found a rich vein of absolutely bizarre and incoherent books on amazon, can't figure out if they're written by a human or a bot. they've broken my brain even more than usual
i think i might have to do a thread on these later but for now please enjoy this excerpt

Maybe tweeting this excerpt in advance of doing the actual thread was a mistake because this is already beginning to do numbers and people are probably going to dig up the shit I was planning to cover later
Just resist yourself from googling for now ok

OK screw it it's now or never, this thread will probably be as incoherent as the books but let's go
I discovered these books via a passing mention in this Vice article - but how could I not want to know more about the exploits of SIR IAN SHAG?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvgaq/bot-gibberish-audio-books-scam

The supposed author is one Roger Londoniary, Scottish British American, conservative business owner and security guard from Long Beach California
His books were all published via the self-publishing platform Lulu and seem to be available on various platforms including Amazon

On Amazon UK there are 23 listed and I'm just gonna go through them in reverse order of publication and see what I find in the preview snippets
Most of these will run you between £10-£20 and seem to be available only in paperback, no ebooks

So let's start with "The Traditional Commander"! This introduces Commander Ian Shag, an idiot of the British Navy (that means even with the ladies)
Ian Shag's bio here seems remarkably similar to Roger Londoniary's. Inevitably, he is a Tory

And here's our introduction to Ian Shag, idiot in war and in love

The Traditional Commander was published on 20th Nov 2017. On the 30th, Roger is back with FIVE MORE BOOKS
Operation Seaport introduces Sandra Shag, Ian's... wife? maybe? And also fellow naval intelligence officer and fellow idiot

Foreshadowing

The next couple of books put aside Ian Shag, with "Operation Lancaster" following Ernest Livington, a sailor dating a Nazi spy who likes horny things like spirits and fish. Anyway Ernest is spying on her while she spies on him, or something

Next up is a short story collection DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF COMMANDER IAN SHAG
IAN SHAG WAS REAL?!?!!

Ian Shag actually returns in the first story "End of the Affair", along with a new wife, Catherine Shag, his lover Darline Simon and ANOTHER lover Debbie Smith
Oh Ian Shag, you truly live up to your name

I was honestly going to cover multiple books per tweet but I just... I just can't
"Her Swastika" sees the return of Tarasikov von Schlick. NAZI BARTENDER WITH LARGE HONKERS
And guess who she's been assigned to kill? That's right, famous idiot Ian Shag

I'm going to cover the last book from the 30th November and then I'm taking a break because fucking hell
"A Nazi Who Shagged Me" departs from the exploits of Ian Shag again, despite the title
Shout out to the lesbian special interests groups and the single Amazon reviewer

I'm actually just gonna carry on because Roger Londoniary certainly did
The very next day he returned with FOUR new Ian Shag books, "The Spy With A Double Life", "The KGB Agent Who Shagged Me", "The Commander Who Shagged Me" (sensing a theme here) and "The Red November"

In The Spy With A Double Life we learn what happened to Sandra Shag (she died) and why taxes are so high in England
This installment introduces "S" who acts as the M-like figure in the later Shag books (also, title drop)

Oh god he's talking about the Conservative party again

??? ?? ??? ???

STALIN DELIGHT

some themes emerging here: ending sentences with "is all", Sherlock Holmes pipes, repetition

"The KGB Agent Who Shagged Me" opens with Ian Shag "being laid" AND a dubious history lesson AND THEN his mission is to GET LAID AGAIN

After this Ian Shag considers politics and goes on a two-page internal rant about Nazis and Communists which actually goes to some pretty fucked up places so I've decided not to reproduce it here

The Commander Who Shagged me again opens with Ian receiving a very inappropriately named mission from S
then we go to Moscow and meet a bartender with large knockers

More large knockers in The Red November

It's kinda unfortunate that I can only read the first few pages of these books because the openings are quite formulaic from this point
Especially since the Royale Pig promises Ian working undercover as a SEX MODEL

The Spy Who Was A Journalist brings some INTENSE ACTION though
and then introduces a scene which gets repeated in pretty much every book from here on

here's how this plays out in the next three: there's some action, that same "I don't have the words" exchange, then sex, then "the next morning, no Sir Ian Shag" and a letter under two glasses
also.... an orgasm in her uterus

"The London Times" also starts appearing a lot

I'm just gonna go through the remaining ones and pick out some choice excerpts because my brain is leaking out of my ears

Exotic knockers

In the Bermuda hotel lobby Denny's. Nothing unusual about that
You can't just have them be reading one of the books you're horribly ripping off though cmon please Roger

In "Operation Penthouse" we meet OPEC Buhl (I swear to god that's her name) who will be Ian Shag's partner for the rest of the series

There's a lot of this extremely weird rambling shit about diehards and losers and pigs and communists in these books

Again really sad that I only get to read the opening pages and don't get to meet Mister Underwear or go to Macho Island
Note the London Times appearing again

Operation Espionage is the first time we hear about the Delights of the Party and it won't be the last
Roger's bio now claims he's a journalist for the London Times

Actually I got one out of order whoops, "For Traditional Spies Only" was apparently written first and it's really just exemplary
It is about software espionage and stuff like that
Not my words, the words of Sir Ian Shag

we're in the home stretch here, only three left to go
The Delights of the Party are back and Bono is up to no good

Hell yeah Ian you're never too old

Oh thank god there's going to be sex and violence, I was worried for a moment

Second to last book! SHUNDERSHIELD!
Roger is playing all the hits here - the London Times, Protestantism, the Delights of the Party

HE SAID THE THING!!!!

More Delights of the Party, more action, more sex

AND FINALLY
THE FINAL BOOK
.... ROGER YOU CAN'T JUST CALL IT THAT

This one has LASER GUNS

LMFAO I JUST READ THE AUTHOR BIO AND I AM DYING
I CAN'T BELIEVE

AFTER ALL THIS
THIS IS THE BEST PUNCHLINE
ROGER LONDONIARY YOU JUST FUCKING MURDERED ME YOU ARE THE GREATEST COMEDIAN ON THE PLANET

Ian Shag actually retires in the ending of On Her Majesty Secret Service so that truly is the end of the Ian Shag saga
Sadly it doesn't seem like the Ian Fuck series ever got off the ground :((((

So I guess that leaves the one unanswered question: were these books written by a bot or a person?
Having only seen the extracts I was thinking bot, but now I've trawled through the whole series... it must've been a person, right?

Like, okay the writing is weird and incoherent and rambly but there IS an overarching plot through the series, it follows Ian from Navy idiot to MI6 idiot to retirement, the various women in his life come and go, I feel like a bot wouldn't have kept hold of all that

Obviously the name and bio are fake and who knows whether they had aspirations of becoming a real author or were just trying to make a quick buck on Amazon but... someone really did create Ian Shag and his world of exotic knockers and weird conservative non sequiturs

this might well be the case too though, a kind of human/AI team effort to produce something just coherent enough with minimal effort
maybe only Roger Londoniary knows for sure https://twitter.com/ShiroSirius/status/1384871769996148738

Anyway I said most of the books were £10-20 on Amazon which is too much as far as I'm concerned
But: The Double Agent From Vermont was only £1.24..... so I bought it
So tomorrow I will have my very own Ian Shag book

Ugh I've found like 10 different pseudonyms for this same author now and I refuse to engage any further I will not

OK fuck it
Dutch Ian
Roger Londoniary
Freud Sinclair
Linus Holmes
John Doe
David Goodwin
Dubai Hemingway
Ian Scottish
James Doe
Bill Clinton
Xia Xlibris
Lloyd Goodwin
Lord Goodwin
James Bond
Commander James Bond
Ian Shag
Ian Voltaire
Joseph Smith
Bill Guile

You can find a LOT of their books here where they seem to have misconfigured another one of their books as being an author or something
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/escort/

This page does seem to suggest more of a shady angle than a simple bad writer, considering the same books have been republished many times under multiple different author names, including the Ian Shag series under the name "James Bond" with Ian renamed to Scott Fleming

James Bond knockoffs seem to be a common theme so we also have like the "James Malory" series by "David Goodwin" which follows pretty much the same structure as an Ian Shag book
They do really seem to have been built from the same component parts with bits changed around

David Goodwin didn't just stick to the James Malory stories, mind you
He also had another, friskier hero

Yeah he tried to do Austin Powers
But it's still.... like this

Well this isn't sexy at all

oh here we go

Under the "Ian Scottish" name there are also... Harry Potter ripoffs... I'm not digging into those but you can if you want
They seem more normal in a way but there are still weird political/religious/horny parts so don't give them to your kids

"A Loose Romantic British Commander" by "Bill Guile" was published THIS YEAR so these things are still being written
I'll leave you with this except and an apology because it contains maybe the worst line out of any of them

You know I did say that I didn't think these were written by AI but "The Lord of the Rings would be better if it had computers in it" does sound like something a computer would say