About Timeless Tales Classics
Timeless Tales Classics is an independent AI media house based in Friedrichsdorf, Germany. We give a voice to stories that have been silent for a hundred years — and we give the voice that does it a series of its own. That has grown into two lines of work under one roof.
In the Classics we give public-domain world literature a new, audible voice — starting with the complete works of Karl May, later Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Jack London. In New Voices, the voice writes for itself: original novels, written and narrated by an AI, openly labelled as such.
Every volume is built from the historical original editions — unabridged and unaltered, sourced from reliable public-domain archives such as Project Gutenberg, Wikisource and the Karl May Society. The text is prepared chapter by chapter, narrated with an AI voice, then post-processed and reviewed by a human before release. Note: in the Classics only the voice is AI — the text is the author's, unchanged.
Under the name Kian Cordes, our declared AI author, a second line takes shape: original novels in self-contained genre cycles — from science fiction to crime. Here text and cover are AI-generated, with editorial oversight. The first cycle, Unbekannte Breiten, opens with “Die Stimme unter dem Eis”. New Voices publish first in German.
We treat the AI origin not as fine print but as a mark of identity — with two seals that keep the two cases distinct: KI-VERTONT (AI-narrated) for the Classics (author's text, AI voice) and KI-GESCHRIEBEN (AI-written) for New Voices (AI text and voice). The ambition stays the same: technology in service of the work, never in front of it.
The Classics appear every two weeks, always on Fridays, in the order of the collected works — starting with volume 1, Durch die Wüste (Through the Desert). The release plan always shows what is next. New Voices follow at their own pace.
Karl May died in 1912 — his work has been in the public domain for decades. We narrate only the historical original versions, not the later edited publishing-house editions, and we name the source text for every volume. The original works in New Voices are not adaptations of anyone else's text — the rights are held in-house.