Welcome to the Multiverse: Sorry for the Inconvenience

This hilarious science-fiction comedy novel follows the first case for Noomi Rapier, rookie investigator with The Transdimensional Authority – the organisation that regulates travel between dimensions. When a dead body is found slumped over a modified transdimensional machine, Noomi and her more experienced partner, Crash Chumley, must find the dead man’s accomplices and discover what they were doing with the technology. Their investigation leads them to a variety of realities where Noomi comes face-to-face with four very different incarnations of herself, forcing her to consider how the choices she makes and the circumstances into which she is born determine who she is.

Ira Nayman’s new novel is both an hilarious romp through multiple dimensions in a variety of alternate realities, and a gentle satire on fate, ambition and expectation. Welcome to the Multiverse (Sorry for the Inconvenience) will appeal to comedy fans who have been bereft of much good science-fiction fare these last eleven years. Ira’s style is at times surreal, even off-the-wall, with the humour flying at you from unexpected angles; he describes it as fractal humour. Anyone who has read his Alternate Reality News Service stories will know how funny Ira is. The characters we meet from around the multiverse deserve to become firm favourites with all fans of science fiction comedy.

In his past lives, Ira Nayman was, among other things: a cave painter whose art was not appreciated in his lifetime; several nameless peasants who died before their 20th birthday during the Dark Ages; a toenail fungus specialist in the court of Louis XIV; and Alan Turing's scullery maid. In his current incarnation, Ira is the creator of Les Pages aux Folles, a Web site of political and social satire that will be 10 years old in the first week of September, 2012 (that's positively Paleolithic in Internet years!). Three collections of Alternate Reality News Service (ARNS) stories (Alternate Reality Ain't What It Used To Be, What Were Once Miracles Are Now Children's Toys and Luna for the Lunies!) which originally appeared on the Web site have been self-published in print. Two new volumes of ARNS stories - The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Market Lateralization and The Alternate Reality News Service's Guide To Sex, Love and Robots will be published in 2013. Probably. Hopefully. 2014 at the latest. Ira has produced the pilot for a radio series based on stories from the first two ARNS books; "The Weight of Information, Episode One" can be heard on YouTube. Ira has also written a series of stories that take place in a universe where matter at all levels of organization has become conscious. They feature Antonio Van der Whall, object psychologist. To date, four of these stories have been sold. "A Really Useful Engine" has been published in Even Birds Are Chained To The Sky and Other Tales: The Fine Line Short Story Collection and "Escalation is Academic" has appeared in the anthology UnCONventional. "If the Mountain Won't Come to Mohammed" can be found in Here Be Monsters. "Thinking is the Worst Way to Travel" has been accepted into Explorers: Beyond the Horizon. Several other stories in the series are currently awaiting editorial decisions at various publications. Ira's Web Goddess tells him he should make more of the fact that he won the 2010 Jonathan Swift Satire Writing Contest. So, Ira won the 2010 Jonathan Swift Satire Writing Contest. In another life (but still within this incarnation) Ira has a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School for Social Research which was conducted entirely online. He also has a PhD in Communications from McGill University. Ira taught New Media part-time at Ryerson University for five years. Whoever created the Karmic wheel has a lot to answer for -