Literature / Neokosmos

NEOKOSMOS is a trilogy of in-progress highly illustrated science-fiction novels, written collaboratively by Shelby Cragg, Brian Russell, and Danny Cragg. Originally published as a webcomic under the same name in May 2015, it has since been adapted into a series of illustrated books, with drafts of the first two books currently available to read in full. It is currently in development; live drafts can be accessed via their Patreon, and new chapters are published incrementally on the NEOKOSMOS Discord server in real time.

NEOKOSMOS 01: Isolation follows the story of Tye, Iris and Zee, three 15-year-old humans growing up in space as test subjects under the care of lizard-like aliens called Compies. All three kids have been confined to a single small room their entire lives, and are only able to communicate to each other via chat client. Supposedly, they are all that remains of humanity after a meteor strike rendered humans functionally extinct.

One day, Iris is mysteriously taken away on a "field trip", which coincides with an attack from a gang of mysterious alien pirates hellbent on killing any Compies they come across. On their way to find their missing friend, Zee and Tye uncover the true nature of the experiments being held on the space station, and the sprawling webs of intrigue and abuse that have held so many more people prisoner than either of them thought possible.

Currently, there are three books in the main trilogy being worked on (01: Isolation, 02: Observation, and 03: Apotheosis). There is also an in-progress prologue book (00: Annihilation) centred on the Compies of the SOL-03 Space Station before Tye's birth.

The webcomic, while bearing many similarities to the start of 01: Isolation, is not required to understand the current story, and is considered a non-canon proof of concept by the authors.

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NEOKOSMOS contains examples of:

• After the End: Centuries ago, the Earth was struck by a meteor that rendered humanity (and all life on Earth) functionally extinct.
• Alien Abduction: What Xera and Kondoz did, thousands of times, while observing Earth.
• Alien Blood: Compies bleed indigo.
• Aliens Speaking English: Subverted. Nobody is actually speaking English in-universe (unless otherwise noted), although it has all been translated to English for our reading pleasure. Instead, everyone, including the humans and other non-Compie aliens, speaks Compie Phonetic Standard (CPS). In 02: Observation, Zee bemoans the fact that humans have continued to speak CPS, and argues in favour of them learning actual human languages.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Compies come in a wide variety of saturations, patterns and cool-colour hues, from Qurti's deep blue to Xizliza's bright green to Xera's muted grey.
• An Arm and a Leg: After Zee outs Seven as a human/ankar hybrid, Seven teleports away, taking Vesper's right hand with them.
• And I Must Scream: The ultimate fate of the unsuccessful ankar candidates and Level 1 humans is to have their bodies and consciousnesses unwoven and repurposed into Kondoz's Tower, a fully-sentient psychic bioweapon built on generations of human suffering.
• Angst Nuke: Seven, with increasing power and volatility. They become a literal nuke in Observation when they turn into a nuclear bomb in the desert, and later again when they destroy the entire planet.
• Anti-Villain: Book 2 Qurti. She lies, threatens, cajoles, guilt-trips, fails in her responsibilities as Director, and generally manipulates Xera and Xaveria into getting what she wants from them, all for the sake of love.
• Arc Words: "Don't look at me" and its variations.
• Asshole Victim: Xera. They're a victim of structural oppression and centuries of physical and emotional abuse. They're also a serial killer and abuser themself, who regrets everything.
• Ascended Meme:
  • "BOOM Vesper" originated as a meme on the NK Discord server, after Google Docs automatically generated "BOOM" and "Vesper" as headings next to each other. During the first Pollinate, Vesper announces their arrival at the Bunker by kicking the door open and shouting, "BOOM. Vesper."
  • Farbi's non-sexual foot fetish also began as a Discord inside joke, specifically from an art stream where the server joked about Farbi running the Compie equivalent of a Wikifeet forum.
• Astral Projection: The first of Seven's powers. They use this ability to Be other people, which is their main coping mechanism for the torture of growing up on Level 3. Their astral projection powers are often played with through the medium of the prose itself, with the POV swaps often (but not always) occurring as Seven Becomes other people.
• Awful Truth
  • The "field trips" on Level 2 are actually sending failed ankar candidates to be absorbed into the Tower.
  • The Terms and Conditions of Xaveria's tenure. Her ankar is bugged in real time, routing back to Director Woxlixow as part of their research on curing attachment mutations. To make matters worse, Xera is writing the reports on her ankar data in order to hide his own mutation.
• Ax-Crazy: Red. Not only does she has literal brain damage from pulling out her own ankar, but she has a staggering amount of rage and hate for Compiekind, and relishes in causing Compies anguish.
• Bait-and-Switch: Everything about the elevated and scientifically-minded Compies and their white glowing ankars suggests that the process for reviving dead Compies for tenure is similarly sterile. In actuality, Compies are brought back to life with a powerful lightning bolt strike, greeted upon their revival with Director Nativiae's cannibalistic mural of Litan hide.
• Beach Episode: For the seventh anniversary of the First Day, the Level 2 humans organise a beach trip with Seven (and Vesper, Aries and Peach, by proxy). The gang gets up to cheerful beach hijinks such as swimming, jetskiing, sharing drinks and dancing by a bonfire, playing pool and air hockey, painting the minivan, and oh yeah, eviscerating their pre-existing social dynamics thanks to the explosive incompatibility of Tye and Seven's trauma. Fun times!
• Big Damn Heroes: Deconstructed by the pirates. Ostensibly they're here on a rescue mission, but Red hasn't given much thought to how she's actually going to kill Director Kondoz, hasn't done any research into what is actually happening on the station, and is secretly treating this rescue like a suicide mission.
• Bookends:
  • NK:01 begins with Tye starting their latest comic project, Earth Humans on Earth, as a way to cheer up their friends. By the end of the book, they have met with Zee, Iris and Tye and are resting on Level 1, and they go over to each of their friends in turn to cheer them up in-person.
  • In NK:02, there is an illustration of Vesper breathlessly looking up at Seven after their first kiss. Near the end of the book, there is an illustration of Vesper in the same pose, lying on Xera's surgery table and looking up at Seven as they destroy Neokosmos.
• Brain/Computer Interface: Ankars are a computer-like fungus that interface directly with their host's brain, capable of increasing lifespans, improving cognitive processes and recall, and even crashing if their host is emotionally overwhelmed. Ankars have such a profound impact that they have entirely defined the Compie species, to the point where your life as a "Litan" (a pre-ankar Compie) is considered a "tutorial" in Compie society for being a person. Before the proper term for them is known in-text, they are literally referred to as "brain computers".
• Brick Joke: Xera comments that she should probably stop flopping into priceless and irreplaceable wooden antique furniture. She later breaks her chair doing exactly this.
• The Brute: Triss. She's big, loyal, kinda dumb, and loves her girlfriend. She's the one who seems mostly responsible for murdering Compies on Red's behalf.
• Black Comedy: A lot of the humour in Neokosmos is pretty dark, and characters are always dryly pointing out the inherent absurdity of their wretched circumstances. Xera and Xaveria frequently crack jokes about their shockingly bad lives, with Xera describing the gallows as their "home gym".
• Building of Adventure: The entirety of NK:01 takes place on the SOL-3 Space Station. Book 1 is also the most action-adventure book in the Neokosmos series to date.
• Caged Bird Metaphor: Nativiae compares Xaveria's living conditions under Qurti's "care" to that of a caged bird, hearkening back to the birds that Qurti's genetic ancestors domesticated long ago. Qurti is not happy with this comparison.
• Child Prodigy: Zee and Iris were genetically designed to be this, in competition with each other to see who would receive an ankar.
• A Death in the Limelight: In the beach episode, the reader gets to know Peach beyond just being Vesper and Aries' lackey. They knit, play keyboard, like chicken nuggets, and have even been thinking about identifying as a man. Their death at the hands of Rexian's hybrid comes right as they and Tye are falling in love.
• Downer Ending: NK:02 ends with Zee leaving the human colony behind, Vesper outing Seven as a hybrid to Tye and Iris, Qurti being disconnected from the University system, and newly-promoted Director Xera being ordered by First Ankroti to give Vesper an ankar. Oh, and the fallout of Seven's feelings of betrayal cause them to blow up the entire planet and sever Vesper's right hand at the wrist, destroying any progress the humans were making to establish a new civilisation planetside.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Xaveria's first POV chapter is glimmering and optimistic, as the reader watches her embrace her love for Xera, Qurti, and her grown-up child living happily on Neokosmos. At the same time, her ankar is bugged by one of the most powerful people in the universe and Xera is sneaking off to write reports on her attachment mutation.
  • Readers of NK:00 get a lot more context to Xera, Xaveria and Qurti, which makes a lot of otherwise innocent lines hit very differently upon reread.
• Dream Spying: In Observation, Seven can't sleep without dreaming of what 9 is doing at that point in time, feeling what they're feeling and thinking what they're thinking.
• Earth That Was: Thanks to the meteor, Earth is a corpse of a planet, entirely devoid of life and hospitable conditions.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Despite all of the psychological and physical torture she put them through, Kondoz never told Xera that she loved them, leaving that as "the one boundary she never crossed".
  • Although Xera is responsible for writing the reports on Xaveria's attachment mutation for Director Woxlixow's cure research, and is keeping all of this a secret from Xaveria, he - unlike Qurti - refuses to have sex with her. He calls it "rape".
• Exact Words: Before the events of NK:00, Xera agrees to drop their emotional filter only when them and Kondoz are "the only Compies in the room". In NK:00, Kondoz argues that this agreement does not extend to Auteur Void, seeing as Void is disconnected from the University system and therefore not technically a "Compie".
• Exhausted Eye Bags: Seven and 9, thanks to the torture and trauma of Level 3.
• Extremely Short Timespan: All the events of NK:01 take place over a single day.
• Fantastic Slurs: "Mutant", for Compies who have attachment mutations.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: What happens to almost every test subject on Level 3.
  • Downplayed with Level 2. Although Tye, Zee and Iris can all chat together, they all struggle with being unable to physically meet each other.
• Hands-On Approach: Seven teaches Tye how to play pool this way. The rest of the humans take acute notice.
• Implicit Prison: Xaveria's home on the Orbiter has a waterfall, pretty lights, plants, good music, and the two people she loves the most. She's also not allowed to leave, and struggles to think of anywhere she would go if she could.
• Insectoid Aliens: Scree is a S'klik, a eusocial ant-like alien species with six limbs, compound eyes, and a carapace.
• In-Series Nickname: Qurti often calls Xaveria "Xavvy". A lot of the humans call Seven "Sev".
• Jerkass: Vesper, at least for the start of NK:02.
• Last of Their Kind: Tye, Iris and Zee are the last humans left alive. It turns out they're the only humans alive on their level of experimentation, and that there are about 30 other humans living in a classroom-type setting on Level 1 of the space station.
• Lizard Folk: Compies are upright lizard-like aliens, with scales, tails, claws and feathers instead of hair. They are based on the Mexico whiptail lizard, a real-life Earth lizard that is also single-sex and reproduces asexually.
• One-Gender Race: Compies are a single-sex female alien species who reproduce parthenogenically. Subverted with Xera, who is human-style transmasc.
• Meaningful Name: Zigzagged. A lot of the Compies have CPS names that directly reflect their genetic ancestors' natural environments, or otherwise point to relevant character motifs. The Level 2s, by contrast, picked their name themselves, sometimes resulting in names like Soup or Tye. The Level 1s generally have more nature- or space-themed names, like Green, Coral, or Quasar.
• Mental Fusion: One of Seven's most notable powers. They fuse this way with Vesper and later with Zee, achieving an emotional psychic connection that transcends words. It often happens without Seven meaning it, which is part of the reason that Seven and Tye's relationship eventually falls apart.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: Triss is a notauri, a minotaur-like alien species that has three genders, and lives in harmony with smaller bug-like aliens called sprytes.
• Power Fist: Triss uses this to kill Xaveria.
• Slasher Smile: Red often sports one of these.
• Small, Secluded World: The space station. The kids are told that they live on separate space stations lightyears apart. It's made apparent pretty quickly that they're all on the same space station, with their rooms just down the hall from each other.
• Space Pirates: Red, Triss and Scree are a band of alien pirates who attack the space station.
• Speech Impediment: Iris has a stutter that gets worse when she gets nervous. When she is feeling more confident or enthusiastic, she doesn't stutter at all.
• Survivor Guilt: Xera, after the destruction of Earth. Also Seven, after the destruction of Neokosmos.
• Teleporters and Transporters: PORT technology allows people to teleport themselves without the effects of time dilation. They can be in the form of static PORTpads, teleport guns, or long-distance PORTspeed spaceship engines.
• The One That Got Away: What Xaveria was to Xera and Qurti, until she's brought back to life.
• Time Dilation: When travelling EXOspeed, one suffers a one-to-ten time dilation. Because of this, during Observation, the events on the pirate ship happen within a year, while the events of the rest of the plot (on Neokosmos and the Orbiter) happen over ten years. Time dilation is also a plot point in 03: Apotheosis, when Zee, Scree and Seven are forced to go EXOspeed after the subscription on Triss' ship is cancelled.
• Translation Convention: Although the books are written in English, everybody is speaking Compie Phonetic Standard unless otherwise noted in the prose.
• Waxing Lyrical: A lot of lyrics that are part of the official Neokosmos playlists are present in the books themselves. Still others were in the books first, and then put on the playlists later as diegetic additions.
  • "You know exactly who you are" from Azeti's introduction chapter in Isolation. This is a reference to Get Famous by The Mountain Goats ("show everybody exactly who you are"), which is Azeti's character theme on the NK:01 mix.
  • Xera's ankar mockingly plays Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads while simulating what Xera's life would have been like without Kondoz.
  • Xera sings Qurti an "anachronistic sea shanty" (Barrett's Privateers) while drunk.
  • Xera and Qurti dance to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, with some of the lyrics quoted in the actual prose.
  • On the beach by the fire during the NK:02 beach episode, Vesper puts on Man! I Feel Like a Woman! by Shania Twain. They tell Iris that, as a woman, it is her prerogative to have a little fun.
  • "You want to feel that love, normally" from the Sevesper road trip chapter is a reference to "Love, Me Normally" by Will Wood.
• Wham Line:
  • Qurti’s Directorship is officially over. Congratulations, Director Xera.
• You Are Number 6: All humans on the space station were originally named this way, with the Level 1s being given a new name as they grow older and the Level 2s being allowed to pick their name. Seven and 9, who grew up on Level 3, never changed their names.
• You Can't Go Home Again: The humans are unable to return to Neokosmos after it is destroyed by Seven.