Lelia Rose Foreman

Shatterworld

Amish Wannabes take a ship to another world to set up a peaceful, agrarian society. Once they are self-sufficient, they intend to throw away most of their technology. But twelve-year-old Rejoice does not want to grow up to become a farmer. She wants to be an astronomer. She struggles to understand what God wants her to be as she discovers intelligent aliens in the sea and then discovers an asteroid that is going to destroy the colony’s new world.

New Earth, or Shatterworld, as Rejoice prefers to call the world, had been hit by large asteroids five hundred years prior to the coming of the humans. Most life on land and sea had been obliterated. Ninety percent of the world is covered by ocean.

Sailing in the shallow waters would be fun, as would playing with baby hexacrabs. The occasional fair or feast is fun, but for the most part, the colonists engage in work as a godly discipline. They are not thinking about tourists.

Sailing in deep waters would expose you to a variety of sea monsters. Hurricanes can be severe.

The colonists work hard and they do like to eat what we would consider comfort foods.

They’re pacifists! No fighting. They don’t even like contact sports.

The colonists use VTOLs, space shuttles, boats, rollers, and camels to travel. And walking. Walking is good for the soul.

The most important are the hexacrabs: sentient, undersea aliens with six armored legs, six tentacles, and three eyes on stalks. The hexacrabs are trying to rebuild their shattered civilization and are looking for their lost libraries, all while fighting off sea monsters and these new creatures, the humans.

These Christians love God and have banded together in a discipline that they believe will draw them closer to God. They don’t ever think about magic.

If you are at all familiar with science-fiction tropes, you will recognize all the technology in the book.

How entertaining do you think sermons are? Soil creation? Feeding chickens? Oh, discovering and being attacked by aliens?

The colonists follow the Christian calendar, but divergence is coming.

Although none of the colonists started out as Amish, the practices they cobbled together most closely resemble the Christian Amish.

The colonists start out with a form of socialism, sharing all things in common, until they can separate onto individual farms. The man with the biggest voice is Brother Smith, the financier and organizer of the colony. The next most influential is the pastor. Everyone likes to think things are run by consensus.

Please respect their pacifism, their modest dress, and their sexual mores.

When we were stationed in Japan at Yokota AFB, my husband explored the concept of pacifism, because if that was God’s will for us, we wanted to engage in the practice. There would have been repercussions for adopting pacifism, as the US Air Force had paid for his dental school, but if that’s what God calls you to, that’s what you do. We did a lot of study and reading. My husband retired a colonel, so you can guess which way we went. I like writing about people who aren’t me, so I wanted to write about a people the way they see themselves. What would happen if they met aliens who wanted to fight them?

Pacifism. Some people consider monogamy and/or Christianity controversial. Is having some main characters with mild Asperger’s controversial?

I’ve raised and released five children, one of them a Wookie. The Air Force gave us the privilege of living in Japan and a number of states, including Texas, Alaska, and Oregon. I have some minor engagement with ministry in Rwanda, and have begun libraries in eleven primary schools there. I also introduced Golden Grain amaranth to farmers there, which was a big hit, and purslane, which was not. They introduced me to the concept of loving and working under murderers.

Shatterworld can be ordered as an ebook or paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, or from any bookstore.