * The leader of the Homeworld during the War used the title War King. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
 * The Star Chamber ran secret operations in Great Britain and around the world. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
 * The House of Dvora was one of Gallifrey's Great Houses. (AUDIO: Panacea)
 * The Yssgaroth fought a war with the Great Houses at the beginning of history. (PROSE: The Pit, TV: State of Decay)
 * Stendec wanted to put a menagerie in the Eleven-Day Empire's version of the building on the Strand which housed a zoo in the 18th century and famously had an elephant winched to one of its higher stories. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)