Press Kit
Pillars: Science and Other Profitable Lies
A satirical novel by Dr. Andrew Brandeis about medicine, ambition, productivity culture, and the machinery that turns a profitable narrative into public truth.
Apex Pharmaceutical and Restempic are fictional extensions of the novel. Secondary Effects is the author's newsletter.
About the Book
Pillars: Science and Other Profitable Lies is an adult satirical novel by Dr. Andrew Brandeis, a physician and healthcare entrepreneur. Zach Sumthing is very good at arranging true facts into narratives that produce false conclusions.
When Apex Pharmaceutical develops a drug that ends the need for sleep, Zach invents the disease that makes it prescribable. He names it. He funds the research. He destroys the scientist who finds the brain damage. And he tells the story so well that the biggest fraud in pharmaceutical history feels like a public service.
Pillars is a story about the narratives we are sold, the people who sell them, and the consequences we refuse to foresee.
One-Sentence Description
A pharmaceutical marketing executive launches a drug that eliminates sleep, invents a disease to expand the market, and discovers that a civilization does not need to be conquered when it can be persuaded to optimize itself.
Quick Facts
- Title
- Pillars: Science and Other Profitable Lies
- Author
- Dr. Andrew Brandeis
- Publisher
- Post Hill Press
- Publication date
- March 23, 2027
- Category
- Literary fiction / Satire
- Length
- Approximately 65,000 words
- Tone
- Funny, clinical, morally slippery, pharma literate, literary, and increasingly horrifying
Hook
A pharmaceutical marketing executive launches a drug that eliminates the need for sleep, invents a disease to expand the market, and watches the world reorganize itself around the narrative he built.
About the Author
Dr. Andrew Brandeis is a physician and co-founder of OK Capsule, a personalized supplement company. His work in healthcare, wellness, and consumer behavior gave him a close view of how medical narratives are built, sold, defended, and absorbed into everyday life.
He is also a painter, musician, yogi, husband, and father, though not necessarily in that order and rarely at the same time. Pillars: Science and Other Profitable Lies is his first novel.
Media Angles
- № 01
What If Sleep Became Optional?
Pillars begins with a fictional pharmaceutical premise: a drug that eliminates the need for sleep. The question is not only whether such a drug should exist, but how quickly a tired, productivity-obsessed culture would learn to want it.
- № 02
A Physician Writes A Pharma Satire
Dr. Andrew Brandeis brings firsthand fluency in healthcare, wellness, patient behavior, and medical messaging to a satire about how commercial narratives become public truth.
- № 03
The Disease Comes After The Drug
The novel explores a familiar but uncomfortable commercial pattern: once a product exists, language, experts, institutions, and consumer identity can be organized around expanding the market.
- № 04
Productivity Culture As Body Horror
Restempic begins as a productivity drug. Its deeper horror is cultural: a world where rest becomes morally suspicious, exhaustion becomes a personal failure, and opting out becomes economically irrational.
- № 05
Fictional Worldbuilding As Literary Discovery
The book is supported by fictional public artifacts from the world of the novel, including Apex Pharmaceutical and Restempic. These are not medical claims or deception campaigns; they are literary extensions that make the satire feel close enough to touch.
Pull Quotes
“The central question is not whether a drug like Restempic should exist. The question is how quickly we would rationalize it if it did.”
“Pillars is a satire about the stories institutions tell when profit needs a moral vocabulary.”
“Restempic does not conquer the world. It gives the world permission to keep doing what it already wanted to do.”
“Zach Sumthing is not a villain because he misunderstands the system. He is frightening because he understands it completely.”
Press FAQ
Press Contact
Submissions are sent privately. We typically respond within a few business days for interview requests, review copies, and event inquiries.
World of Pillars
Pillars is connected to a restrained fictional ecosystem that extends the novel's critique of pharmaceutical marketing and productivity culture.