About Adrian

Adrian Stride was born in England during the mid-1960s, which was still the usual method of arriving on his particular part of the planet.

He now lives in the New Forest, where he writes about history, humanity and the absurdity of a species that considers itself reasonably well organised.

Writing with dyslexia

Adrian is dyslexic, not in the sense that he cannot read or write, but in the more inconvenient sense that his mind occasionally adds words that are not on the page, removes those that are and rearranges the survivors.

This has made writing slower, but it has also made him unusually persistent.

His first encouraging experience of English at school came when a teacher praised an original story as entertaining, clever and funny. He was subsequently reported to the headmaster and caned for plagiarism.

The caning was commonplace at the time. The accusation left the more lasting mark.

It took many years, and several unfinished or imperfect novels, before Adrian returned properly to fiction.

The journey to The Trivial Matter of the Universe

The character of Alfred first appeared in an earlier novel about his unlikely career as a police officer.

Although that book still requires considerable work, and possibly legal representation, it produced a fully formed Alfred: intelligent, ambitious, morally flexible and entirely certain that any situation could be improved by placing him in charge of it.

Adrian soon realised that an ordinary setting was too small for Alfred. He needed history, government, artificial intelligence, questionable institutions and a universe large enough to contain his ego.

The result was The Trivial Matter of the Universe.

The novel was rewritten six times and then proofread line by line, word by word and, on particularly difficult evenings, glass by glass.

Adrian strongly recommends finding a more efficient method.

He writes because he loves history, humour, large questions, unlikely characters and the endless absurdity of human behaviour.

“Be good. And if you can’t be good, don’t get caught.”
— Alfred, c. 50 BC