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Young Pretoria east author brings something new to Sci-Fi genre
A 17-year-old author from Pretoria east chose to write The Rip in the Christian Science Fiction genre, primarily because of her own interest in space and the infinite possibilities of storytelling that science fiction can bring to the table.
“I am constantly inspired by other authors and even filmmakers to expand my horizons through different types of storytelling. My goal as a creative is to challenge myself and explore all sorts of breeds, classes, and categories of crafting in the world of words. That is what I intended to do.
Unexpectedly, my first science fiction endeavour has now become my first printed book,” said T’manya Meyer who self-published the book with the help of her parents.
She described The Rip as ultimately a spiritual book.
To her, the title is an analogy of how far God will go to get your attention. To her, this means sometimes God will strategically allow your reality “to rip” so that you can see what is beyond the veil that He ripped through the cross.
“It is written to cover multiple topics including life, death, and life after death. The story encourages the reader to connect the dots between the events of the book and where we are in history. The perspective I wrote from was very intentional. I desired to convey the essential message of the book in a clear, but subtle way,” explained Meyer.
To this happy and cheerful author, it was such a joy to create this world in which The Rip takes place.
“I was incredibly excited to play around with different locations and determine the contrasts between the creation on one side of the rip and the realities on the other.”
She hopes for readers to find something of value in reading this book.
“There are different themes in which different people can find themselves relating to. However, I would love for the reader to take away a newfound hope and curiosity that also encourages the characters to accept the imperishable, and unvarying truth of hope.”
The main characters are a group of agents sent to investigate an anomaly in outer space. Coming from fairly different backgrounds, each has polar opposite ideas and reactions to certain events that follow their journey across space.
The objective for Meyer, while creating these characters, was to give them a transparency for readers to connect and learn who they themselves as well as the characters are as people.
These characters are fun, loving, and kind, but have all sorts of doubts, fears, and hindrances that create an inevitable friction between one another and the high-stakes mission they’re on.
To Meyer, time travel is one of the most prominent themes right through the entire book. The reason being, first and foremost, that time travel is “an absolute blast” to write about and perhaps it will be the same for readers to read how characters jump between the boundaries of a ticking clock.
She has not read many Christian science fiction books. There are a handful that have caught her eye such as CS Lewis’s famous The Space Trilogy. Other books like The Firebird trilogy by Kathy Tyres, and The Paradise Protocol by Anna Zogg are on her to-read list.
“When it comes to dystopia stories, my personal favourite would be the Out of Time series by Nadine Brandes.”
She believes there is an evident new wave of Christlike themes found in genres that were preserved only for secular writers.
“I am truly excited to see into what other unlikely territories Christian content will overflow.”
Meyer’s 16-year-old brother, Gavriél, designed the cover of the book.
“He worked an insane amount of hours to get the result we both wanted. Every single thing was hand-drawn.”
She said the two of them tried to picture the technology in the book in the presentation of the spaceship.
“I realised it could be fun to bring in elements of this world we call home and intertwine them with the world that scientists imagined we’d be in, a hundred years ago. As a result, in the story, you’d find that the technology is far more advanced than what we are currently familiar with, hence the spaceships, strange oxygen masks, and indestructible shields.”
Meyer’s book will be launched on October
