Coming soon: The Egg And The Rock

So… What is this oddly-named Substack about?

This is The Egg And The Rock, a newsletter in which I use the techniques of a novelist to redescribe the universe (using scientific papers as the raw material). I have been quietly and obsessively researching this project for ten years, and the story I have found, buried deep in those papers, has completely flipped my world upside down. I think it might flip yours, too. And I think you might enjoy being flipped.

Why should you bother reading this particular guy you don’t know, you who are so busy, in a world on fire?

Will I switch on the Boast-o-meter™? Nobody really likes the Boast-o-meter™, but there’s no good way to list off all your own achievements without sounding like a dick. Let’s just switch it on for sixty seconds…. (PULLS SWITCH.)

OK, I’ve won what was then the biggest prize in the world for a single short story (The BBC National Short Story Award); my books are published in over thirty languages (I would like to boast more accurately, but I lost count a while back); I wrote the ending to the biggest-selling game in world history (260 million copies); I’ve had a top ten hit single, back when singles were on vinyl; more recently, I’ve had a number one Kindle Single; I wrote the first short story ever published in the Financial Times; I’ve written for the New York Times, the Guardian, etc; I’ve been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction (twice), the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Of the Year Award, the Irish Book Of The Year Award (twice)... No, I’m not enjoying this, let’s switch off the Boast-o-meter™, it’s giving me a headache. Probably giving you a headache, too. (PULLS SWITCH.)

Let’s try Dry Factual Mode. My name is Julian Gough; I’m the author of four novels (most recently Connect); five children’s books (most recently A Bad King Is A Sad Thing, illustrated by the great Jim Field); a couple of BBC radio dramas; a stage play; a book of poetry (Free Sex Chocolate); and the ending to the computer game Minecraft (often known as the End Poem).

In my youth, I also sang with the Irish indie pop group Toasted Heretic, who released four albums.

Basically, I’m a restless writer who chases his obsessions, and likes to try new things. Thus this Substack, and the book which it accompanies (and complements).

The book

This Substack is basically an experiment, where I will attempt to write my next book in public.

The Egg And The Rock is my first non-fiction book, and the concept is this: all of the scientific data piled up in the last couple of centuries is simply the raw material for a story, the true story of the universe… and I'm going to tell it.

The story, which is extraordinarily powerful and coherent, has lain hidden (with its parts scattered across dozens of scientific fields, like Osiris across Egypt), because scientists by definition couldn't tell it (they are mostly hyper-specialists, operating inside a reductive system which can measure with extraordinary accuracy, but not extract meaning); and nobody else looked in all the necessary places.

I’m writing this book in public, using this Substack, for three reasons:

1.) So that I can get feedback from readers and listeners as I go, and thus improve my arguments.

2.) To bring those arguments to the largest number of people possible, as early as possible, because I believe this new way of thinking about the universe and our place in it is important and will improve people’s lives.

3.) To build an audience for the eventual book.

I don’t yet know when the book will be published, because, obviously, I am still writing it, here: I am a slow writer, and it is a long book. But I am setting up this Substack because I want to make it as easy as possible for you to watch the book being written, should that interest you. A finished book, the book encountered by a reader – polished, published – is a static object, very demure and well-behaved; but, as any writer knows, the true book, the book the writer lives with, and struggles with, is a quest, is a monster, is a war, is a love affair – and that hyper-dynamic process of writing, often lasting many years, is far richer and more complex than any single, static, finished book can ever capture.

OK, I hope you come with me on the journey. If you do, and if you find you are enjoying it, please tell any friends you think might enjoy it too. And talk about these ideas, test them out, play with them. Help me make them better. Ultimately, my goal is for us to change the consciousness of the world, because right now our way of thinking about the universe and our place in it is

A.) Wrong, and

B.) Making us miserable.

Subscribe if you think that sounds interesting. Right, that’s it for now. Off we go...