What does humanity’s future hold if Earth is abandoned by billionaire colonists seeking their own dominion?

Elsewhen Press, an indie publisher specialising in speculative fiction, is delighted to announce the next title in Terry Jackman’s series, the Worlds Apart collective. With current renewed debate across the media about the necessity or desirability of the colonisation of other planets, and the apparent obsession of some billionaires with developing the means to abandon Earth and settle elsewhere, Terry’s series is a timely appraisal of humanity’s possible future, using the unique perspective that only science fiction can bring, by considering the path that could lead to that future.

In Terry’s imagined future universe, Earth (OldEarth) is long-abandoned due to environmental and societal destruction. Humanity has made a fresh beginning on NewEarth; its vassal worlds have spread across the void, not always under all the supervision that NewEarth intended… though NewEarth itself might lead one to suspect the reasons. The Worlds Apart collective provides a series of glimpses into the ‘lost’ history of the divergence of human evolution as experienced in the centuries after mankind spreads beyond a single planet.

The first two books, Harpan’s Worlds and Worlds Aligned are set on a pair of colony planets, under the control of the family of the founder, where social injustice and inequity are carefully kept out of sight and out of mind. The latest title, Homeworld, book three, is set on NewEarth itself, a rigidly governed world with a strong military but poorly controlled militias left to oppress the underclass who have little hope of escape.

To be published next year will be Fourth Seed, set on a colony world where NewEarth authorities desert the colonists when an alien invasion is threatened. Two more books after that will complete the series.

Terry Jackman has been a well-known, and highly respected, presence in the UK science fiction community for many years. Twenty years ago she joined the British Science Fiction Association’s first Orbit group for writers, and by the time she stepped down in 2020 had been instrumental in developing it into 14 separate groups that have supported and encouraged many of today’s popular science fiction authors. Spending so much time helping others with their writing did not leave enough for Terry to pursue her own. It was the diagnosis of a brain tumour, combined with the isolation imposed by Covid, that led to her having to step back from Orbit but, ironically, it has also given her the time to write the Worlds Apart collective that she had been developing.

Peter Buck, Editorial Director at Elsewhen Press, says, “It has been a privilege working with Terry Jackman, whom we first met at a convention in 2012. Running the BSFA Orbit groups, she was so supportive of many authors, including some whose work we publish. Later, it was a shock when she told us she had been diagnosed with a tumour and was withdrawing from Orbit. But it did give us the opportunity to read the first book of her Worlds Apart collective, and we were delighted when she signed with us to publish her books. The future of humanity is a popular theme in science fiction, and the idea of space colonies in the near-future has become widespread even in mainstream media. But Terry’s approach looking back from an imagined distant future to its past, our more immediate future, and how humanity evolves as it spreads out from Earth, is novel. Fitting her writing and editing between repeated hospital treatments and recoveries has sometimes been a challenge for her, but she is a very resilient and impressively determined person.”

Homeworld, the third book of the six-part Worlds Apart collective is already available as an eBook and will be out as a paperback on 2nd June. Harpan’s Worlds, and Worlds Aligned, the first two books of the series are available in both eBook and paperback editions.