What is Gobblesplot?
Gobblesplot Publishing is an independent publishing imprint for stories that are difficult to place neatly inside an existing box.
The name Gobblesplot was first registered in 2007. It began as an invented word: something deliberately unfamiliar, slightly ridiculous and free from somebody else’s definition.
That matters.
Words are usually inherited with their meanings already attached. An invented word arrives without instructions. It can become a place, a publisher, a planet, a joke, a philosophy or an administrative mistake that has somehow acquired legal status.
Gobblesplot became all of those things.
Why Gobblesplot?
The idea behind Gobblesplot is simple: imagination should not have to ask permission from established categories.
The books published here often combine science fiction, bureaucracy, ordinary people, improbable machinery and the persistent suspicion that reality is being managed by a department nobody can contact.
They are funny, but not because every line is trying to be a joke. The humour comes from people behaving seriously while the universe becomes increasingly unreasonable.
Gobblesplot Publishing also gives its books a permanent home and identity. The stories, characters and invented worlds remain connected to the person who created them rather than disappearing beneath a temporary platform, label or algorithm.
A history of invented words
Gobblesplot existed as a name long before it became a publishing imprint.
Its history grew from a fascination with the ownership and use of language. An ordinary word may belong to everyone, but an invented word begins as a small act of creation. Once used in stories, websites and conversations, it develops associations of its own.
Over time, Gobblesplot became more than a domain name. It became the name of a fictional world, a recurring idea and eventually the natural home for a collection of books that did not wish to behave themselves.
The first Gobblesplot books draw heavily on that freedom to invent language, systems, species, rules and official procedures that are internally logical right up until the moment they encounter Alan.
The influence of The Goons
The earliest creative influence behind Gobblesplot was not modern science-fiction comedy, but the British tradition that came before it.
The Goon Show, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore demonstrated that language itself could be bent, misused, repeated and launched unexpectedly through a wall.
Their humour was absurd, but rarely random. Beneath the noise were recognisable people, institutions, class structures, military habits and officials following rules long after the rules had ceased to make sense.
That influence remains central to Gobblesplot.
Later comparisons with writers such as Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are understandable, because they drew from some of the same traditions. Gobblesplot, however, has its own voice: British, bureaucratic, occasionally Cornish and deeply suspicious of any form requiring information already provided on the previous form.
The Administrative Handbook for Reality
The principal Gobblesplot series is The Administrative Handbook for Reality.
It follows Alan Powndsland, Sid, Mel and a growing number of beings who become involved in the administrative, mechanical and procedural failures of existence.
The series includes:
The Universe vs Alan: Contingency Planning Enacted
Alan believes most problems can be solved with the correct form, completed properly and filed carefully. The universe has other ideas.
The Universe vs Sid
Sid understands machinery. Unfortunately, the universe has started behaving like a committee.
Further books in the series are currently in development, expanding the story through Chapter Zero, Chapter Eleven and the increasingly questionable history of reality’s original contingency arrangements.
Other books in development
Gobblesplot Publishing is also developing books beyond the main absurd science-fiction series.
These include MIRRORS, a children’s novel about childhood, empathy, education and the patterns that pass between generations.
Also in development is Force 8, a separate novel with its own setting and voice. Although very different from the Alan and Sid books, it shares Gobblesplot’s interest in people placed under pressure, the decisions they make and the consequences that continue long after the immediate event has passed.
Further projects include stories exploring the true origins of dinosaurs, unreliable official history, family, memory and the consequences of allowing administrative departments access to dimensions they cannot pronounce.
Some of these books are funny.
Some are serious.
Most will probably contain at least one person who has misunderstood the purpose of a form.
Independent by design
Gobblesplot Publishing exists to produce books carefully, retain creative control and allow unusual stories enough space to become what they were intended to be.
It is independent not because collaboration is unwelcome, but because the books should remain recognisably themselves.
No committees were harmed during the creation of this publishing house.
Several were confused.