About Violet

The day came when Luna reunites with the rays of the sun. On this day the people who live on Luna celebrate with matsuri, but Violet looks on from the top of a tower held behind the walls of the government that manages the precarious state of human settlement in space – the Sol Alliance Nexus (SAN) – to which she is bound by ascribed duty. The contentment Violet feels during the days spent flouting SAN with her closest friend and confident, Kibou, shatter when SAN presses her into service as the only representative of the government not tainted by past decisions. However, Violet’s perceived emptiness lies in tension with the militant agitators from Mercury and Venus destabilizing the few mineral and food supply chains holding humanity up among the stars. Violet’s reluctance floats along until the confluence of ideology, simmering anti-human augmentation sentiment, popular frustrations, and governance failures compel her into a fateful decision that forces her to decide who she will become, what her story will be, and who she is in a world bucking against Fate itself. Violet can only rise to purpose, reunite humanity and cease the wheel of karma, by accepting the fact that “I do not exist.”

Consider how human settlement in space could actually proceed. Enduring the lack of breathable air, fertile soil, protection from radiation, and prolific space junk will require civilization to overcome unprecedented engineering challenges and new logistics. On top of that, in Violet, the Earth is walled off from the Sol Alliance Nexus (SAN) by a shell designed to conduct global ecological restoration. This split among humanity effectively makes SAN the thinnest barrier between survival for humanity in space and an unprecedented civilization collapse – worse than the Bronze Age Collapse by far. Violet also engaged with the trouble of unity among a society spread out among the planets from Mercury to Jupiter – years of travel time and communication delays of hours. This is to say nothing of the ideological division among those humans with trans-humanist augmentations and those without. With all this in mind Violet has one central crisis that shatters that thin barrier managed by SAN: what happens if the food production shuts down?

How would you save those stuck inside a burning home who cannot fathom the fire? One of the most well-known of the Buddhist parables is The Parable of the Burning House. In Violet this parable is invoked to capture Earth’s and humanity’s perilous position and the purpose to which Violet must rise. That is not the end to the role of Buddhism in Violet or the various literary elements. Saṃsāra is a central Buddhist principle and its cessation is a purpose for which the bodhisattva of wisdom deploys a ‘wrathful’ form. To this, how can you end a war without drawing blood? At that point does engagement in a chaotic world necessitate such a form capable of subduing the deity of death itself? Read more about the Buddhist themes, and other inspirations, present in Violet here.

The novel Violet takes inspiration from Japanese literary fiction, Japanese culture, and forms of Japanese artistic expressions. The world of the Sol Alliance Nexus is not only a fusion of cultures set in the near future, but is predicated on a strong infusion of Japanese features. The rhythm and momentum of the novel follows a pace known as Jo-Ha-Kyū as the literary novel structure of Kishōtenketsu which breaks from the structure of western novels and can de-emphasize conflict as the force behind the plot. Of the most importance is Yūgen, a Japanese aesthetic about what exists behind the veil. Yūgen is much more than concealing a subject, rather, it is a way to focus on the possibilities and potential that exist beyond the veil. Read more about the elements of Japanese literature, culture, and art that inspired the novel here.