It started with a thought:

“What is the future going to look like, five hundred years from now?”

Not exactly groundbreaking, I know, but the thought kept growing in my head. I started giving it serious consideration.

I’ve been fascinated by space since I was a child. This empty vastness capable of containing just about anything. There really is no better name for it: “space”.

I grew up on shows like Star Trek, watching The Next Generation on my old TV inherited from my grandfather, despite being supposed to sleep. That shaped me into the hopeful person I am now, and so I immediately made some assumptions.

  1. We aren’t going to cause our own destruction as a species. There are enough stories about the post-apocalypse out there, I wanted to create a story where our current problems are relegated to the history books

  2. The technological leap is large, but not so large as to be magic. This is where I will likely be wrong, but I wanted to write science-fiction, not science-fantasy. I wanted a reader to intuitively connect to the future’s technology, while still - hopefully - being forced accept that things have changed, and maybe wonder how much more they could have changed if I didn’t write to a contemporary audience.

  3. The societal leap is supposed to be uncomfortable, but interesting. Five hundred years of societal development is a long time, especially if you make the assumption that you make a colony on an alien planet with the people most adjustable to changing circumstances. The social values and norms I created should serve to make the reader question their own biases, while providing a plausible explanation for why people behave the way they do.

Thus, a mission statement:

Diversity is fantastic

Viridia is a world where, thanks to mastery of genetic science, anyone can become anything they want, and people are fine with that. The human body is no longer a sacrosanct ideal created in the image of some deity, it is a canvas that is yours. You get to create your own masterpiece, and so does everyone else.

Sexuality, gender, visual expression, and more have become things that are so diverse in this setting that our current debates seem laughable. Racism is a thing of the past, and so are genetic defects.

Humanity is exceedingly diverse, and it is celebrated.

Technology enhances

There exists so many stories where technology is posited as antithetical to humanity.

From cyberpunk to post-apocalypse, technology is posited as this dangerous thing that needs to be reined in or we might lose what makes us human.

Not so on Viridia.

Humans are no longer born the natural way, instead they are birthed while under the supervision of medical technology that has rendered genetic diseases a thing of the past.

This includes ageing. Thanks to technological progress, you no longer degrade and die thanks to the march of time. You get to decide how old you look.

AI and digital intelligences work in tandem with humanity, augmenting each other and compensating for each other’s flaws. Neither wants to eradicate the other, because it would be a net loss.

And thanks to fusion power and off-world space mining, humanity no longer pollutes the worlds they live on.

In the setting of Viridia. Technology enhances humanity. It does not replace or threaten it.

Exploring the unfamiliar

The planet named Viridia is specifically chosen for colonisation because it should not exist according to our understanding of the universe.

But humanity has never shied away from exploring the unknown, from stepping outside our comfort zone. Viridia presents novel problems that humanity has never encountered before.

And yet humanity still decides to handle it. They do not shy away from exploring the unknown, nor from attempting to understand it.

They want to understand it so they know how to handle it properly. How to integrate it, and how to use it to enhance their lives.

And humanity is not alone in this. From the perspective of Viridia, aliens have come down from the skies and begun to make a home for themselves.

It’s time to see how they might integrate into the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I buy the book?

Viridia is available for purchase in paperback on Olympia Publishers’ web store! Not to mention quite a few other retailers, including Amazon.

Olympia ships internationally, so regardless of where you are, you are able to get it, and if you want the E-book, you can get it from Amazon.

Can I get it signed?

Sure you can! But you will need to get in contact with me directly in that case. Easiest way to do that is through my email: Jacobharbo@gmail.com.

I also ship internationally, but you will need to pay the shipping costs. Each book will be sent, gift-wrapped, inside a large bubblewrap-lined envelope.

How long did it take to write Viridia?

I began the first furtive steps of actually writing Viridia during the Pandemic of 2020, so from the first words on paper to the publication has taken almost 5 years.

Though this is partly because I accidentally Pavloved myself into only being able to write while travelling. I could not simply sit down and write, I needed to be in transit before I was able to get my act together: Whether by bus, train, the back of a car, or even in the occasional plane, I wrote only while travelling.

I finished writing late 2023, from there it was the publishing process taking about another year

Again, I am not a professional author. Viridia was a project I wrote as a hobby, not because it was expected of me.

How did you get started?

It depends on how you define the ‘start’. I’ve been writing for roleplay purposes for more than fifteen years. Got my start in World of Warcraft, and from there it has just never really stopped. I enjoy creating characters to explore situations that the world we live in cannot provide.

I’ll never be a fantasy paladin, or a space explorer, or so many other things. Doesn’t mean I can’t write about such characters though.

But if you want to know how I got started on Viridia, it is this comment right here. I wrote a few paragraphs related to the events of the video, and people liked it, including the channel owner, Sethorven.

One of the people leaving replies to the comment, @connor5070, made a comment that I should write a book. And so… I began to give it thought.

I began to think up Viridia as a setting, as a concept, but it would have remained an idea…

If not for Sean “Day[9]” Plott deciding to start what he calls his DK30 - biannual 30-day periods where he gets his viewers encouraged to start on projects they might have for a 30 day period.

Well, I decided I would participate, and I spent the 30 days learning a few things from Masterclass.com from professional authors. In particular this class from James Patterson, and by the time the 30 days were over, I had a skeletal outline, a 0’th draft, of Viridia.

From there, it was just a matter of writing.

How did you find a publisher as an unproven author?

In a word: money.

I did not create Viridia to make a profit - I am not a professional author. I had money in the bank, and I was willing to pay to get Viridia published. I did not want my work to languish in self-publication, I wanted this done right.

And so, I approached Olympia Publishers, who offered me what is known as a Hybrid Publication deal - essentially, you pay them a one-time fee (in my case, 3.000£) and from there, you are given the full professional publishing process.

Now, hybrid publishing gets a bad rap from professional authors: publishers are supposed to make you money, not the other way around. But that’s the kind of elitist attitude that will have you running from publishing house to publishing house to agent to agent until you find one that is willing to take a gamble on an unproven author.

By paying that one-time fee, I was certain that the publisher I found was reputable. And that really gave me peace of mind.

If you want to make a profit, I cannot recommend this way, but if you have money and want to spend it to make your writing see the light of day, I cannot recommend it more.

Because at the end of the day, time is more valuable to me than money. And I would rather spend money finding a publisher than spend weeks, months, or even years of my life with constant rejections.

Is this porn? Did you write porn?

No, Viridia is not porn. But it does contain explicit sex scenes. There are a number of reasons for that, but the main three are thusly:

1) I wanted people to recognise this is a book for adults. It deals with some heavy topics about the nature of what it means to be human, topics that are not suitable for those who are not physically, emotionally, or sexually mature.

Consider the sex a filter: If the thought of reading about two - or more - people having sexual fun is a deal-breaker, you weren’t going to like the book in the first place.

2) I wanted the reader to feel some amount of culture-clash discomfort. Sexuality is far less taboo in the future than it is today, and thus it served as a great way to get the reader to recognise that the culture of the future is not the culture of the present. It’s a way for me to get people in the right mindset for reading the book: The world of Viridia does not conform to today’s society.

3) To quote TBSkyen, a Danish Youtuber and art-critic: “The world is kinky, human beings are kinky, and it's broadly speaking harmless so long everybody's educated. Repression is what leads to the damage, you know?” - it is a quote that I wholeheartedly agree with.

What about the story made you want to publish it?

This ties into the thought I had at the beginning of this page: I wanted to provide a counterpoint to all the fiction that posits the future will somehow be horrible for one reason or another.

It does not need to be. We have many problems that face our species - but so did our ancestors, and their ancestors. I bet that if they could see how the world developed in the aftermath, they’d think we have it made. You’re reading this thanks to the manipulation of atomic structures through the medium of electromagnetism.

Our world must seem utopic to them - at least if they could get past the cultural changes since their time.

What was the hardest part to write?

  • Chapter 31 deals with a lot of heavy subject matters that I really struggled to write. It is the lowest point of the main character, and even the following chapters deal with the ramifications of it. Even then, I am still worrying I didn’t do it justice.

    Why did I write it that way? Because I wanted to remind a reader that nature does not play nice. Evolution is a game with the highest stakes possible, and species will evolve traits that we consider abhorrent if it means they get to survive.

    If you have suffered anything even resembling what happens to the main character, I hope I did not make light of what you’ve gone through.

How hard was it to write in a language that’s not your native one?

Surprisingly easy, but then I have had a solid grasp of the English language ever since 4th grade elementary school. Thank you, Runescape.

Why did you write it in English in the first place?

Because I have a lot of friends who do not speak Danish, and so if I wanted to ask for opinions, or beta-readers, or wanted them to be able to read the final product, I needed to do it in English.

Not to mention, there are a lot more English publishers out there than there are Danish ones. I would reach a wider market.

In short, I had a lot more resources available to me thanks to choosing English as a language than I would have had if I chose Danish.

Now that Viridia is finished… any plans for a sequel?

No, and yes.

No:

I am at a point in my life where I need to focus my attention elsewhere.

I intentionally ended the book with all the pressing concerns and plots tied up. The ending is open, but it is not a cliffhanger. You are welcome to write fanfiction about what you think happens after the ending: Viridia, the book may have ended, but Viridia the setting has not.

Yes:

I have ideas for a continuation. But there is no timeframe. Hence why I wanted the book to end the way it does: It is a complete story. You can read it and reach a satisfying conclusion.