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Galactic Powers · 2989 2GE
Select a power to light its dominion.
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Select a power to light its dominion.
Beware! O Wanderer!
Who treads amongst the shimmering Stars,
Of False Promises, lurking on your lonely Path,
Of Deceit, wearing the mask of thousand Smiles,
Of Truth, born from the womb of Lies,
Beware! O Wanderer!
Who seeks Courage in the dark of Night,
Of Prophets False, calling you to join their Fight,
Of Darkness… donned in the veil of Light
— A fragment of the Yalandeyan Epigraph,
discovered on Dirrin in the year 2990 of 2GE (Second Galactic Era),
author unknown.
The Known Galaxy was once bound together by the Galactic Council and a Great Peace that seemed it would never end. Then the Darantian Federation rose from the ashes of the Great Galactic War — and the peace died with the world of Immeria.
Generations later, the refugees who fled the Federation's tyranny are scattered across the frontier. Many never reached the promised sanctuary of Elendeya. Some ended their flight on Dirrin: a harsh desert world, once rich with the precious ore dirrieit, now a forgotten Protectorate where, as everyone says, once you arrive, you never leave.
Eliyar is one of them — an orphan raised in the dunes by his foster father, Sima; a dock engineer by day, a scavenger and fearless rider of the Southern Reach by night, and a dreamer who wants nothing more than to leave Dirrin behind and fly. But the season of superstorms is coming, old wounds are reopening across the planet, and the shadow that once burned a world is turning, at last, toward the desert.
The Known Galaxy — its powers and worlds, its peoples, and the long history behind The Starfall. Everything belonging to Dirrin itself keeps its own archive in the Dirrin section.
The people, places, creatures and machines of the Known Galaxy. Click any image to view it full size.
From a hand-drawn chart to a living world — the galaxy and the desert planet of Dirrin, where the saga unfolds.
The Known Galaxy in 2989 2GE. Hover a marked system to read it. The gold artery is the Galactic Spine Trade Route, running from Vaiatar in the north to Dunabis in the south.
— and the author's original hand-drawn charts —
Click any map to view it full size.
Twenty-three standard years after the Great Galactic War, a long-dormant threat begins to wake.
The Yalandeyan Odyssey follows that waking outward — from Dirrin, a forgotten world at the edge of known space, toward the centre of the Known Galaxy. It begins with a refugee’s son who wanted to see the stars, and who finds something he does not understand.
The Odyssey is built as three arcs of two books each. That shape was worked out in the notebooks long before the first chapter existed, and it is why Book I is large enough to be published in parts.
Book I is published in three parts:
Each part is a complete act rather than a fragment. But Book I is one story, and the parts are meant to be read in order. If you would rather wait and read Book I whole, that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do — I would rather you read it the way you want to than read it disappointed.
Dirrin has a Field Guide of its own — the planet, its weather, its wildlife and the people who ended up there. It is free, and it is a reasonable place to look around before committing to a book.
It came to me one night close to midnight, twenty-five years ago, as a single scene. That scene lit something, and out of it came the Known Galaxy. Then the first timelines, the first events and civilizations, and the first characters — among them Eliyar, a refugee’s son who longs for the stars, on a world the Protectorate governs and the rest of the galaxy has forgotten.
And then I wrote nothing at all.
For sixteen years there were jobs, careers, family, the ordinary shortage of hours. But the Odyssey would not leave. It grew instead. More scenes, more events, more characters stepping out from behind the veil. Timelines lengthened. Cultures acquired histories. I drew the map of Dirrin by hand, long before there was a first chapter to go with it. My notes became almost books in themselves.
Eventually it was obvious that the story wanted out.
So, sixteen years late, I wrote the first chapter in pencil, and promised myself that if I finished it I would not stop. By Chapter III I had moved to a laptop, because by then there was no chance of leaving the story alone. Eight months later the first draft of Book I, all three parts, was done.
Then life rolled in again and the edit sat for eight years. The story did not go quiet. It kept revealing worlds, until finishing it was the only option left.
The Starfall is the first part of that book. Twenty-three standard years after the Great Galactic War, a long-dormant threat begins to wake. Stranded on the remote, forgotten world of Dirrin at the edge of known space, Eliyar makes a discovery whose significance he does not understand, and sets in motion a conflict far larger than himself.
I am not a full-time novelist. I came to this from astronomy, orbital mechanics and a long interest in how a world actually works — which is why there is a Field Guide to Dirrin as well as a book, and why the map came before the first chapter.
Parts Two and Three are in editing.
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Available now on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover — and as an ebook on Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Everand, Google Play, Bookshop.org and more, with Apple Books on the way.
A ten-page illustrated field guide to the desert world of Dirrin: its regions, its peoples, its ore and its storms. Free when you join the reader list — and you will be first to hear when the next part of the saga arrives.
Once a dirrieit-rich republic, now a forgotten Protectorate at the wrong end of the Galactic Spine. Turn it with the mouse.
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Dirrin turning on its axis — the Belt and its glacier-capped Fangs, the dune seas, the Red Plateau and the Three Sisters craters, with the superstorm running the length of the southern dune sea.
— and as it is seen from orbit —
Its places, its peoples and factions, its beasts and its marks. For the powers and worlds beyond its sky, see The Universe.
