18+ Adult fiction: sexual content, strong language & tobacco. Read the disclaimer →
Chris Decio Manuel

Satirical, dystopian fairy tales for grown-ups: a drag queen's sandwich empire, a Soviet sleeper agent's manifesto, resurrected robots at the end of the world, alien shoppers and a very unreliable love gun. From Portsmouth to Perm to Asunción. Laugh first. Shiver later.

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The Works~

five stories, all deeply unsuitable for your aunt
01

The Sandwich Man

a semi-autobiographical novel in twenty instalments

Jhonny grew up gay on a Portsmouth council estate in the 1970s and '80s, living on banana-and-sugar butties and Curly Wurlys. Now he lives on the sixty-eighth floor of a tower in Asunción, glamorous by night in towering heels, and he is about to launch the gourmet sandwich empire he has dreamed of all his life.

His chaotic crew includes Lujan, Paula, Chen and Niko. The meat is lab-grown at a secret plant hidden in the Paraguayan countryside. A commando raid is carried out with a "Literality Inversion gun" made from household odds and ends. And there are memories of his first love, Roger, in the Hampshire lanes. It all builds to one very grand opening.

satirecoming of agePortsmouth ⇄ Asunciónadults only
19

Novem Decimate

(Soviet Hotel) · Founding Reality series

Tolya Morozov, a boy from Perm, became a GRU sleeper agent just as the Berlin Wall came down. He now lives in Asunción, passing as a British Jehovah's Witness who deals in Soviet porcelain. His only way of recognising his contact is that she carries a pink inflatable donkey.

With the formidable Nasaindy, he launders a cartel's hidden fortune through a vegetable stall, a children's charity and two dance schools. Between glasses of caña he drafts a nineteen-point manifesto for a new Britain (pets: cats, small dogs, maybe fish). Underneath it all, a countdown is running. He is full of tender memories of the Urals, birch smoke and fish-shaped decanters. The book's darkest joke comes in its last chapter.

Cold Warblack comedyPerm ⇄ Asunciónadults only
18

Los Robotnik

(Los работникs) · eighteen movements

Far in the future, scholars on the supercontinent Pangea Ultima dig up humans and their robots and bring them back to life. The trouble began years earlier, when Buennoche, a drunk amateur radio builder in Valparaíso, beamed "Testing, testing" into deep space and an alien race took it the wrong way.

Robert Čapek is a fifty-year-old ex-supermarket delivery driver and teacher, and possibly not entirely human. He crawls out of a cold puddle into a world of Strangers, monsters, raging executives in Mercedes, management jargon and a cat called Liquorice who pretends to be dead. Published under the pen name Samantha Peach.

sci-fi fairy taledystopiarobotsadults only
04

How They Live

a satirical dystopian science-fiction fairy tale

Set in a parallel world where consumerism, social conformity and state control shape everyday life. Through the experiences of Celeste and Cachete, the story presents a society in which shopping, work and personal identity are governed by strange rules and unsettling technologies.

Their lives are disrupted by the arrival of alien visitors, whose misunderstanding of humanity leads to an attempted invasion and upheaval on Earth. Mixing absurd humour with darker moments, the story explores how easily people can be manipulated by systems that promise comfort, order and prosperity. Its central satire lies in the contrast between the ordinary routines of shopping and work and the extraordinary forces that threaten to overturn them.

satireconsumerismalien invasionadults only
05

The Case of the Crazy Funky Love Gun

social satire, erotic farce & speculative fiction · as C. S. Manuel

In a satirical, near-future Asunción, Park Min Ji, a young Korean-Paraguayan woman, is caught between her family's conservative expectations and her desire to choose her own life. Known outside her community as Leidy Dye, she becomes infatuated with the Overlookista, a handsome employee of her father's clothing business. With help from a mysterious digital companion, she builds a device intended to make him fall in love with her, though its unpredictable effects quickly complicate her plans.

Her private romantic adventure unfolds against a vividly exaggerated Paraguay of oppressive heat, urban decay, conspicuous consumerism and elaborate technological conveniences. As the love gun's connection to a much larger alien scheme emerges, an intimate tale of desire and rebellion becomes a comic science-fiction narrative about humanity's future. Its absurd inventions and bawdy humour sit alongside more serious concerns: the policing of women's sexuality, the pressure to preserve cultural identity, and the uneasy relationship between technological progress and human freedom.

The result is an intentionally unruly blend whose comic excesses expose a world that promises modern comfort while leaving old prejudices and forms of control firmly in place.

erotic farcenear-future Asunciónaliensadults only

Excerpts

straight from the manuscripts
text size

from the manuscript

Biography

the official version, more or less
your photo goes here
(looking unelected)
the author, probably
  • Born: Portsmouth, England
  • Lives: Asunción, Paraguay
  • Studied: Russian & East European Studies, Information Systems, Applied Linguistics
  • Day job: teaching English
  • Also writes as: Samantha Peach, C. S. Manuel

Born on planet Earth. Continues to work on the planet.

Chris Decio Manuel was born in Portsmouth, England. He studied Russian and East European Studies, Information Systems and Applied Linguistics, and has taught English as a foreign language for more than fourteen years, face to face, online and, he claims, telepathically. He now lives in Asunción, Paraguay, where much of his fiction is set.

He writes what he calls satirical-dystopian science-fiction fairy tales: semi-autobiographical stories that start with real incidents and keep going well past the point of good taste. His characters are drag queens with sandwich empires, Soviet sleeper agents with fish-shaped decanters, and delivery drivers who may be robots. They move between 1970s Portsmouth, the Urals and the streets around Asunción's Mercado 4. Novem Decimate and Los Robotnik belong to his Founding Reality series.

In 2017 he sat briefly in the House of Commons, before a security guard explained that only elected people can sit there. His influences include Dickens, Tolkien, García Márquez, Orwell, Bulgakov and Angela Carter.

Also by the author (allegedly): Marginal Proximity to Moist Desires (1999) · The Dwarf Paragraphs of the Later Twentieth Century (2000) · Asymmetrical Love Nodes: an anthology of robotically-themed love stories (2004)

20instalments of Sandwich Man
19pillars of the new Britain
18movements of Los Robotnik
429bnmiles Tolya travelled without leaving Earth

The Notebook

research, craft, crumbs
The Sandwich Man · legend

San Wych the Wayfarer

The Anglo-Saxon patron saint of sandwich makers, at least according to the Joyfulness of Knowledge, the part-work Jhonny collected every week as a boy.

Novem Decimate · objects

The Aquarium

A cobalt-blue Soviet decanter shaped like a fish, with little fish cups around it. Tolya keeps the blue one in Perm, and a white one and a red one in Paraguay.

Los Robotnik · origins

Testing, testing

A drunk man in Valparaíso, a home-made radio and a text message from nowhere: how two words beamed into deep space started the end of the world.

Founding Reality · the series

Fictionalised memoirs

All events are real, completely fictitious and verifiable. Names have been changed to protect everyone, especially the author.

Disclaimer!

a trigger warning, of sorts CAUTION naughty bits ahead 18+
Please read before reading.
— the management (such as it is)

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