My 'VayneLine' series - Scifi westerns involving personal shields, melee weapons, interstellar wars, philosophic undertones and dimensional manipulation

I grew up fascinated by aliens and wondering what was out there.  With an entirely over-active imagination I looked up at the stars and could imagine entire fleet battles playing out and wondering what stars were currently being invaded.  My first major ‘whoa’ moments in sci-fi were about 6^(th) grade reading ‘Inherit the stars’ where they imagine an alternate history of Earth that blew my mind, and ‘2001’ with HAL and the core of Jupiter.  Between too much sci-fi as a kid and too much anime – especially some of the big ones like Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop my path was pretty clear.

My series of books takes place in what I call the ‘VayneLine’ universe, which is name after the first major book.  Each individual book is very space-western in feel but overall there is a massive interplay of governments, wars and racial intrigue that form a heavy space opera for those that want to read it for that.  It is a universe where FTL is normal, almost everyone is genetically engineered to ‘perfection’, personal shields are common and special melee weapons are the only (easy) way to break through shields, re-enabling melee combat – though everyone still carries guns.  I go into some very deep philosophical ideas such as higher dimensional beings manipulating us and the true structure of reality.

The general gist of the universe is that humanity was nearly extinct due to environmental degradation and nuclear exchanges, the Aelisha race had been watching us for a while and ‘saved’ us.  I use quotes because we end up being a 2^(nd) class subordinate race to them.  Like most aspects of the series though everything is morally gray.  It is quite clear the Aelisha use us as soldiers, expendable and so on, yet its also undeniable they uplifted and saved us as a species as the Solarians are now present across the galaxy.

While the books mainly focus on personal narratives like survival, there are heavy philosophical themes present throughout.  These include how much freewill we actually have, how much sacrifices actually cost, morally gray situations, the weight of killing, and spiritual overtones as much of the dominate religion focuses on a spiritual recycling known as ‘The Line’.

My main book ‘VayneLine’ follows three separate groups that slowly realize various artifacts they have come across are incredibly powerful, but come at a huge cost.  Imagine a bit of ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’ with starships, growing interstellar war, and dimensional beings using us as playthings.  (Queue ‘The ecstasy of gold’)

My other complete collection called ‘The VayneLine Chronicles’ is a completely standalone set of novellas that take place in the same universe, expanding on things like technology, politics and so on.  There is stories involving a time loop, a society kept in the middle ages by an rogue immortal Star Priest, two splinter Solarian groups forced to fight each other secretly (heavily inspired by ‘Enemy Mine’), and some delving into hidden races and beings behind the scenes.

I am currently working on a book called ‘Reiko-10’ which is a dark scifi horror of a small group of people trapped on an ice planet military base with an unknown alien threat.  It blends clear ‘The Thing’ inspiration with some degree of time manipulation (Edge of Tomorrow / All you need is kill).  If you enjoy dark humor, bloody action and carrying on in the face of hopelessness you might like it.  I could always use advanced readers if this sounds your style.

I am linking my own website which I created in a ‘wiki’ style to showcase terms, stories and so on.  https://vayneline.com

This is my author page on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/stores/E.-A.-Szabelski/author/B01MFB7QO0  I have Project: AKRA for free on there, it’s a small special ops team sent to a hostile planet to recover a secret.

If you are interested in another free novella my email is vayneline@mail.com feel free to email me there (no email harvesting I promise) it’s about the outbreak of a huge war and an Aelisha soldier trying to escape with a Solarian girl off the colony.

Well at this point I’ve written a book so will stop here :)