Creators & Roles
Marsha Clarke (Creator) is a Speculative fiction writer and the active showrunner of Earth Raiders and co-creator of the Parallelia World. Her family is from Barbados and she is a fiction writer from Brooklyn, NY.
Gisselle Bolden (Co-creator) is a Fiction writer is the co-creator of the Parallelia World. She was raised between South Florida and Honduras.
Brynn Yoder (Contributor) is a fiction writer and student at Eastern Mennonite University.
Caylee Tierney (Contributor) writes young adult fantasy fiction that explores themes including identity, truth and freedom. She is currently completing a PhD in English at the University of Tasmania. Her research sits at the intersection of popular fiction studies, publishing studies and children’s literature, and focuses on children’s fantasy series. She aims to use what she’s learning in her PhD about storytelling conventions, writing craft and the publishing industry to help her build a career as an author. Her short fiction has appeared in Aurealis #140 and the Romance Writers of Australia’s Sweet Treats: Cupcake anthology, and her academic work is featured in the Australian Humanities Review #66
Fabrice Guerrier (Contributor) is a Haitian-American writer, producer and founder of Syllble, a pioneering science fiction and fantasy production house and publisher that creates fictional worlds by connecting diverse creative writers, visual artists and inspired creators from different countries, back- grounds, and cultures through artist collectives. His vision is to bring a new era of storytelling in Hollywood and the publish- ing world by building vibrant collectives of underrepresented creators producing together within unique fictional universes, publishing the best original work that emerges and growing these worlds through creative collaborations, content creation, and transmedia. He was selected as a 2022 PEN Emerging Voices fellow finalist and a PEN Haiti fellow by PEN America. He was inducted into Forbes 30 Under 30 list and named to Root magazine’s 100 most influential African-Americans.
Tim Malachy (Contributor) is a fiction writer living in New Jersey.
Katrina Rosemond (Contributor) is an up-and-coming author from Miami Gardens, Fl. She’s attending Miami Dade College to become an English teacher while establishing her writing career. Most days, she can be found writing on her laptop with the work of Hans Zimmer playing on her headphones as she works. When she’s not writing, she spends her time dueling her friends in The Saber Legion. It has been her dream since she was ten years old to be a published writer and she is doing her best to make that happen.
World summary/overview
Earthbound (formerly known as Parallelia) tells of a future world in the year 2087. After a series of unrelenting extreme natural disasters that ravage most of the world, most people across the United States are left homeless. Years pass while they form a new collective called the Earthbound as they move into the abandoned city of Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
As a community focused on maintaining a primal and spiritual connection to earth, they are able to restore some land and remnants of technology to establish live-able conditions and a culture based on energetic connectivity. Meanwhile, the Silicons, a group of hybridized human-android elites operate with alternative intentions. They found a way to digitize themselves as well as physical earth to escape the deteriorating conditions of the planet. They actively build a pixelized parallel reality by usurping land and resources that Earthbounds have christened as sacred modalities of connectivity.
There’s a major and hostile rift between both groups for the survival of humanity for each claim to be that their way is the answer.
Concept
The outside world is cold, tech driven and capitalist driven. After the vast working estates of silicon valley were abandoned due to environmental factors of the west like wildfires, erosion, water scarcity and other social factors. Employees moved to other states and countries that had less violent weather patterns and the sprawling headquarters of many of the worlds largest technology companies became abandoned.
Homeless people of the west (LA & Bay area) moved in and found shelter and were able to learn from the literature that was left behind and used the technology to cultivate food which also led to the creation of a symbiotic connectivity between earth people and technology.
Themes
Internal vs. external connection
Ideological conflict vs. physical war
Environment
Everything is determined by connectivity. Either your plugged into the larger world system which is or your plugged into humanity
Technology
Technology here is as it’s always been – it’s being improved by the community of people who used to be homeless to build, grow food, improve logistics to reach out to more people who are homeless and need a new home and a sanctuary. Where they can be safe and be a part of a safe community that looks after one another. They rebuild and create new things like cars, robots, open spaces that provide community food and recreation etc.
Groups
Earthbound : Humans who reject the rampant use of tech and seek out sages to understand the past and the reason for human existence. They’ve had to endure a lot to build their culture and entire existence from the ground up starting with the generations of their founders. Materials from the earth and use ley lines to connect to the spiritual realm.
Humans of the near future are called ‘Myopics’: They are heavily addicted to technology. They are unaware of their surroundings and go through the motions of being in a productive force. People downloads – 1 purpose, no sense of ancestry, very capitalist, always work towards efficiency, protection of powers that be and strive to evolve technologically.
Silicons: essentially wealthy tech wizards, who have amassed wealth and positions of leadership, especially in construction. they are bent on dissolving the physical world and converting it into a digital experience.
Sages: modern-day humans who study spiritual connection and gods and spirits across different traditions: the beings that sages and learned humans visit for the restoration of self or to adopt a new reality. Your feelings matter more than anything else. People decide which is more important to them.
Messengers: guides to soul seekers in animal form, usually have some kind of intuitive or telepathic communication style.
Androids: serve as security guards between realms.
Culture
Earthbound: culture encompasses all they have experienced within their humanity. This ranges from the best of the best to the worst of the worst. It’s peaceful and loving but also gritty thanks to the connection to nature and acceptance of light and dark forces as one. Strive towards selflessness. They are making robots to be more human and connect while the Myopics are making humans into robots.
Myopics: Materialistic, practice selfishness, At birth they are given a chip which can turn off the human emotion or thoughts that make humans question their existence so they don’t crave connectivity instead they are more like human robots.
Books Published From The Earthbound Universe
SYLLBLECON 2022 // Oct 30: “Conversation with Syllble Showrunner of Parallelia, Marsha Clarke”
PENS DOWN Earthbound: Session 1 to 6
Explore the realm of creativity within the collaborative sphere, where a collective effort gave birth a new innovative literary form known as the “micro-novel,” brought to life through our publishing imprint Syllblebooks.
This collaborative Book is called “Earth Raiders: a micro-novel” was published in 2022. This project brought together a diverse array of imaginative minds, who convened over numerous creative sessions to create in the futuristic universe that is today celebrated as “Earthbound.”
World News
“Syllble Productions Announces The Release Of The Collaborative Novel: Earth Raiders” in Syllble News
“Parallelia Wins The Inaugural ‘World Of The Year’ Award at SYLLBLECON 2022” in Syllblecon 2022
“Meet The Showrunners of The Parallelia World: Marsha Clarke and Giselle Bodden” in Syllble News