The worlds of Dunia and Eden II

I’ve had a blast imagining the Sable Riders worlds - and I hope you, too, have enjoyed a new and different reading experience. Discover more about Dunia and Eden II below:

Dunia

Eons ago and a universe away, Earth’s cities fell into a cesspool of poorly managed and strained housing, water, food, sanitation, energy, waste management, and urban governance challenges. Climate wars had broken out, and nuclear stand-offs were standard between governments and competing corporations.

To escape the escalating conflicts, the super-wealthy fled to their luxury domed bio homes and underground shelters on Mars.

Unfortunately, for the billions of Earth’s most poor, leaving their homes was not an option. They’d remained mired in semi-apocalyptic environments, roaming a ravaged earth in tribes who battled the never-ending climate crises whilst competing for the little remaining and fast dwindling resources.

The middle class, primarily composed of professionals, scientists and technologists, banded together under cooperative umbrellas. Each Co-Op commissioned space explorers to map out possible new planetary homes for them. Once secured, they’d massed their collective funds to build a series of generation ships, lined with sleeper pods, that were sent out into the cosmos to set up permanent homes for the thousands of people within.

Selene’s ancestors had been on the fourth wave of middle-class financed generation ships fleeing Earth.

They’d journeyed to a newly discovered Super-Earth, a planet almost 90 light-years away in the newly discovered Pegasi Galaxy. Orbiting two stars, the planet was 60 per cent larger than their previous home and four times as massive, with deep oceans, continents, a breathable atmosphere and a climate suitable for human life. Made so because, like its neighbour planets Rhesus, Alloria, Iccythria and Falasia, it was closer to the system’s twin stars of Alphetraz, near the inner edge of the habitable star zone. This allowed each planet’s global average surface temperature to stay almost constant. As a result, more water vapour persisted in these planets’ atmospheres, acting as a buffer, providing oxygen and stabilising surface conditions. Thus plant and animal life thrived in varying degrees across the cluster of five super planets and a dozen more planetoids.

The generation ship’s passengers had woken from their sleeper pods 120 years later on the new planet dubbed Dunia.

One of the explorers who’d gone ahead of the new settlers had given them some advice. That it would be prudent to first land a small group of clerics and spiritual leaders whose task it was to respectfully ask the planet for its permission to settle there.

For Dunia was sentient. It had a complex psionic mycorrhizal network controlled by a single intelligent mind made of mycelium strands that connected the entire planet’s biosphere. While this network distributed water, nitrogen, carbon and minerals throughout the planet, it had also merged itself over time to live in symbiosis with the entire ecosystem. It even wielded power to direct the biosphere to protect itself from its enemies using the sheer power of its leviathan-sized plants, trees and animals.

The clerics had battled a storm of almighty proportions and landed a shuttle on one of the supercontinents. Then, they’d pushed through rain and hail onto a beachhead that later became the groundbreaking point for the planet’s capital, New Malindi.

They’d sat on the sands of a stunning peninsula headland. There, against lashings from the hailing wind, they’d linked hands. They’d beseeched the planet to allow them to settle, promising to uphold the good of the new world for its biosphere and future generations.

The storm surge died, the giant trees calmed, and the driving ice fell away to a gentle drizzle. The planet had allowed the settlers to stay.

Over time, it picked one of the clerics, Silas Munene, as its human envoy. Thus Silas became the new planet’s Prime and the settlers’ new leader. Via Silas, the intelligence suggested that should they choose to stay, they may need to erect protective barriers under which to live. To protect them from the super-sized flora and fauna that could have proven lethal for humans.

The settlers built domes. The materials for the giant plasma-curved structures came from their Pegasi neighbour, the planet Rhesus. Its inhabitants, the Rhesians, were a group of humans from Earth’s first wave of generation ships. They’d developed Pegasi-friendly technology in their seven hundred years in the system, which they generously shared with their new neighbours.

That had been over five hundred years ago.

Fast forward to the current timeline - where Dunia is the antithesis of the Earth the original settlers had left behind.

Its surface consists of a string of supercontinents shrouded by vast forests, stunning lakes and one interconnected ocean teeming with wild sea life.

Under the transparent, twin sun-lit domes, Dunia’s cities are dense, designed for mixed and efficient land use that protects the natural environment, biodiversity, and food-producing areas. Domed farms provide the planet’s food needs. Supplemented by urban farming and community gardens that also host stunning green parks where the settlers celebrated a shared community and culture. Ecology, water and energy sharing are made possible through closed-loop systems.

Residents are not allowed to own a personal fossil-fuelled car, viewed on the one hand as one of the most cataclysmic inventions ever created by humans, yet also one of its most progressive. Instead, Dunians are encouraged to consider the various electromagnetic options. The planet’s transport system is an interlinked, centrally managed network of free fly-cabs, maglev trains and airships powered by Dunia’s twin suns.

A slew of urban designers continues to work extensively on the plans for each smart city, focusing on mobile, permeable blueprints that offer a varied, rich, personalised expression for Dunia’s innovation, creativity, and uniqueness.

The planet’s visionary and inclusive democracy relies on Dunians working with the planet itself to set a shared direction and vision for how they want to evolve and work together.

Eden II

The moon rock was initially built as a prison moon by the Rhesian and Dunia governments. Then, it was hailed as a first in the System and had accommodated the worst of the System’s crims, outlaws and thugs. However, after a few scandalous jailbird breakouts, the prison moved onto a large ring station that was easier to secure than a moon planet with ready-made tunnels for escape routes.

A decade later, a group of ex-cons requested the then Prime of Dunia for an off-planet habitation they could call their own - within easy reach of the mineral-laden asteroids that circled the System. Eager to rid Dunia’s surface of their rogue influence, he’d agreed.

He partnered with a habitat called Eden City that floated above Earth’s atmosphere. The people of this floating megacity had become Earth’s guardians after an apocalypse of great magnitude eons ago. Over time, they’d needed a foothold in the Pegasi system to re-home refugees, mainly from Earth.

The Prime offered the rock for free, and the Edenites the funds to build the first biodome.

When a civil war in Alloria broke out a few years later, Dunia and its other neighbours across Pegasi faced thousands of refugees they could not physically home. So they struck a second deal with Eden II. They would welcome the Allorian refugees, and in turn, Dunia would provide them with xentium to bolster their biomes, build ships and add tech to their security. They’d been taking in refugees for many years, especially from their home, Eden City, so they had the infrastructure to handle the Allorians. The Dunians also agreed to provide them with regular food drops, raw materials and necessary planetary resources.

Since then, the planetoid, which had enough space for a few hundred million, had welcomed the tired, weary, the homeless and the opportunistic into its embrace. It also drew the attention of other planets - more so, their various gangs and underworld groups - from drug gangs to mercenaries, ex-cons and ex-soldiers.

In the book’s timeline, the lunar planetoid consists of several biodomes - one central metro dome and hundreds more outlier domes, a mix of residential settlements, factory and storage burgs, shipyards and mixed living burgs, connected by above-ground gravity trains and accessible by flyers. Beyond the domes is a wild, remote and unsettled moonscape, rarely reached by any of Eden II’s inhabitants.

All the roads and grav trains on Eden II lead to the metropolis, which a Chamber of Elders runs. Each member has an equal say in legislating the moon planet’s administrative laws and regulations. But as we know, the true power on Eden II is The Sable Group.

The Sable Rider Series has been years in the making - combining my love for empowered characters who genuinely give back (and live not just for themselves but the communities they serve) with my hopelessly romantic nature. I also have a passion for plants, wildlife and preserving the world we live in (I’m a mad gardener!) - which is why I imagined a world that works in harmony with the people who are its guardians and a crew of badass protectors of what is good and true.

Utopia, I know, but we all have to start somewhere ;-)