Five books of speculative biology
Five files compiled into five books. What you have here is the public desk — covers, drawings, a few sample pages. The books themselves are not yet released. Start with Book 1, Vampires in Theory.
Five books of speculative biology, written as declassified investigations. Folklore is treated as bad field data: noisy, culturally inflected, and, once you have enough of it, usable. This site is the public desk. The full texts are the printed volumes.
Written by Z. Reynolds; presented as files.
The first letter
When Vampires is for sale
The shop is not open. Leave an address for the first letter — it comes only to this desk. The field packet is already here: a short field packet from Book 1. You can also write [email protected]. Addresses are kept only to send that letter. Privacy.
What the work is
Speculative biology in dossier form
Each volume reconstructs a biology that folklore has been pointing at for as long as anyone has been keeping stories. The method is clinical; the register is forensic. The claim underneath is simple, and not comfortable: the oldest stories were never metaphors. They were degraded field reports, and the mechanisms can still be derived.
Book 1 develops the vampire as a three-genome chimera on an iron-dependent bio-voltaic drive. Book 2 reconstructs the werewolf as an endogenous retroviral inheritance, triggered by light and carried out as a hydraulic engine. Book 3 is the operational history of the hunters who learned to identify and contain both. Book 4 is the joint threat assessment of the shadow war running since 1947. Book 5 documents a manufactured subterranean population whose clean genome never entered the surface myths, and whose existence turns a three-body problem into a four-body one.
You can start anywhere. Read them in order and the argument comes into focus. © 2026 Z. Reynolds, All rights reserved.
The research programme these volumes describe does not exist. The biological organisms they characterise are not recognised in the scientific literature. The historical events they reference are real; the biological mechanisms proposed beneath them are speculative. Names of historical figures are used in their public-record sense. No claim is made that any organisation depicted has operational existence. The compilers observe that this consensus is itself one of the documents' predictions.
The original research group numbered four
None of the four is available to review this document. Two were present at an examination. One died at the facility. One was recovered nine kilometres from it, gave a debriefing, and succumbed. The third and the fourth have not been located. One left a field journal in a rental vehicle at Clermont-en-Argonne. The vehicle was returned. The researcher was not.
A grandfather who would not talk, and a drawer cleared in 1980: slides, a vial of grey powder, a photograph of four Americans at a forest clearing in 1947. A dissertation in Novosibirsk on a number that would not balance. Across five files the compiler is the only character. Missing colleagues. A box in a desk.
Five volumes. The same designation.
None of them names another. Volume V names, once, an organisation that distributes the documents, and does not describe it. What the volumes are willing to say.
The Compiler
HHDRV · Vampires in Theory
Clinical theoretical biology. The original research group numbered four. None of the four is available to review this document. The missing fourth member — the compiler's younger brother, a parasitologist — is the document's central absence.
The Compiler
LCAN · Werewolves in Theory
Clinical theoretical biology. A separate compiler. Dedicated to a research group whose membership is smaller than it was. The compiler hopes some of them still are.
The Compiler
CUSTOS · Hunters in Theory
Operational history. A separate compiler. Carpathian lineage. The compiler's identity is itself part of the evidence. Dedicated to the ones who kept no records.
The Compiler
OVERLORD · Joint Threat Assessment and Containment Protocols
Committee voice. Active containment. Maternal grandfather, French occupation zone near Freiburg, 1946–1949. The desk was cleared in 1980. She was eleven.
The Compiler
AETERNA · Dwarfs in Theory
DESIGNATED. Former Institute of Geophysics, Novosibirsk State University, 1983–2004. Arrived independently. Not available for correspondence following submission.
Each volume is the work of a different person. Each refers to themselves, and to every other, only as the compiler. Publication mail goes to the desk: [email protected]. Copyright and permissions go to [email protected].
Who this is for
- You read Wikipedia articles to the end.
- You want the lore to hold up under pressure.
- You have ever been annoyed that a story never explained why silver.
The register
- The books treat folklore as field data, and they do not wink.
- If you want the organisms real enough to think with, you are the reader.
- The shop is not open. Leave an address if you want the first letter.
Reading order
Read one, or read them in order
First questions
Things people ask first
- What is this website?
The public desk for a printed series: covers, drawings, a glossary, sample pages. The full texts are the five books, and they are not in shops yet. Leave an address if you want the first letter when Book 1 is for sale.
- Is this fiction?
Yes. Speculative theoretical biology, presented as declassified investigative documents. The historical events named are real. The organisms are not recognised in the scientific literature. The compilers observe that this consensus is itself one of the documents' predictions.
- Where do I start?
Twelve minutes inside Book 1, in the reading room. Then the printed file. You do not need the others first.
- How long is it?
Five volumes; 476,572 words on the printed extents. Book 1, Vampires in Theory (HHDRV), is about eighty-four thousand — about seven hours at a careful pace. Each volume lists its own extent on the volume page.
- Is it paranormal romance?
No. The register is clinical and forensic. If you want the mechanisms real enough to think with, you are the reader. It is not camp, not spice, and not a thriller that treats lore as atmosphere.
- Can I test this?
Yes. The volumes publish the conditions under which they would be wrong. Path Four-A is a patterned background and a telephone camera. File a result with the desk. Attempted, on the printed roadmap, is still no.
- Where do I get the books?
Independently published, first edition 2026. Leave an address on this desk and you will hear when Book 1 is for sale. The shop links will be added when there is a shop.
- Can I use the frameworks?
Ask. Most reasonable requests get a yes.
The texts, plates, and terminology are © 2026 Z. Reynolds, all rights reserved. Reproduction, adaptation, and commercial use need written permission — write to [email protected] and say what you want to do.
Discussion, review, criticism, and quotation need no permission at all.
Preview hosts that once carried a Creative Commons line are not authorised texts. The only authorised public desk is thetheoryseries.com.
Rights holder
A note from Z. Reynolds
The compilers remain the compilers. I wrote the five volumes because the folklore is more interesting if you take it as data, and because the argument would not close in one book. The public desk is this site. The full texts are the printed volumes.
Z. Reynolds, 2026
Copyright
All five volumes are © 2026 Z. Reynolds, All rights reserved. Independently published, first edition 2026. 476,572 words. ISBN pending. The public archive is thetheoryseries.com. Desk: [email protected]. Copyright and permissions: [email protected]. The public desk on X is @thetheoryseries.
The investigation continues.