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Eric Rhys Taylor

Shail + Trisan

The future was never meant for everyone.

Shail + Trisan cover
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Front flap

In the beginning, there were 8(9)

Trisan is just a regular kid trying to prove himself so he can stay on Earth. But the Earth Standards have other ideas. And soon he's a father, and his mom is a robot and his sister would rather he stop appearing on the news all the time, because she's the one who's supposed to be famous.

Shail + Trisan

Book One of the Cascade

In a far future Solar System, rival genetic lines wage war over humanity's legacy, each convinced they alone possess the key to our survival.

Accolades
Date published
Formats
Soft & Hardbound
Audio
eInk

Binding · who's who in Shail + Trisan

Open the full glossary →

  • Character

    Char

    A purple governess-class XOframe, badly worn and long overdue for an overhaul, who raised Shail and Trisan. "Enduring pain so that others will not is what makes us good people."

  • Character

    Chroma

    Chanta Corella, executive geisha, agent for more than one ORG, and Michi's lover. Speaks of herself in the third person, in verse. The obi is a weapon.

  • Character

    Entiat Chelan

    The Earth Trust Services officer responsible for the welfare cases of Diego GeoDome. Shail and Trisan are two of his files.

  • Character

    Jin Silic

    Last of a line of solar futures traders. Haggard, unwashed, no heredity to speak of. "Who would have thought..."

  • Character

    Michi Matsutoma

    Michi Matsutoma Newlan, fourteen, heir to Matsutoma ORG and adopted son of Rel Newlan. Hears voices, and has reason to. "Why did this happen to me?"

  • Character

    Rel Newlan

    Founder of Newlan ORG, member of the Triad, sole keeper of the alien artifact he builds his empire on. Demanding, visionary, controversial. "Expand or die."

  • Shail Fairchild

    Character

    Shail Fairchild

    Shail Didio Trax Fairchild, the Beast. Six foot nine, long red hair, and no patience for deliberation. "Action is the purest form of thought."

  • Character

    Sylhan Emo

    The Mother of Neohumanity. Founder of Emo ORG, first of her house, the finest genetic designer alive and the least restrained. "The best human is an adapted human."

  • Trisan Fairchild

    Character

    Trisan Fairchild

    Trisan Zil Fairchild, the Brain. Short, red-haired, a one-in-a-trillion genetic reflection whose eyes track independently, and the only person the AIs cannot read. "Can we just get this over with?"

  • Place

    Diego GeoDome

    A geoDome city on the edge of Earth's freeze zone: towers of stalactite and stalagmite sunk below the surface, with a vast iris that opens to the sky for traffic. Over a million interplanetary immigrants live there because the prosperous cities of Earth will not have them. Shail and Trisan are two of them.

  • Organisation

    Matsutoma ORG

    The house that built the premier bigmind space-construction works, and the superluminal observatory that went looking for humanity's next home. Michi is its last heir.

  • Organisation

    ORG

    A dynastic house built on an exclusive genetic line that its founders keep to themselves. ORGs sponsor, employ and adopt people, and run everything from shipyards to spies.

  • Technology

    XOframe

    Also XO, or simply frame. Robots linked to the Earth AI, from remote-driven waldos to fully self-aware beings. Each colour line shares one memory: purple frames keep house and raise children, red ones police, ivory ones teach. Char is a purple.

  • Concept

    Cascade

    Humanity's collective consciousness: an ancient mind as old as the internet that has absorbed every memory ever uploaded to it. Reached through anything from a wraparound visor to a full-immersion Cascade Trunk, where a whole life can be stored and lived again.

  • Concept

    Earth Standard

    The approved human genotype, enforced by Earth since the War of Standards and counted by generation. Anyone outside it is, officially, something less than human.

  • Concept

    Hybrid

    A designed human line, engineered past the Earth Standard. Expelled from Earth after the War of Standards, hybrids flourish in the Outer System, where the house of Emo leads the work. In the beginning there were eight. Or nine.

  • Event

    War of Standards

    The battle for control of humanity between the hybrids and the conventional lines. The conventional lines won, the hybrids were driven out to the Dark Planet, and the Earth Standard was written into law.

Back flap

SHAIL + TRISAN is a smart and fun BIOPUNK adventure in a future full of radical bioengineering and even more radical rejection. An unruly ensemble of siblings, scattered since birth across the colonies, must join forces to prevent humanity's extinction. Can they work together and will everything they do really make a difference in the end?

#8HYBRIDS

ERIC RHYS TAYLOR spent fifteen years crafting the intricate world of SHAIL + TRISAN, drawing inspiration from advances in genetic engineering, the rapid advent of AI and his fascination with family dynamics under extreme pressure.