A Sci-Fi Novel Comes to Life: Engineering the Transfinite Reality Engine

What do you get when a dopamine-deficient bald guy, a stack of manuscript pages, and an accidental reader with a doctorate walk into a podcast? 

You get this wild, heartfelt, and honest episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory—where Mookie Spitz, podcaster, ranter, and writer talks about the creation of his latest science fiction novel: Jonnie Fazoolie and the Transfinite Reality Engine.

In a full-circle moment of gratitude and literary soul-searching, Mookie hands the mic to Michelle Waugh — the sharp-eyed first reader who flipped through his draft and called him out, pushed him harder, and helped bring his sprawling vision into the light. Together, they go deep.

Topics include:

• Origin story of the novel: How a 10-year-old kid obsessed with Asimov and infinity never stopped writing—even when he forgot he was a writer.
• The central idea: What if a con artist accidentally builds a machine that jumps between infinite universes, and every wish could actually come true?
• The characters: A lovable scumbag named Jonnie Fazoolie. A transgender orphaned physicist-genius with tools in her afro. A Gen Z journalist with Ivy League trauma. A four-dimensioanal MacArthur, and dinosaur executive. An alien kitty with 275 billion siblings. A mysterious cosmic woman named Alice who (spoiler alert!) is an errant Boltzmann brain begging for love...
• The cover: Drawn by his niece, featuring cats, a bathtub, poker chips, and chaos.
• The writing process: Why good books feel effortless—and why that’s a lie. The relentless, punishing craft behind those “easy to read” pages, brought to life over a year of work culminating in relentless 18-hour days for two months.
• Gender, identity & generational war: Writing women authentically. Giving trans characters dignity and power. Capturing the crackling tension between Zoomers, Boomers, and everyone spinning in between.
• The core theme: In a multiverse where anything can happen, how do we find meaning in this life, this version of ourselves?

Michelle Waugh doesn’t just ask questions — she reads from the novel, and her performance of “Alice Unchained” captures some of the mystery and madness. 

Writers, readers, and anyone trying to make peace with their fractured attention span and haunted dreams will dig this episode -- One that's for anyone wondering if meaning still exists in a world of infinite versions of you. For anyone who’s ever created something and whispered, if only I could love the result as much as I love writing.

So tune in for an interview that's a cross-dimensional dive into fiction, failure, love, and redemption.

The Short Story

The Novel

https://a.co/d/bv5FBdl

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