Pure Hokum is the world-building company of writer-director Julian Simpson. This site exists to give an overview of those worlds, to show how they connect, and to make navigation between them as easy as possible.
The work spans film, television, audio drama and prose, built across five universes that grew into each other over time, rather than being planned from above. They share connective tissue, recurring preoccupations, and in some cases characters and events that cross between them. Understanding how the pieces fit together is easier from here than from inside any one part of it.
The Pleasant Green Universe is the primary space: more than a decade of award-winning audio drama and serialised prose, rooted in the weird, the uncanny, and the growing certainty that the world is stranger than it appears. The main hub for that work lives at the Pleasant Green site.
European Sinister spins off from Pleasant Green, and is rooted in a ritual performed in a French village in September 1914 that tore a crack in reality. The Department of Works has designated as "European Sinister" any event or organisation that arose from, or tracks back to, that ritual. Stories in this universe span from 1914 through to the present day and tend to involve clandestine operations and organisations.
Albany is set in contemporary New York. A secret society, based in rooms beneath the New York Public Library, protects the city from ancient forces that have adapted perfectly to modern life.
Kaleidoscope is a spy-fi world of secret agents, international criminal masterminds, and a machine that can compress one human personality and implant another. Identity is the ultimate weapon. The Kaleidoscope novel is serialising here, a chapter at a time. [Read the first chapter]
The Origin is the Shadow Government of America. Founded in 1620, it exists as a refuge for those who can no longer live within mainstream society: entry is via a little red book, How to Disappear in America, delivered to those in need by a woman known only as Raggedy Ann.
Cartoon Gravity is Julian's personal site and scrapbook, where he writes about process, ideas, inspirations and offers tips and tricks on writing, directing, and world-building.
- For more about the worlds and projects, see Universes and Productions.
- For more about who I am and how Pure Hokum works, see About.