Back to where it all began

The Vienna launch · 22 November 2025 · By Kerim Tapkan

Returning the book to the place where its story began.

Back to the beginning

For me, Vienna means much more than one of the cities in which P.X: No Man’s Space takes place.

The novel begins at Ballhausplatz in 1815, during the Congress of Vienna, as Europe’s political order is being reshaped after the Napoleonic Wars. An event that seems small within its own time becomes the first link in a chain reaching more than two centuries into the future: to Kai Carson’s life and humanity’s first real encounter with civilizations beyond Earth.

Vienna is therefore more than a historical backdrop. It is where the story begins, and where the first connection between its past and future is made.

22 November 2025

While writing the book, I promised my wife, Fulya, that I would publish P.X: No Man’s Space on her birthday, 22 November.

The unexpected part was that our trip to Vienna had not been planned for that purpose. We had booked our flights about three months earlier. At that point, I did not know exactly when the book would be finished, and I had no intention of organizing a launch in Vienna. The journey had no connection to a publishing plan.

Then, through a remarkable coincidence, the book was ready just in time.

On 22 November 2025, Fulya’s birthday and the date I had promised her, the Legacy Edition (Vienna) of P.X: No Man’s Space was published. We were already in Vienna. The book’s first launch had found its setting almost by itself.

A simple idea suddenly acquired a great deal of meaning: take the first printed copy to the place where the story began.

That day, I carried the book to Ballhausplatz. The novel opens there in 1815. More than two hundred years later, the first real-world journey of the printed book reached the same place.

A promise, a coincidence and Ballhausplatz

P.X was the result of roughly two years of writing and development. Over that time, 22 November had become more than a publication target. It was a promise to Fulya.

I wanted the book to be ready by that date. I had not planned to mark the occasion in Vienna.

In the end, three separate threads met: the novel’s story beginning in 1815, my own two-year writing journey, and a personal promise to my wife. An ordinary plane ticket booked months before became part of the book’s story.

That is why the photographs from the trip mean more to me than conventional book-launch photographs. They record the moment I took the first printed copy back to the starting point of its entire story.

I continued working on the novel after the Legacy Edition, and the Second Edition was published on 1 August 2026. But 22 November 2025 and Ballhausplatz will always hold a special place in its publishing journey.

Why Vienna matters to P.X

Although No Man’s Space develops into a large-scale first-contact story in the present day, its roots reach much further into human history. One of the novel’s central questions begins there: how well does humanity really know its own past?

A small mystery in Vienna in 1815 grows into a question about Earth’s place in the universe more than two centuries later. That connection is an essential part of P.X.

I had brought the book back to the place where its story began.

English translation adapted from Kerim Tapkan’s “The Vienna Connection” media-kit account.