Hopeful science fiction. Tomorrow is worth building.
Meet the Settlers of Esperan
A free, spoiler-free character guide to five of the people trying to turn a shared dream into a home. Join the newsletter and it lands in your inbox.
Maya Okonkwo
Settlement coordinator
“We came here to grow something different.”
Rodriguez
Materials engineer
“Deep breath, amigo. We’ve got this.”
Chen Wei
Lead botanist
“I’m a scientist. I’m never sure.”
Kovač
Security and logistics
“We adapt.”
Marcus Webb
Solar engineer
“We should schedule some time for wonder.”
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A Seed in Tender Soil
Debut novel, coming spring 2027
Forty-eight colonists. Seventeen countries. One hundred days to prove that a better way of living is possible.
Maya Okonkwo crossed eleven light-years to help build a society that runs on consensus, not command. Her first step onto the planet Esperan sinks ankle-deep in rust-colored mud. Then it starts to rain.
The terraforming drones never finished their work. The clean water is running out. The solar engineer and the botanist can’t agree where to put a single panel, and eleven-year-old Sofia hates every inch of the place. Every hard choice goes to the circle under the meeting tree, and every vote costs time the settlement may not have.
Then the first real storm comes.
A Seed in Tender Soil is hopeful science fiction about ordinary people learning, one argument at a time, how to live together on a world that never asked for them.
“The whole grove was one instrument, forty or fifty trunks of it, and the chord shifted every time the air did.”
The wind trees, from A Seed in Tender Soil
About Joel
I write solarpunk science fiction: stories set in futures where humanity chose to build rather than burn. My debut novel, A Seed in Tender Soil, follows 48 colonists from 17 countries as they try to build a new society on an alien world through consensus rather than conquest.
When I’m not writing about hopeful tomorrows, I’m a parent of four, navigating the beautiful chaos of raising the next generation. I believe the best science fiction doesn’t only warn us about the future. It inspires us to build one worth living in.
Say hello
Podcast invitations, collaboration ideas, a question about Esperan, or just hello. I read everything and reply by email.