A Science Fiction Novella · Book One

He fell through a storm for a thousand years.

He landed in a world built from his worst ideas.

A brilliant physicist, exiled for telling uncomfortable truths. A thousand-year fall through an alien atmosphere. A city of two million built on the teachings of a man who became a myth before he ever arrived. And the most dangerous woman on the planet waiting in the field where he landed.

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The Story

A World Built on Myth

David Voss was an outcast. Brilliant, abrasive, and stripped of his credentials for telling dangerous truths, he was the last person anyone would choose to represent humanity. When his ship tore apart over an unnamed world and his crew fell before him, David went last. He always did.

The others landed in minutes. David landed a thousand years later.

The city that grew from the crash site is called Other. Built on his teachings, exposing its children to the planet's atmosphere from birth, the citizens emerge at twenty with force fields, impossible strength, and the unshakeable belief that they already know the Founder's will.

"He had been exiled from his own civilization for saying these things too loudly. Here, an entire world had been built from the saying of them."

But something older than any of them has been watching the city grow. The ship's physician is over nine hundred years old. And he has been patient long enough.

Readers of These Will Love Other

📡

Isaac Asimov — Foundation Big ideas, civilizational stakes, long arcs of consequence

🌱

Octavia Butler — Parable Series Power, legacy, and what ideology does to communities

🌋

N.K. Jemisin — Broken Earth A world with rules, a protagonist out of time, real stakes

🚀

Ursula K. Le Guin — The Left Hand of Darkness One outsider, one civilization, philosophy meets action

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The People of Other

Meet the Characters

Protagonist

David Voss

The Founder — 1,000 Years Late

An exiled Jamaican physicist who fell through a thousand years of alien storm to wake in a city that turned his cynicism into scripture. Brilliant, difficult, and forced to reckon with every word he ever wrote.

Ally

Quick

Captain, Aegis Corps

Forty-one generations descended from the ship's crew. She carries a sword and a gun and uses whichever one the situation deserves. She doesn't hesitate. She doesn't negotiate. She has never met anyone who treated her like a student — until now.

Antagonist

Doc

Marcus Oyelaran — 900 Years Old

The ship's physician. Over nine centuries of patience. He built the city's police force, its medical infrastructure, and the program that makes every soldier in Other what they are. He has decided, quietly, that he is done sharing the credit.

Reader Reviews

What Readers Are Saying

★★★★★

Other grabbed me in the first paragraph and didn't let go. David Voss is one of the most compelling protagonists I've encountered in years — a man who was right about everything and completely wrong about what that means. The world-building is elegant, the action is brutal and earned, and the ending left me wanting the next book immediately. This is science fiction the way it's supposed to be written.

Marcus T.

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★★★★★

"Quick is the best new character I've read in science fiction in a long time. Fierce, moral, and absolutely terrifying when she needs to be. I loved watching David and Quick figure each other out. The father-daughter energy between them is real without being sentimental."

Danielle R.

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★★★★★

"Read it in one sitting. Asimov wrote ideas. This book writes ideas AND makes you care about the people carrying them. Doc is one of the great sci-fi villains — not evil, just absolutely certain. That's so much scarier."

James O.

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★★★★☆

"I wish it was longer — and I mean that as the highest compliment. Tightly written, big ideas, a world I wanted to stay in. The concept of the Bloom and what it does to a society over 900 years is exactly the kind of thinking that made me fall in love with science fiction."

Priya S.

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★★★★★

"The Cradle chapters hit hard. A system designed to protect that becomes a system that controls — and everyone inside it convinced it's the same thing. This book asks real questions with real stakes. Highly recommend."

Kevin M.

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★★★★★

"Doc's final scene in the reactor hall is one of the best villain exits I have ever read. The ambiguity of what happens to him is going to live in my head for a long time. Book 2 cannot come fast enough."

Aisha W.

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★★★★★

"Finally a debut sci-fi that trusts its reader. No hand-holding, no over-explained lore dumps. You get dropped into Other and you figure it out the same way David does — by paying attention. Exactly how it should be."

Thomas B.

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The Author

Wayne Austin

Author · Other, Book One

Wayne Austin writes science fiction about the long consequences of ideas — what happens when a civilization is built from the teachings of someone who never meant to become a symbol, and what it costs when the myth finally has to meet the man.

Other is his debut novella and the first book in the series. It introduces the world of Other: a city two million people strong, built on a single crash landing, governed by a system its founder never agreed to, and watched over by a man who has been patient for nine centuries.

Book Two is coming. The storm isn't finished with anyone yet.

He fell through a storm for a thousand years.

A World Built on Myth

Readers of These Will Love Other

Meet the Characters

What Readers Are Saying

Wayne Austin

Wayne Austin

Begin the story of Other