Why write Solarii Ascension?

A girl makes a promise in the snow. Two civilisations burn because she keeps it.

When I tell people I’m writing a book series and explain the premise in my carefully curated ‘elevator pitch’ I get the usual questions but there is a theme of “Why this story?”

The short answer is irritation. But before that, a little context.

I’m not twenty anymore. I’ve been around the block a few times. Over the years I’ve done a lot of things, many of them likely suggest I’m a ‘geek’ etc and that’s fine with me, I make no excuses for living my own life. I played role-playing games when in the eighties, once owned a comic shop, worked in photography dark rooms and design studios, trained martial arts for decades, and spent a lot of time running stupid distances and playing around on obstacles pretending to be an endurance athlete… And I still play video games (but mostly Call of Duty if I’m honest)

Through all of it, science fiction has always been somewhere in the background. Often in Audio books these days, but also in the my favourite films, games, books and comics

Like a lot of people my age, I grew up on Star Wars movies and the subsequent sci-fi boom of TV show’s like Blake’s Seven, the original Battlestar Galactica, and later the darker reboot. I was obsessed with Aliens when it came out in 1986. I went to see it with some friends from work when it premiered.

Then I went back.

And back again.

Sixteen times.

Yeah… I know, a little sad/obsessed.

I bought the books, the magazines, patches and the T-shirts (some of which I still have). Films like Blade Runner stuck with me just as deeply. To this day I still think it’s one of the greatest pieces of science fiction ever made despite a good friend saying “I don’t get why people love it, it’s just boring, dark and raining”.

So this series and subsequent project didn’t appear out of nowhere. It’s the product of decades of stories, ideas, and influences rattling around in my head… All the damn time.

But the actual spark?

Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that came from frustration.

The Irritation

I read a lot of science fiction. I listen to audio books constantly, usually while training those long runs or travelling.

Some of them are excellent. But over time I started noticing the same patterns appearing again and again.

Space marines of one kind or another fighting aliens.
Planetary invasions.
The heroic protagonist rising to save the day.
The chosen one discovering their destiny.

Now, for the record, there’s nothing wrong with those stories. They exist for a reason. They’re fun. Entertaining and thought provoking, sometimes.

But eventually they start to feel… predictable. You know where the story is going before it even starts.

The hero will struggle
They’ll suffer a bit.
Then they’ll rise, probably reluctantly at first, defeat the enemy, and everything will make sense again.

Real life rarely works that way. And, perhaps that is the point maybe you even want that. Cool. I get it, and this is NOT judgement.

The Question That Started It

Like most people these days I was doom-scrolling through channels and ended up in the obligatory ‘rabbit hole’, which, via a path I can no longer remember, ended sparking the a question:

How easy would it actually be to invade a planet?

Science fiction loves invasion stories. Giant ships appear over cities. Humanity panics. Things explode.

But if you stop and think about the logistics, it gets strange very quickly.

Even if you had mile-long warships, how many would you need to control an entire planet? How many troops can you realistically carry? How do you supply them? Where does the food and water come from and before you bravely say “food replicators” which I will accept is an answer, you’d still need a substrate of some kind, right?

Star Wars Universe Star Destroyer (TM):  Roughly 1600m / 1 mile Long
Crew: 9,700 Stormtroopers, 9,235 officers and 25,850 enlisted personal
(src: Wikis)

Now even if we use the sample stats and constraints of the Star Destroyer (which may or may not in itself be used for landing and occupation) we find ourselves with a ship at roughly a mile long and a Super Star Destroyer being 5 Miles long.

The point? Five miles of spaceship suddenly doesn’t seem that big when you’re trying to occupy a world.

And then there’s humanity itself. Humans are extremely good at surviving. It’s the reason we exist at all. Every generation alive today descends from people who figured out how to adapt when things went wrong. You don’t need to be a degree in anthropology to see that the humans that were not so good at survival didn’t make it.

So if an invasion really did happen… It probably wouldn’t go the way science fiction usually portrays it. And, even when it does happen, according to most sci-fi, it takes a few days and somehow the human race rallies, our hero finds a weakness and the aliens die or catch a cold. Yes, there are exceptions with long occupations (V being a classic)

But that thought stuck with me. A few days later another thought followed. If I couldn’t find the story I wanted to read…

Maybe I should write it.

The Story I Wanted

I wasn’t initially sure what I did want, but I know what I don’t want:

I didn’t want to write another heroic space opera.

I wasn’t interested in a chosen one or super hero.

I didn’t want a perfect military genius solving everything with the right weapon at the right time.

I really don’t want a reluctant ex-military super-warrior called back to war by circumstance because no-body else was capable.

And I really didn’t want some Mary Sue – Yes I’m talking to you Disney – You can fuck off.

And I definitely didn’t want revenge to magically fix everything.

What interested me instead was something much simpler.

Survival.

In one form that maybe as simple as: What drives us? Why go on? What is the human drive to survive, the human spirit in real terms? I won’t pretend some author leakage isn’t in there, but as the kind of idiot that puts themselves into some awkard situations and extreme events I just wanted to know:

What kind of person do you become if you survive the wrong things for too long?

Mara

The story begins with a fifteen-year-old girl. Her world ends on the way to school in Milton Keynes (because MK is essentially ‘ordinary enough’ and isn’t a capital city or the usual invasion hot-spot).

Everything she knows is destroyed.

Somehow she survives.

Twenty-five years later, the legends about her are everywhere. People whisper stories about the things she’s done. The enemies she’s hunted. The worlds she’s burned.

Most of those stories are wrong.

Mara isn’t a hero.

She didn’t choose the war.

She isn’t the chosen one.

She’s just what happens when someone survives things that should have killed them… and keeps going.

What the Series Is Really About

At its core, Solarii Ascension rests on three ideas:

• The enemy within is often worse than the enemy outside.
• The “greater good” corrupts almost everyone who claims to serve it.
• Revenge, in the end, is empty.

Everyone believes they’re the hero of their own story.

But the closer you look, the harder that claim becomes to defend. So this isn’t really a story about defeating monsters.

It’s about discovering who the monsters actually are.

A Small Tease

In this universe there are the Solarii — the people who survived and rebuilt.

There are the Astarii — the enemy humanity believes invaded them.

But wars built on misunderstanding rarely stay simple.

Somewhere in the middle of it all is a ship that shouldn’t exist.

And for reasons nobody understands… (and no – it isn’t because she is ‘special‘)

It recognises Mara.

Why I’m Doing This

I’m writing this series independently.

No studios. No committees. No one watering it down.

Everything comes directly from the questions and ideas that built the story in the first place.

This site is going to follow that journey.

The writing.
The world-building.
The artwork.
The strange places the story goes.

Where It Begins

The first book is Retribution.

But technically there’s a Book Zero sitting behind it. When you finish Retribution, you’ll understand why that story needs to be read afterwards.

Trust me on that.

For now, this blog is simply the development log while everything takes shape.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably curious enough to see where it goes.

The story begins with a girl in on her way to school in Milton Keynes. Everything after that is survival.