Hardcover
Anand Gandhi & Zain Memon
An insect will soon go extinct. Seven years later, this will cause a civil war that kills millions.
The Divyas know this. Through their planetwide network of Maya trees, they can see all that is, and therefore, predict all that will be. They intervene invisibly.
The insect will survive. The war will never happen. No one will ever know.
On Neh, seven species tether daily to Maya. The trees immerse them in play, fable, and the company of the living and the dead.
The Divyas rule all of Neh without armies. Why force obedience when you can shape desire itself?
A narrative superstructureEsquire
An ambitious, eye-popping universeThe Hollywood Reporter
A whole new genre taking shape.@Asvinireads
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Releasing worldwide · August 25, 2026
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
“An Eye-Popping Sci-Fi Fantasy Universe” The Hollywood Reporter
“The creatures in Maya are pioneering excursions into the terra incognita of possible minds, through which we can learn a great deal about our own ways of seeing, ways of thinking, and ways of being.”
Anil SethNeuroscientist · author of Being You
“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” This was written by Anaïs Nin in 1961 in The Seduction of the Minotaur, but the idea itself is much, much older. It is one way, but only one, into the mystery and the wonder of Maya.
One of the questions explored, examined and playfully (but rigorously) dissected in Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon’s wonderful novel—the entry point into an entire new world—is the mystery of consciousness. Somehow, the tofu-textured tangle of wetware inside our skulls is more than just an insanely complicated object. The brain, when embodied in a body that is embedded in a world, creates—or enables—the appearance of a subject. We experience our worlds, and we experience being ourselves within these worlds.
“An Eye-Popping Sci-Fi Fantasy Universe” The Hollywood Reporter
The Divyas know this. Through their planetwide network of Maya trees, they can see all that is, and therefore, predict all that will be. They intervene invisibly.
The insect will survive. The war will never happen. No one will ever know.
On Neh, seven species tether daily to Maya. The trees immerse them in play, fable, and the company of the living and the dead.
The Divyas rule all of Neh without armies. Why force obedience when you can shape desire itself?
“The creatures in Maya are pioneering excursionsinto the terra incognita of possible minds,through which we can learn a great dealabout our own ways of seeing, ways of thinking,and ways of being.”
Anil SethNeuroscientist · author of Being You
MAYA: Seed Takes Root is the first novel of a planned sci-fi fantasy trilogy. It is a labor of love of more than 200 artists, scientists, filmmakers, and game designers from around the world, handcrafted over the last four years.
This book has moved me in a dozen different ways. My assumptions have been challenged, my mind has been changed, and my hunger has been stoked. As someone who holds several works of fiction close to his heart, I find myself surprised to realize that Maya is now decisively my favorite… Maya reads like Chomsky collaborated with Tchaikovsky to create a vivid new world that blurs the lines of fiction and non-fiction. And then Ursula LeGuin came in to render it with all of her sensibilities and wisdom.Darius VanceGoodreads review
This is a book with an insane number of ideas. Every page has a scene, a moment, a creature, a sentence that I know I am going to remember for years to come… I have too many favorite scenes to write about, and I am too blown away, too overwhelmed, too jumpy from all the ideas still firing in my head.
Morgan TaylorGoodreads reviewFive pages in, I was fully hooked and flipping pages as fast as I could. The world Gandhi and Memon create along with its inhabitants is so richly imagined… I felt like I was there, living inside the world with them. The scenes are cinematic and humming with constant subtle tension.Nina KowalczykGoodreads review
If Hugo Weaving could continue narrating for the series that would be great. His voice added a whole other level to this book.
DarleneGoodreads reviewWeaving elevates an exceptional story that raises questions about modern society in a compulsively listenable experience.
Best Audiobook · Earphones Award · “GET IT”
An Eye-Popping Sci-Fi Fantasy Universe
Uncomfortably close to our current relationship with technology and social media algorithms—and that's entirely the point.
The antagonist lays out his reasoning step by step, and you can't argue with it. It's ironclad. It's terrifying.
@JoshReadsBooks
There were chapters where I had to put the book down and breathe. The pace, the ideas, the weight of everything happening. But I couldn't stay away.
@VestCody
An act of civilizational memory… a mythos that confronts the 21st century's most urgent questions.
Every aspect of it—the politics, the culture, ecology, and technology—feels like a simulation that's been allowed to run for hundreds of years.
@TheBookishAlchemist
$426K+
raised by 4,185 backers, 4,260% of a $10,000 goal.
MAYA: Seed Takes Root, by Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon, is the highest-funded debut novel on Kickstarter. A big thank you to our 4,185 Kickstarter backers for helping us make history.
Open the Kickstarter
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everyone talks to
their dead. he can't.
the villain is right
airplane mode is illegal
neurodivergent hero
trees domesticated us
she eats people
"me also have name"
narrated by Agent Smith
the algorithm can't see him
Uncle Iroh energy
tournament for godhood
cyberpunk
without computers
what's left fits in his fist
narrative warfare
insect POV (it dies in bliss)
omelas with taxes
The Divya Trials have been announced. Billions will compete. One will ascend to godhood. In every future predicted by the Maya network, the outcome is certain: the son of a god will win.
Kshar disagrees.
He has rehearsed the scion's assassination a hundred times in Maya's simulations. In seventeen minutes, a single fruit will begin a cascade that ends in a riot.
The plan is perfect. Every move predicted. Every breath choreographed.
Except one. Yachay.
Nineteen years old. Maker of riddles.
His grandfather has staked their lives on him winning the trials. But Yachay seeks what he has been kept away from. Maya. He doesn't know:
When you gaze into Maya, Maya gazes back into you.
Some reviewers received advance reader copies. Here’s what they had to say:
The complete novel in Hugo Weaving's voice, carrying the same canonical text as the hardcover.
The voice of Elrond, Agent Smith, and V reads MAYA: Seed Takes Root.
Four characters carry Seed Takes Root.
A nineteen-year-old manushya raised in isolation, Yachay has grown up with scrolls, riddles, and the words of long-dead bards. He has never entered Maya, the planet wide network that everyone tethers to daily. Little does he know that his longing for connection is the very thing that makes him dangerous to the world.
A veteran naag operative of the Secret Coil, Kshar faces an impossible choice: kill an innocent child, or watch his ailing son die. The mission he has been enlisted for is harder still: change the future with just a fruit.
A young, pragmatic rakshasi scholar, Ayn's contrarian philosophy makes her an outsider to her people. After setting out to see the world with her own eyes, she discovers why all three of her mothers warned her against venturing into the manushya heartland.
The forgotten son of a Divya, Tarkash has had to claw his way up in the world with charm and guile. After the Divya Trials are announced, his birthright is closer in reach than it has ever been.
Seed Takes Root arrives August 25, 2026. Backers get live access to Book Two as it’s written.
From the creators of Ship of Theseus & Tumbbad.
Adapted from MAYA: Seed Takes Root.
“Beautifully crafted and creepy as hell.”Tasha Robinson, Polygon
Opened Venice Critics' Week · Three Filmfare Awards · Best Film, Sitges Fantastic Festival
“A life-changing film.”Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard
National Film Award, Best Feature Film · Transilvania Trophy, Best Film · Prizes at Tokyo & BFI London
Two companion volumes go deeper into Neh: the history beneath it, and how it was built.
Chart the big history of Neh, from primordial cosmology to lush tropical present, across geological epochs of 6.9 billion years. Witness the emergence of consciousness itself, and follow its trajectories across every sentient species, from evolutionary origins to civilizational upheavals to present realities.
The cog-and-lever edifices of the manushyas, the humming, breathing dwellings of the rakshasis bound by mite colonies. How evolutionary biology shapes habitats, how geological forces sculpt cities, and how imagined cultures manifest new solutions of shelter and coexistence.
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