After years writing for academic economics journals and conferences, an Armagh man has delved into a world of sci-fi and fantasy… resulting in two tome-like novels inspired by the behavioural science that might even include “predictions” for the future!
For the last two-and-a-half years, author Wayne Davies has been crafting the fictional planet, Sapia and its humanoid inhabitants and is now delighted to see the fruits of his labour, publishing two novels under the umbrella series title of ‘Sapien Loop’.
The Sapien Loop series is a creative – and clever – culmination of Wayne’s years as an economist in the form of two novels spanning some 600 pages.
Through an alien species known as the Sapiens – an obvious nod to humankind – Wayne explores the dynamics of civilisation – in an almost Orwellian fashion – through the typically studied areas in economics of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
But, he adds, there’s a touch of Games of Thrones-esque inspiration in there too!
Describing his first novel ‘Sapien Loop: End of an Era’, as a Utopian or Dystopian fiction “depending on how you see it”, Wayne explained: “It’s fiction but not entirely because a lot of it is forecasting and predictions for the future.
“I guess the inspiration was, in a sense, creating an alternative world to ours as it’s another planet but in a way it does reflect on our world.
“The alien creatures – the Sapiens – they are a lot like human beings. They kind of look a bit like us but they’re green! They function like people more or less, but their thinking is a little different.”
The planet Sapia is a simple world. It has but one unit of land, a sort of large continent called Sapey and one body of water.
On this land, Wayne says “everyone more or less has everything.”
Book one and two of Sapien Loop
He adds: “They all have houses, they have enough food, they have great healthcare, there’s very little crime. That’s the utopian aspect but it is a very sort of controlled society.
“The places – or regions – are surrounded by a giant wall that is very restricted and it’s very confined under a sort of surveillance state.
“The people do have a reasonable amount and they don’t necessarily have to work because they get a lot of free things as well. But they want to work and the psychology that’s involved with the education system and the media all feed into that.
“But as time goes by, that starts to fall apart a little bit and that is from the bottom upwards and vice versa, where some of the people on the ground are not entirely happy about how things are and the upper level are not so happy about what they are giving away.
“It falls apart on both sides and leads to a breakdown of their society.”
His second novel, ‘Frozen in Time’ is set six years after the final events of End of an Era – however he also regards it as “somewhat of a prequel”.
Explains Wayne: “Right at the end of the first book one of the characters discovers a chamber and there’s frozen creatures inside the chamber that turns out to be their ancestors.
“As they start unfreezing them all they start to discover how life was before the first book. There’s an interaction between the past and the present and without saying too much, that sort of leads into the third book.”
In writing both novels, Wayne hasn’t just taken inspiration from his previous career. He’s also been inspired by a very special, non-human entity from the real world who takes up a main role in both books.
One of the novels’ main characters is based on Wayne’s beloved and mischievous pet Juliana pig, Hamlet.
Both novels include an interspersing of digitised images created by Wayne of some of the places and characters. In Frozen in Time, Wayne has even included a real black and white image of Hamlet… with a digitally created headdress which – in the book – is actually a machine created to pick up her thoughts allowing her to speak.
Without giving too much away, Wayne explains that Hamlet plays quite an “important role and is quite heroic!”
His pet goat Lily also makes a brief appearance!
In the last fortnight Wayne attended his first book festival in Belfast Books to help “spread the word” for both novels.
This was also his first opportunity to sell paperback versions of his novels – which had previously only been available as e-books on Amazon.
Wayne has already begun work on his final book of the Sapien Loop trilogy… although he adds that there is also a fourth book of short stories in the works.
And, for any Comic-Con fans out there… you may want to keep an eye out at the upcoming September exhibition as Wayne has plans to hopefully make an appearance.
Information on both Sapien Loop novels can be found on Amazon where they can also be purchased in paperback and e-book format.
