SYNTOPIA EPISTEME

The old world is sinking... ...but one young woman is designing a new one. Not a utopia. Not a dystopia. A syntopia. A solarpunk floating future for stateless sea nomads. A future empires cannot tolerate. When hired guns close in, she designs resistance. Floating Eden Defies Empires. As the world is being parceled out, Ayesha, born Bajau, a stateless Southeast Asian sea dweller, loses her mother in a traumatic accident. Orphaned in Sumatra, adopted in Singapore, her Leonardesque gift for drawing leads her to study design in France. At every stage of her journey, mentors and bullies, some real and some composite, appear like stepping stones across a widening river delta, sharpening her worldview and refining her sense of what design can be at its worst, and what it should be at its best. Upon returning to her beleaguered stilt village, Ayesha commits herself to helping her maritime community by prototyping self-sustaining floating islands from salvaged plastic and low-tech ingenuity, with the support of her former orphanage bully turned corporate lawyer, a retired U.S. Army engineer, and a gifted Bajau teenager.

Neither utopia nor dystopia, the emerging artificial archipelago is called a Syntopia: places that design together. But when her half-moon, glinting Eden draws predation, relentless pressure and intimidation from hired guns follow. Can the Bajau keep their future afloat when land-dwellers keep dragging it under? Written by a professor of design, SYNTOPIA EPISTEME: a Design Odyssey is conceived as the first volume in a series of speculative epic, Vernian novels intended to make design theory and practices vivid, thrilling, and cinematically engaging for students.