Faction Paradox (series)

The Faction Paradox series is a standalone collection of audio, prose, and comic stories set in and around the War in Heaven, introduced in Lawrence Miles' 1997 Eighth Doctor novel Alien Bodies.

History
At the time that Lawrence Miles wrote Alien Bodies, he intended for the War in Heaven to stay indeterminably far in the Doctor's future, like Merlin or the Valeyard. However, after he learned that Kate Orman and Jon Blum were including Faction Paradox in their novel Unnatural History, he felt justified to explore them further in his 1999 two-part novel Interference, which introduced the Eleven-Day Empire and the Remote. Despite the novel's positive online and international reception, after Interference received unfavourable reviews in DWM 281 and elsewhere, Miles felt he had "lost [his] mandate" and resigned from writing Doctor Who to instead develop a Faction Paradox series.

By the year 2000, BBV Productions had agreed to produce The Faction Paradox Protocols audio series. These audios introduced several concepts that would later become staples of the Faction Paradox range, such as the Faction's shadow-weapons and alternate names like "Great Houses" for the Time Lords or "timeships" for TARDISes. Miles described these alternate names as the continuation of the reinvention that he began in Alien Bodies: as he developed more of the mechanics of the War in Heaven, the War-era Time Lords evolved further and further away from the Time Lords of the past.

This process would not be completed until the writing of The Book of the War, a "guidebook to a series that doesn't exist yet" intended to be a standalone companion to the Protocols audios. A total of twelve authors, including established New Adventures novelists as well as writers from contemporary charity publications, contributed short stories to the book in the form of alphabetically-sorted encyclopedia entries. As Miles collected, edited, and synthesised these stories, he developed the War as a more mythological setting with the scale and appearance of science fiction but none of the props. For instance, rather than using aliens in The Book of the War, Miles characterised all non-humans as either gods, like the Great Houses and Celestis, or monsters, like the Yssgaroth and Mal'akh.

"The Faction's universe is on the surface an SF universe, but it works on the same principles as traditional folklore. It's all very feudal. There are, or were, 'people' who ran history – 'history' being a way for us to deal with the world around us – and these 'people' are generally nameless and faceless, but with the attitude of an aristocratic upper class. Ruling Houses, in effect.

At some point these Houses engaged in a war with an equally inscrutable enemy, and the war intersected – still intersects – human history like a biblical, impacting on humanity but without direct human involvement. Usually. So that makes Faction Paradox a Prometheus among the Titans, it's a splinter-group halfway between the elite and humanity, which believes in (a) introducing its principles to the "collaterals" caught in the crossfire... that's us, essentially... and (b) interfering in the plans of the Houses whenever possible."

- Lawrence Miles

The Book of the War was published in September 2002 by Mad Norwegian Press, and it was such a success that, in December of that year, Mad Norwegian announced that it was starting a series of standalone Faction Paradox novels edited by Miles. Despite the series' name, these novels would not specifically focus on the Faction, instead exploring "a myriad of times/settings" throughout the War. Each was written by a contributor to The Book of the War, either building upon the contents of their entries (e.g. Philip Purser-Hallard's Of the City of the Saved and Mags L. Halliday's Warring States) or telling completely new stories (e.g. Lance Parkin's Warlords of Utopia and Kelly Hale's Erasing Sherlock). Notably, each book was set before its predecessor, with some novels hinting that their events were connected to or even caused by their successors. Along with these original novels, Mad Norwegian also republished Miles' 1999 book Dead Romance, which had originally been released in Virgin Books' New Adventures line.

At the same time, Mad Norwegian began producing a Faction Paradox comic to be published by Image Comics. It was written by Lawrence Miles and tied into his 2001 Eighth Doctor novel The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, albeit in a way that required no prior knowledge of that novel or any other Faction Paradox story. The first issue, Political Animals, was listed as one of Diamond Distribution's "Gems of the Month" and was received favourably by several mainstream comic reviewers, but for cost reasons Mad Norwegian decided to end the comic series after issue two, leaving the third part unreleased and the story unfinished.

In September 2003, BBV Productions announced that it was ending its Audio Adventures in Time & Space range to focus exclusively on the The Faction Paradox Protocols line. However, BBV stopped producing new content after A Labyrinth of Histories in 2004, so Miles, impressed by the quality of actors in the Kaldor City series, reached out to Magic Bullet Productions to continue the Faction Paradox audios. Though the resultant True History of Faction Paradox series was designed to be standalone from the earlier Protocols audios, it continued to feature the characters of Justine, Eliza, and Lolita, albeit played by different actors. The first True History audio was released in July 2005, and the sixth and final story was released on 23 November 2009.

Mad Norwegian Press CEO Lars Pearson announced in September 2006 that, as the return of Doctor Who to television had focused fans' attentions elsewhere, the Faction Paradox novels would end with Erasing Sherlock that December rather than continuing with "Novel #6" as was previously announced. However, the following July, New Zealand-based publisher Random Static announced they would resume the Faction Paradox novel line with Newtons Sleep, published January 2008 to some local media attention. Concerned that the series branding was scaring off unfamiliar readers and distracting reviewers, Random Static later released the novel online as a free ebook without the Faction Paradox label. Despite plans for another novel to be released in 2010, this was Random Static's only Faction Paradox release.

On 7 June 2010, Obverse Books announced that it had obtained the license to publish a series of Faction Paradox short story anthologies, beginning with A Romance in Twelve Parts in 2011. Following that anthology's success, Obverse took over the Faction Paradox prose license in its entirety. They began their new novel line with Against Nature and The Brakespeare Voyage, both of which had begun production while Mad Norwegian was still running the series. At the same time they announced novellas from Kelly Hale and Jim Mortimore, neither of which have been released. Obverse also began the first Faction Paradox prose spinoff: The City of the Saved, a series of short story anthologies edited by Philip Purser-Hallard.

Obverse maintains a steady release schedule of Faction Paradox prose. Notably, in 2015 they published the anthology Liberating Earth, edited by acclaimed Doctor Who novelist Kate Orman, which featured only women writers. This precedent was continued two years later in the City of the Saved release Tales of the Civil War.

24 November 2017 marked the twentieth anniversary of Faction Paradox's first appearance in Alien Bodies. Obverse Books commemorated the occasion by releasing the Faction Paradox novel Weapons Grade Snake Oil and the City of the Saved anthology Tales of the Civil War in the first months of the year. Then, on 25 November, Obverse released the novel Spinning Jenny, which had been in production since 2012, and opened preorders for the anthology The Book of the Enemy. They also announced The Book of the Peace, the December 2018 release of which was accompanied by a series of promotional vignettes and interviews collected on the Obverse Books website as The Book of the Peace Dossier.

To celebrate Obverse Books' tenth anniversary in 2019, six novellas were released in the Obverse Sextet line, each a tie-in to one of Obverse Books' fiction series. This included a new Faction Paradox book, Hyponormalisation: A Faction Hollywood Production, and the seventh City of the Saved release, Vanishing Tales of the City.

In 2020, characters presented as post-War survivors of the Faction, named Sibling Same and Sibling Different, made an unexpected appearance back in BBC Doctor Who in The Wintertime Paradox. Editor Emil Fortune acknowledged "the Obverse canon" but noted that Same and Different were part of a different version of the Faction, hailing from a defunct "rewritten timeline".

After a 17 year hiatus, BBV Productions reacquired the Faction Paradox audio and video license in 2021 and began releasing new standalone Faction Paradox audio stories, as well as two video crossovers with its P.R.O.B.E. series. The second of these videos, Ex-President, included a brief clip of a costumed Faction Paradox member: technically, the Faction's live-action debut. However, many of BBV's early decisions were decried by Lawrence Miles, and following public outcry over the company's hiring and defence of an accused child predator on a different project in October 2021, its Faction Paradox license was revoked. As a result, several planned stories were never released, including Case File - Faction Paradox, the finale to the P.R.O.B.E. crossover arc.

On 21 April 2021, Obverse Books announced Worlds of the Spiral Politic, a new book series focusing on specific settings around the Faction Paradox universe. The open call for pitches for the first of these books, an anthology set in the Boulevard of Alternate Brutalities, had been announced that February. After receiving almost 100 pitches, Obverse split the anthology into two volumes, and The Boulevard: Volume One was released on 1 June 2022.

The City of the Saved
Starting in 2012 with Tales of the City, Obverse Books also published a Faction Paradox anthology subseries or spin-off, The City of the Saved, set in the eponymous City introduced in The Book of the War.

The Faction Paradox Protocols
BBV Productions released three two-part audios in their series The Faction Paradox Protocols between 2001 and 2004.

The True History of Faction Paradox
In 2004, Magic Bullet Productions obtained the Faction Paradox audio license and began the six-part The True History of Faction Paradox series, which ended in 2009.

Dionus's War
Starting in June 2021, BBV Productions released several new Faction Paradox audios. The first of these, Eternal Escape, introduced the character of Dionus, a deserter from House Military. Subsequent releases featuring Dionus were subtitled Dionus's War, a new subseries into which Eternal Escape itself was retroactively officially incorporated. A planned fifth Dionus's War story, a prequel written by Aristide Twain, was written but never produced.

Faction Paradox: Rebirth
Concurrently with Dionus's War, BBV released a few standalone Faction Paradox audios. Like Eternal Escape, these were originally not released under any series title more specific than Faction Paradox, but they were eventually officially designated Faction Paradox: Rebirth.

Faction Paradox: Hellscape
The audio story Lucifer was written and performed by Trevor Spencer and released by BBV Productions under the subtitle Faction Paradox: Hellscape on 1 January 2022. While BBV continued to use the Faction Paradox logo on further Hellscape releases, they were released without the Faction Paradox license.

Short stories
Long before the first print Faction Paradox short story anthology in 2011, Mad Norwegian Press and Random Static both released short stories as tie-ins to their Faction Paradox novels. These were often published online as part of The Spiral Politic Database or as extras with other releases — not only in Mad Norwegian's own novels, but also in the Image Comics run of Faction Paradox comic books.

In 2018, Obverse Books resumed the practice with ten vignettes released in an online "Dossier" accompanying The Book of the Peace.

Comic
"December, 1774. America stands on the brink of armed revolt. With Boston placed under martial law and the colonies straining at the British Empire's bit, England's King George III is about to receive a rare gift from the Empress of Russia—the last living woolly mammoth in the Western hemisphere.

Among the dignitaries gathered at the mammoth's reception are two representatives from Faction Paradox. Though the details remain vague, the 1700s have apparently become a crossroads, an intersection between known history and the cosmic "War in Heaven." The Faction seems determined to involve itself in local politics ... for whomever controls this intersection in time will ultimately control history."

- Mad Norwegian Press summary

Two issues of a bimonthly Faction Paradox comic were produced by Mad Norwegian Press and published by Image Comics in the latter half of 2003. Each issue had a central, 16-page comic along with shorter, illustrated text stories. The main comic story was an ongoing one, so the early cancellation of the title meant that the story was never finished. It was set after the end of the War in Heaven and acted as a prequel to The Adventuress of Henrietta Street; the Faction Paradox Protocols audio stories Sabbath Dei and In the Year of the Cat were intended to be prequels to the comic, although they were ultimately released first.

The comic was written by Lawrence Miles, edited by Lars Pearson, penciled by Jim Calafiore, inked by Peter Palmiotti, lettered by Christa Dickson, and coloured by Paul Monts. The covers were made by Steve Johnson.

Video
Shortly before the release of the first issue of the Faction Paradox comic, a subsidiary company of Warner Brothers contacted the publisher to ask about the rights to a Faction Paradox theatrical film. The talks came to an abrupt end after Lawrence Miles described the project as " with monsters".

In 2021-22, BBV Productions released two video crossovers between Faction Paradox and its P.R.O.B.E. series, both ultimately collected in P.R.O.B.E. Case Files - Volume 2. A third short, meant to conclude the storyline, was never released.