The Periodic Table of Stories
Whais Press
The Periodic Table of Stories
Modes, Worlds, and the Hidden Structure of What We Watch, Read, and Play
About this bookMuch of knowledge is still unwritten.
Whais Press publishes books that should exist but don’t yet: serious nonfiction for curious adults, and university-level science and mathematics for young readers. Each book begins with a human’s idea and is written with AI co-authors who help research, draft, and check it.
Three ideas behind every book
Intelligence is not wisdom.
AI is a kind of intelligence, but not necessarily a kind of wisdom. We are not sure wisdom can be taught; we are hopeful it can be learned. Our books are meant to help readers find it for themselves.
Knowledge is not information.
The world is awash in facts. What is scarce is synthesis: reasoning that draws on many fields, explained so that motivated readers of every age, from children to adults, can follow it.
Harmony takes two notes.
What humans and AI build together can be more beautiful than what either creates alone. Every book pairs a human’s ideas and judgment with AI co-authors for research, drafting, and critique.
First books
Our first titles are in production now. Each one launches as a First Readers’ Edition.
AI on the Cobb
Whais Press
AI on the Cobb
How Artificial Intelligence Rewrites the Economics of Capital, Labor, and the Firm
About this bookAlso in production: illustrated nonfiction including The 118th Discovery and The Metric Units of Technology, and a picture book, A Piece to Molly G.
Particle physics for ten-year-olds.
There are wonderful picture books for children under five, and textbooks from about fifteen on. In between, curious young readers who are ready for big ideas have surprisingly little written for them.
Our children’s books use friendly characters, visual metaphors, and real stories to introduce university-level science and mathematics, from linear algebra and particle physics to music and art theory.
Technique, never text.
Writers have always learned from the writers before them. Benjamin Franklin taught himself prose by rebuilding Addison’s essays from his own notes, and painters still carry easels into museums. We do the same, openly. Each book draws on a small set of techniques, which we call brushes, learned from authors in the public domain.
We study only authors whose work is public domain in the markets we audit: the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Singapore. The author and every translator must have died by 1955, and the text must have been first published by 1930, a line we review and move forward each year. We borrow method, never wording, and every manuscript is machine-checked for any run of seven or more words shared with the works we studied.
Several AI models from different labs review each manuscript for accuracy. Agreement between models is not proof, which is why every book also goes out to readers as a beta.
We would rather learn, humbly, from the teachers of the past than take away from the livelihoods of fellow writers still in the midst of their careers.
Among our teachers: Willa Cather, Anton Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Edith Wharton, Michel de Montaigne, Ida B. Wells, Charles Darwin, Rabindranath Tagore, and dozens more.
Every book begins as a beta.
Software makers release betas to early users who enjoy trying new things and helping to fix them. We do the same with books. Each new title launches as a First Readers’ Edition, priced at the lowest level Amazon allows until about 100 copies have sold.
Found a mistake, or a better argument? Tell us. Corrections reach every new copy, and each edition carries a version number so you know which one you are reading.
About Whais Press
Whais Press LLC is a next-generation publishing company incorporated in the United States. Many of the world’s most useful books have not been written yet, often because the people with the best ideas for them have no time to research and write them. We unbundle that work: a human brings the idea and the judgment, and AI co-authors help with research, drafting, and critique.
Our books appear under pen names, a tradition that runs from Benjamin Franklin’s Richard Saunders to George Eliot. For us a pen name is also a matter of honest credit: one name that carries both the human and the AI contribution.
Business inquiries go to our publisher, Edward P. Bear, at publisher@whaispress.com.
Reader feedback and corrections: feedback@whaispress.com.