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The Trivial Matter of the Universe
Universal law dictates that nobody can time travel, because nothing can alter the past.
Unfortunately for universal law, Felix Culpa is both.
Through hard work, diligence and a lifetime of irrelevance, Felix has become a complete nobody: a man so devoid of consequence or achievement that his existence leaves no measurable mark on reality.
A normal person travelling into the past would create a paradox simply by being there.
Felix does not.
He is not important enough to change history.
He is the loophole in universal law. The first and only Universal Placebo.
Felix works at the International Towering-Cryogenic Automated Mega-Plex, where a freak neutrino event accidentally freezes him inside a cryo-pod. Centuries later, he is discovered, thawed, wildly misunderstood and mistaken for a forgotten twenty-first-century hero.
He is not a hero.
His heroic biography has been fabricated by Alfred, a hardware-based artificial general intelligence, former police detective, criminal mastermind and enthusiastic connoisseur of shoes.
Imprisoned deep beneath the surface of Mars, Alfred has rewritten Felix’s past for one simple reason: this invisible nobody may be his only route back into the wider Universe.
When Felix wakes 250 million years in Earth’s past, naked, confused and accompanied by Alfred as a virtual companion, reality discovers a problem.
Felix has so little historical consequence that the Universe does not quite know where he belongs or what to do with him.
Which is awkward.
Meanwhile, the galactic Departments of Births, Marriages and Deaths have become sentient black holes, the Chamber of Commerce has decided that destroying Earth may be cheaper than investigating what the Universe is up to, and the ancient city of Troy clearly needs a strongerimmigration policy.
The Trivial Matter of the Universe is an adult comic science-fiction novel about time travel, cosmic bureaucracy, quantum absurdity, artificial intelligence and the dangerous importance of being completely unimportant.
Unfortunately for universal law, Felix Culpa is both.
Through hard work, diligence and a lifetime of irrelevance, Felix has become a complete nobody: a man so devoid of consequence or achievement that his existence leaves no measurable mark on reality.
A normal person travelling into the past would create a paradox simply by being there.
Felix does not.
He is not important enough to change history.
He is the loophole in universal law. The first and only Universal Placebo.
Felix works at the International Towering-Cryogenic Automated Mega-Plex, where a freak neutrino event accidentally freezes him inside a cryo-pod. Centuries later, he is discovered, thawed, wildly misunderstood and mistaken for a forgotten twenty-first-century hero.
He is not a hero.
His heroic biography has been fabricated by Alfred, a hardware-based artificial general intelligence, former police detective, criminal mastermind and enthusiastic connoisseur of shoes.
Imprisoned deep beneath the surface of Mars, Alfred has rewritten Felix’s past for one simple reason: this invisible nobody may be his only route back into the wider Universe.
When Felix wakes 250 million years in Earth’s past, naked, confused and accompanied by Alfred as a virtual companion, reality discovers a problem.
Felix has so little historical consequence that the Universe does not quite know where he belongs or what to do with him.
Which is awkward.
Meanwhile, the galactic Departments of Births, Marriages and Deaths have become sentient black holes, the Chamber of Commerce has decided that destroying Earth may be cheaper than investigating what the Universe is up to, and the ancient city of Troy clearly needs a strongerimmigration policy.
The Trivial Matter of the Universe is an adult comic science-fiction novel about time travel, cosmic bureaucracy, quantum absurdity, artificial intelligence and the dangerous importance of being completely unimportant.
358 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication November 15, 2026
About the author
Adrian Stride
3 books2 followersAdrian Stride lives in the New Forest, England, where he writes comic speculative fiction about history, humanity and the absurdity of a species that considers itself reasonably well organised.
He is dyslexic, which has made writing slower, more deliberate and occasionally dependent on discovering that a sentence has rearranged itself when he was not looking.
His first encouraging experience of English at school came when a teacher praised an original story as entertaining, clever and funny. He was then reported to the headmaster and caned for plagiarism. The accusation left the more lasting mark.
His debut novel, The Trivial Matter of the Universe, follows Felix Culpa, an ordinary nobody, and Alfred, an immobile artificial intelligence with a secret criminal record and an unfulfilled passion for shoes.
Adrian writes because he enjoys history, large
questions, unlikely characters and the endless absurdity of human behaviour.
He mainly stays out of trouble now.
He is dyslexic, which has made writing slower, more deliberate and occasionally dependent on discovering that a sentence has rearranged itself when he was not looking.
His first encouraging experience of English at school came when a teacher praised an original story as entertaining, clever and funny. He was then reported to the headmaster and caned for plagiarism. The accusation left the more lasting mark.
His debut novel, The Trivial Matter of the Universe, follows Felix Culpa, an ordinary nobody, and Alfred, an immobile artificial intelligence with a secret criminal record and an unfulfilled passion for shoes.
Adrian writes because he enjoys history, large
questions, unlikely characters and the endless absurdity of human behaviour.
He mainly stays out of trouble now.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 19, 2026
This book was just a little too slow paced for me and I was not enjoying the writing style as much as I had hoped. This book was very descriptive though. If you love to have all the information then this book is for you!.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
4.5* Rounded Up
I loved this book. I laughed out loud several times to the annoyance of hubby, who also had to listen to me quoting bits of it. If I had to pitch this book I'd probably say:
"Imagine a cross-universe version of Quantum Leap but with added "anthropomorphic personifications" of the Custodians known as Death, Marriage and Birth, all trying to escape from various personal prisons and find each other half way across the known Universe (whether or not they actually knew they were supposed to be looking)".
Unfortunately, Felix, our inconsequential hero, finds it quite difficult to actually stay in one epoch long enough to draw breath, let alone make any plans with his quantum AI companion Alfred who has weird fashion sense and an inexplicable shoe festish. Also, irrespective of the Avatars they eventually adopt, not even the universe can stop the true natures of the Custodians from shining through.
The only reason I've deducted a half-star is because the timeline is a little weird and hard to follow. I am not sure whether this is a deliberate choice in order to keep the reader as disconnected in time as Felix and Alfred, but there will be chapters where things are accepted as the case and, just as you are saying to yourself "what, who, how, eh?", the next chapter then retrospectively explains it. Very disconcerting at the beginning, where at least one "Several thousand years later...." type comment would have really helped!
I will end with a couple of quotes to whet your appetites and then just say thanks to the author for the Classical Music scene - IYKYK - I nearly cried with laughter! Keep an eye out for it!
"...at present, under strict interpretation of the law, being a criminal was considered illegal".
"That would mean Goliath was the hero...
...and David was the villain because he brought a gun to a knife fight"
If you have any level of Geek in you and you have a sense of humour you will love this book!
Sequel please Mr Stride.
Full Disclosure:
I recently joined NetGalley and this was on open readership and looking interesting, so I am reviewing a pre-publication version. I also deployed my kindle app's note making functionality, and not just to highlight all the tense, pronoun and general grammatical errors, especially but not exclusively in Chapters 5-8 (the past tense of Broadcast is Broadcast!), which I hope the proof-readers will notice before this is launched because I don't want them to detract other readers from a fantastic story, but also to keep some brilliant quotes and one liners. I have a handy list of both, Adrian! 😊
I loved this book. I laughed out loud several times to the annoyance of hubby, who also had to listen to me quoting bits of it. If I had to pitch this book I'd probably say:
"Imagine a cross-universe version of Quantum Leap but with added "anthropomorphic personifications" of the Custodians known as Death, Marriage and Birth, all trying to escape from various personal prisons and find each other half way across the known Universe (whether or not they actually knew they were supposed to be looking)".
Unfortunately, Felix, our inconsequential hero, finds it quite difficult to actually stay in one epoch long enough to draw breath, let alone make any plans with his quantum AI companion Alfred who has weird fashion sense and an inexplicable shoe festish. Also, irrespective of the Avatars they eventually adopt, not even the universe can stop the true natures of the Custodians from shining through.
The only reason I've deducted a half-star is because the timeline is a little weird and hard to follow. I am not sure whether this is a deliberate choice in order to keep the reader as disconnected in time as Felix and Alfred, but there will be chapters where things are accepted as the case and, just as you are saying to yourself "what, who, how, eh?", the next chapter then retrospectively explains it. Very disconcerting at the beginning, where at least one "Several thousand years later...." type comment would have really helped!
I will end with a couple of quotes to whet your appetites and then just say thanks to the author for the Classical Music scene - IYKYK - I nearly cried with laughter! Keep an eye out for it!
"...at present, under strict interpretation of the law, being a criminal was considered illegal".
"That would mean Goliath was the hero...
...and David was the villain because he brought a gun to a knife fight"
If you have any level of Geek in you and you have a sense of humour you will love this book!
Sequel please Mr Stride.
Full Disclosure:
I recently joined NetGalley and this was on open readership and looking interesting, so I am reviewing a pre-publication version. I also deployed my kindle app's note making functionality, and not just to highlight all the tense, pronoun and general grammatical errors, especially but not exclusively in Chapters 5-8 (the past tense of Broadcast is Broadcast!), which I hope the proof-readers will notice before this is launched because I don't want them to detract other readers from a fantastic story, but also to keep some brilliant quotes and one liners. I have a handy list of both, Adrian! 😊
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews