MAYA: Seed Takes Root

An insect will soon go extinct. Seven years later, this will cause a civil war that kills millions. The Divyas know this. Through their planetwide network of Maya trees, they can see all that is, and therefore, predict all that will be. They intervene invisibly. The insect will survive. The war will never happen. No one will ever know. On Neh, seven species tether daily to Maya. The trees immerse them in play, fable, and the company of the living and the dead. The Divyas rule all of Neh without armies. Why force obedience when you can shape desire itself? Now, the Divya Trials have been announced. Billions will compete. One will ascend to godhood. In every future predicted by the Maya network, the outcome is certain: the son of a god will win. Kshar disagrees. He has rehearsed the scion's assassination a hundred times in Maya's simulations. In seventeen minutes, a single fruit will begin a cascade that ends in a riot. The plan is perfect. Every move predicted. Every breath choreographed. Except one. Yachay. Nineteen years old. Maker of riddles. His grandfather has staked their lives on him winning the Trials. But Yachay seeks what he has been kept away from. Maya. He doesn't know: When you gaze into Maya, Maya gazes back into you. MAYA: Seed Takes Root is systems fiction for the age of big data, artificial intelligence, and institutionalized extraction. It asks the questions that define our time: Who controls our stories? Who profits from our data? And in an age of perfect prediction, is freedom still possible? Hugo Weaving (beloved as Agent Smith in The Matrix, Elrond in The Lord of the Rings) narrates the audiobook. Neuroscientist Anil Seth, famed for his work on consciousness research, and author of Being You, has written the foreword to the novel.

Anand Gandhi is a polymath filmmaker and public intellectual credited with ushering India's new wave of cinema. He has created culture-shaping projects across media. His debut feature Ship of Theseus won India's National Award for Best Film (the country's highest honor; often likened to the Academy Award for Best Picture) and was hailed by the UK Critics' Circle as "life-changing;" collecting major prizes at festivals including Transilvania; Tokyo; and BFI London. His mythological horror epic Tumbbad; now regarded as a contemporary classic; opened Venice Critics' Week; and won Filmfare and Sitges awards. Zain Memon is a visionary game designer and transmedia creator who pioneered South Asia's modern tabletop renaissance. His political strategy board game SHASN is India's most played modern tabletop game. It has won IndieCade's Social Impact Award and reached players in over 70 countries. Its sequel SHASN: AZADI; hailed as the "blueprint for semi-cooperative game design;" became the first tabletop game honored by Games for Change. Memon has established games as transformative learning systems through his approach to play as pedagogy.