Location: Canada
Member Since: Jan. 24, 2012

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Ira Nayman

Biography

Ira Nayman is profilic. Proficlic. Proclif - he writes a lot.

He has self-published eleven collections of articles written by the tireless staff of the Alternate Reality News Service. Five contain news, reviews, interviews, and anything else you might expect to find in your daily newspaper (Alternate Reality Ain't What It Used To Be, What Were Once Miracles Are Now Children's Toys, Luna for the Lunies!, The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Mutant Technologies and Futures in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear). The series also contains two collections of humourous science fiction advice columns: The Alternate Reality News Service's Guide to Love, Sex and Robots and What the Hell Were You Thinking? Good Advice for people who make bad decisions. The series is rounded out by three collections of reports from a universe where Vesampucceri is the world's leading idiotocracy (rule by the stupidest people): ARNS and the Man, E Deplorables Unum and Angels of Our Bitter Nature. The most recent book collects the three Vesampucceri volumes in one; it is called Idiotocracy for Dummies. All but the first and most recent books are available on Smashwords. (They are also available in print, for those of you who have a fetish for paper...)

New Alternate Reality News Service stories appear regularly on Ira's Web site: Les Pages aux Folles. These include two advice columns: Ask Amritsar (about love and romance and technology) and Ask the Tech Answer Guy (about anything to do with technology except love and romance). Readers are encouraged to submit their own questions for the advice columns. Les Pages aux Folles also contains topical political and social satire and surreal cartoons.

The Weight of Information, the pilot for a radio series based on Alternate Reality News Service articles, can be heard on YouTube; listen to Part One or Part Two.

Ira has also written eight Transdimensional Authority novels, six of which have been published by Elsewhen Press: Welcome to the Multiverse (Sorry for the Inconvenience); You Can't Kill the Multiverse (But You Can Mess With its Head); Random Dingoes; It's Just the Chronosphere Unfolding as It Should; The Multiverse is a Nice Place to Visit, But I Wouldn't Want to Live There; and, Good Intentions: The Multiverse Refugees Trilogy: First Pie in the Face. They follow the adventures of Transdimensional Authority Investigators or Time Agency Agents. If you're somewhere (or somewhen) you shouldn't be, doing something naughty, they find you, stop you and take you back to where you belong.

Fans of Ira Nayman’s science fiction writing are encouraged to check Les Pages aux Folles periodically for news about the availability of these and future stories.

Smashwords Interview

Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in Toronto, Canada. The most obvious way this influenced my writing was that I was exposed to both British and American humour (Canada being on the periphery of both empires). This gave me a wider array of comic options to choose from when I started writing than if I had been born wholly in one culture or the other. (I also had access to Canadian humour, which is its own unique beast. It is! It is! I know it is! CodCo - I rest my case.) I believe that my humour is richer and more complex because of this.

My family moved around somewhat when I was young. In the 1960s, for example, we spent some time in Berkeley, California. In the early 1970s, we lived for six months in Israel, and, for all but the final two weeks or so, we were told that we had moved there permanently. When we did leave, we drove across the country to Haifa, had a cruise up the Mediterranean and spent a week in Paris (where my dad is from and still has family). On the one hand, it was a difficult experience for me: I lost a year of school, with all the social and intellectual implications that that, uhh, implies. On the other hand, I learned first-hand that the way people in my country live is not the only way one can live. That gave me the ability to question why things in our society are the way they are, an ability that I believe is an important part of being a writer. It took me a lot of retrospect to appreciate this, but I now believe that travel when one is young can be an important part of a artist's growth.
When did you first start writing?
When I was eight years old, I had a conversion experience (you’ve probably heard a story similar to mine: a kid was given a camera when he was 10, and all he ever wanted to do with his life was make movies): in the parking lot of my grade school, I decided that I wanted to devote my life to writing comedy.

I've been doing it ever since.

The first thing I wrote were parodies of the Sherlock Holmes stories that I was reading at the time. I used the backs of my dad’s legal sized accounting pads (the fronts had too many criss-crossing lines). I wrote three stories; each one took up a single sheet of paper. I remember thinking to myself, “How do writers fill their stories with so much detail?” Since then, I have written 22 collections of short stories, six collections of cartoons (all of which can be found on my Web site), a novel, 15 short stories and novelettes and over 100 (alas, mostly unproduced) scripts for film, radio and television. I guess I must have figured out the secret…

(Oh, just so you don’t think I was a precocious child – how many children actually devote their lives to what they want to be when they are eight years old? – I was watching an episode of The Green Room with guest Eddie Izzard one evening. Izzard told the story of meeting his idol, Richard Pryor. In the course of their discussion, they found that they had something in common: they both knew they wanted to be comedians when they were four years old. FOUR YEARS OLD! So, far from being precocious, I was already actually four years behind!)
Read more of this interview.

Where to find Ira Nayman online

Website: http://www.lespagesauxfolles.ca
Twitter: @ARNSProprietor
Facebook: Facebook profile

Where to buy in print

http://www.amazon.ca/ira-nayman-Science-Fiction-Fantasy-Books/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=ira%20nayman&rh=n%3A957368%2Ck%3Aira%20nayman&page=1

Videos

A Book Trailer Named "Book Trailer"
A trailer for the book What Were Once Miracles Are Now Children's Toys.

Series

The Alternate Reality News Service by
Collections of Alternate Reality News Service news, reviews, interviews, advice columns and, yes, even obituaries. After all, people in other universes die, too...
What Were Once Miracles Are Now Children's Toys
Price: $1.99 USD.
Luna for the Lunies!
Price: $3.99 USD.
The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Mutant Technologies
Price: $2.99 USD.
The Alternate Reality News Service's Guide to Love, Sex and Robots
Price: $2.99 USD.
What the Hell Were You Thinking?: Good Advice for People Who Make Bad Decisions
Price: $0.99 USD.
Futures in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
Price: $0.99 USD.

Books

Angels of Our Bitter Nature by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 9. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 72,730. Language: English. Published: April 7, 2020 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire
Two and a half years into the presidency of Ronald McDruhitmumpf the scandals kind of meld together into a political scientist's worst nightmare. Or best research subject... Angels of Our Bitter Nature is the final book in the Vesampucceri trilogy, which includes ARNS and the Man and E Deplorables Unum. Collect the whole set!
E Deplorables Unum by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 8. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 68,720. Language: English. Published: April 6, 2020 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire
"Nobody said reporting from Earth Prime 1-6-7-1-8-2 dash psi, where the United States of Vesampucceri is the world's leading idiotocracy, was going to be easy." E Deplorables Unum is the second book in Ira Nayman's Alternate Reality News Service Vesampucceri trilogy - collect the whole set!
ARNS and the Man by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 7. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 71,960. Language: English. Published: April 1, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire, Fiction » Science fiction » General
The Alternate Reality News Service sends reporters to other dimensions and has them write news articles about what they find there. In ARNS and the Man, journalists focus on the United States of Vesampucceri, the world's foremost idiotocracy (government by of the stupidest, by the stupidest, for the stupidest). "Amusing, sardonic political and social satire..." John Shirley
Futures in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 6. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 69,680. Language: English. Published: March 14, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire, Fiction » Science fiction » General
The seventh collection of Alternate Reality News Service articles. The series has been described as "A science fiction version of The Onion."
What the Hell Were You Thinking?: Good Advice for People Who Make Bad Decisions by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 5. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 68,580. Language: English. Published: May 15, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire
The sixth collection of Alternate Reality News Service articles is the second to feature the advice columns of Amritsar and The Tech Answer Guy. This humourous science fiction journalism may not be as good as your mom's chicken soup, but at least it won't nag you to tell it when you're going to get married!
What Were Once Miracles Are Now Children's Toys by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 1. Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 72,630. Language: English. Published: March 4, 2015 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire, Fiction » Science fiction » General
The second collection of Alternate Reality News Service articles. Big floating heads! Conscious cars that tell their owners when the mechanic from the garage down the street is ripping them off! Women suing General Motors for paternity! Now, more than ever, if you don't like this reality, try another one!
The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Mutant Technologies by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 3. Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 67,810. Language: English. Published: June 23, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire
The Alternate Reality News Service is proud to announce the publication of The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Mutant Technologies, its latest collection of paper cutting edge journalism! Oww! Better put some disinfectant on that reportage!
The Alternate Reality News Service's Guide to Love, Sex and Robots by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 4. Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 68,040. Language: English. Published: June 21, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire
When the craziness of the modern world affects your relationship with your life mate, your offspring, your other family members, your auto mechanic or your AI-enhanced toaster oven, it can be hard to know what to do. When relationships get so confusing that the federal tax code starts to make sense, who can you turn to for help? The Alternate Reality News Service’s advice columnists, of course.
Luna for the Lunies! by
Series: The Alternate Reality News Service, Book 2. Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 72,070. Language: English. Published: January 24, 2012 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Short stories
Luna for the Lunies! is the third collection of Alternate Reality News Service stories. Robots who rue their consciousness! Alien invasions foiled by bureaucrats! A successful conclusion to the war on squirrels! Humorous science fiction journalism has never been so...so...science fictiony!

Ira Nayman's tag cloud

advice columns parody    alternate reality    experimental literature    fake news    fantasy    goofiness    humor    humor adult humor satire parody parodies short stories    humor and gender    humor and life    humor and online dating    humor and politics    humorous scifi short    humour    journalism    multiverse    parody    political satire    politics    relationship humor    reportage    satire    satire and politics    satire of fame    satire science fiction    sci fi    scienc fiction    science fiction    topical