IT entrepreneur Ruslan Nonka founded sci-fi publisher Lobster in 2024. Two years on, its Bobiverse trilogy has sold over 8,000 copies in Ukraine

The Ukrain­ian pub­lish­ing house Lob­ster has set its own sales record in its two years of exis­tence. Its most suc­cess­ful project has been a tril­o­gy about a pro­gram­mer who trans­forms into arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

The series in ques­tion is Den­nis E. Tay­lor’s Bobi­verse (a set of 3 books) by Cana­di­an sci­ence fic­tion author Den­nis E. Tay­lor, com­pris­ing *We Are Legion (We Are Bob)*, *For We Are Many*, and *All These Worlds*. The tril­o­gy has sold more than 8,000 copies: 7,000 in print and over 1,000 as audio­books.

Why Bobiverse Became a Hit

The series’ main char­ac­ter is an ordi­nary pro­gram­mer named Bob Johans­son. After his death, he awak­ens as an AI aboard an inter­stel­lar space­craft, and his con­scious­ness is lat­er copied into numer­ous sep­a­rate per­son­al­i­ties. The author, Cana­di­an sci­ence fic­tion writer Den­nis E. Tay­lor, is him­self a for­mer soft­ware engi­neer.

The pub­lish­ing house describes the tril­o­gy as an epic space odyssey com­bin­ing “sci­ence fic­tion, IT humor, dynam­ic inter­stel­lar bat­tles, and pro­found philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tions on the nature of con­scious­ness.”

In response to read­ers’ ques­tions, Lob­ster announced that it is already work­ing on the pub­li­ca­tion of the fourth book in the series.

How the Publishing House Operates

Lob­ster is an inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing house spe­cial­iz­ing in con­tem­po­rary sci­ence fic­tion and his­tor­i­cal non­fic­tion. The com­pa­ny describes this com­bi­na­tion as a delib­er­ate prin­ci­ple: sci­ence fic­tion explores pos­si­bil­i­ties for the future, while non­fic­tion exam­ines and inter­prets the past.

The cat­a­log pri­mar­i­ly con­sists of trans­lat­ed lit­er­a­ture, with pub­lish­ing rights acquired through inter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary agen­cies. Its sci­ence fic­tion selec­tion includes space opera, dystopi­an and post-apoc­a­lyp­tic fic­tion, cyber­punk and books about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, eco-fic­tion, mil­i­tary sci­ence fic­tion, and sto­ries about con­tact with oth­er civ­i­liza­tions. Oth­er titles include nov­els, mem­oirs, detec­tive fic­tion, adven­ture sto­ries, and queer lit­er­a­ture. Each pub­li­ca­tion under­goes a sep­a­rate selec­tion and edi­to­r­i­al process, with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion paid to trans­la­tion qual­i­ty and visu­al design.

Lob­ster founder Rus­lan Non­ka entered the pub­lish­ing busi­ness from the IT indus­try. The pub­lish­ing house­’s team con­sists of pro­fes­sion­als with more than a decade of expe­ri­ence in the pub­lish­ing indus­try. Pre­vi­ous­ly, they had worked with authors and lit­er­ary agen­cies from var­i­ous coun­tries and across dif­fer­ent book mar­kets.

In addi­tion to pub­lish­ing books, the com­pa­ny sup­ports the PAX plat­form, which aims to devel­op the sci­ence fic­tion com­mu­ni­ty.