Today we talk about EXPERIMENT – FAILED… REPEAT, a book by William A. Pollard published with our publishing house Europe Books.
Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author William A. Pollard to get to know him better, what prompted him to the writing of his book EXPERIMENT – FAILED… REPEAT, as well as how he chose the title of his book.
Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!
- What prompted you to the writing of your book?
It is a scientific fact that plants talk to each other – and to animals and insects. For example, a flower talks to bees and wasps via its colour. The wrong colour and the bee will not visit the flower to feast on its nectar. Plants also give off certain vibrations to attract, or repel, insects. Further, plants have been recorded talking via their root network, warning of an insect invasion and even registering pain when a plant is pruned. I, personally, have cultured innocent looking plants with petals that have burnt my skin when stroked (Zantedeschia aethiopica – “arum lily”), and one frequently reads, and hears, news articles about dogs attacking people (and babies!). I read an article in The Times, dated 21 January, 2026, about a tourist found dead on an Australian beach, attacked by Dingoes. Supposing this scientific hypothesis is taken one step further, and plants and animals’ rebel against the human race? It’s possible… isn’t it?
- What are the crucial themes of your work?
There follows an extract from a critique provided by Ginevra Grasso (Europe Books) that answers this question : This story is a crossover between procedural thriller and eco-SF. The hook lands early: Professor Max King, Inspector Dave Reed, and the forensics duo (Monica Lake and Simone Poulter} walk into what looks like a standard scene-and then the floor drops out. The lovers in the meadow are not just victims; they’re literally interlaced with the environment. The moment Max can’t lever the bodies, peels back skin, and discovers grass rooting through pores-and Simone exposes the carotid choked with “a mass of tangled, tiny grass flowers”-is a superbly staged set-piece that fuses dread with scientific plausibility. It stayed with me. From there, you escalate confidently: the Skegness sequence with the boy swaddled in kelp “like a papoose,” impossible to free until the roots are hauled up, is chilling in its quiet logic. And the Orleans forest chapter, with its imported banyan and gorse turning the clearing into a trap, delivers the kind of large-scale horror that feels earned by the groundwork you’ve laid. I also appreciated the tonal counterpoint-the dry, friendly sparring between Max and the team (the second-hand bookshop quip made me smile) that keeps the human thread alive even as the stakes broaden. The prologue’s cosmic frame-refugee ships, a dead homeworld, and the triple warning about tampering with time, evolution, and the galaxy-gives the investigation a mythic shadow without crowding it. It’s a neat premise that the intimate, forensic puzzles we’re solving have galactic consequences. A particularly impactful passage for me, and the one I’d highlight in any public note, is Simone’s reveal of the chlorophyll-tinged tongues and the artery “flowering” that literally occludes blood flow. It’s precise, visual, and thematically perfect: nature isn’t merely striking back-it’s replacing us, cell by cell.
- What is the message you want to convey to the readers?
Three statements in the book represent the message that I try to get across :
- If you tamper with the Galaxy, it will bite you.
- If you tamper with evolution, it will bite you.
- If you tamper with time, it will bite you.
The human race is considering a programme to occupy the moon to use this as a stepping stone to visit Mars. Why? I’m all in favour of scientific progress to improve human lifestyle and well being, but why does human curiosity demand that we leave this planet to explore other worlds? Isn’t it more likely that our planet is overcrowded and we are looking to find another planet to occupy and overcrowd? Perhaps we cannot accept that we are alone, and we are searching for a neighbour – but that, in itself, embraces its own dangers…With regard to evolution, It is a fact that humans have genetically engineered plants to increase output for our crowded populations. Are we not in danger of tampering with evolution in this way? Who knows? Finally, the main theme of this book is that it is possible to create a paradox if we can somehow tamper with time. Aliens are compelled to travel back in time to recue the human race from a planet that has degraded past it’s sell-by date, but the humans that the aliens are rescuing are the aliens’ ancestors, so the aliens have to recue the human race to save themselves from obliteration. The paradox – if the aliens don’t rescue the human race, they (the aliens) won’t exist. If the aliens do rescue the huma race they will create a paradox of themselves in that by rescuing your ancestors, you enter a time paradox that is impossible to break.
- How did you choose the title of your book?
This question is easy. The aliens terraform a planet (earth) to grow crops for themselves, an experiment that may enable the aliens to settle on the planet. But this experiment goes wrong when they tamper with the Galaxy by destroying a neighbouring sun, encouraging evolution to make a wrong turn. So, the aliens must destroy this experiment, by destroying the planet but they create a time paradox by having to rescue the humans – the humans being a consequence of the aliens interference with Galactic manipulation.
- Can you tell us more about your next literally work?
My next literary work is now with Europe books to be edited and published. Called “A Cruel Injustice” looks back in time to a period when witches were feared and the witchfinders were employed to interrogate and torture people into confessing that they are witches. The main theme is one of making a false allegation against an innocent woman who is eventually burned at the stake for being a witch. The consequences of this cruel injustice is that, three hundred and seventy-nine years later, eleven people are murdered in seemingly unrelated random locations across the country. No evidence. No motive. The past, it seems, has a long memory.
Europe Books thanks the author William A. Pollard once again for taking the time and answering our questions. We are really pleased to have walked alongside him on the editorial path that led to the publication of his book EXPERIMENT – FAILED… REPEAT. We wish him the best of luck for his book and for his future works.
To you, my dear reader, I hope that the main theme of this book will fascinate and intrigue you, and that it will help you understand scenarios and realities that are unknown to you, so that you can draw new food for thought from them.
So, my dear reader, all I have to say is to enjoy your reading!
Your Editor!