MAYA: The Journey So Far
MAYA began on Kickstarter, where 4,185 backers pledged $426,356 to help bring the first novel to life. After late pledges through our own store, the community grew to 5,378 backers, with $547,896 raised in all. Kickstarter has since confirmed it officially: MAYA: Seed Takes Root is the highest-funded debut novel in the platform's history. Journalists who looked further found it to be the highest-funded debut work of fiction in crowdfunding history.
The novel is the entry point into MAYA, an expansive new universe created by filmmaker Anand Gandhi (Ship of Theseus, winner of the National Award for Best Picture; Tumbbad) and game designer Zain Memon (SHASN, Azadi).
It has been built over five years with more than 200 writers, game designers, filmmakers, biologists, architects, linguists, and artists across the world. Every word and every pixel of MAYA has been shaped with care by humans, for humans.
The collaborators who joined us
Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, V for Vendetta) narrated the audiobook, and revealed the book in the official trailer.
Anil Seth, bestselling author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness and one of the world's leading neuroscientists, wrote the foreword.
Wayne Barlowe contributed concept art.
What has reached readers
The ebook went out to backers first.
The audiobook, narrated by Hugo Weaving, followed in May. It has since won an AudioFile Earphones Award, a Kirkus "Get It" recommendation, and a Best Audiobook selection.
Edition Zero, the backers' hardcover, is now in readers' hands, with deliveries continuing through August.
Every backer, at every tier, also receives Maya: Sparks, a companion book of quotes drawn from the lines readers kept bookmarking.
Where the book has travelled
MAYA has been to Seattle Worldcon, New York Comic Con, LA Comic Con, World Fantasy Convention, Essen Spiel, and PAX Unplugged, where early readers, players, and science-fiction communities began encountering the world of Neh.
Anand gave a talk on MAYA at OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters (1 October 2025).
Emmy-winning CNN anchor Omar Jimenez interviewed Anand Gandhi at New York Comic Con, where crowds gathered across the weekend.
Dr. Avi Roy interviewed Anand at the Rhodes Scholar Forum, Oxford (November 2025).
At the 2026 Locus Awards in Berkeley, Anand joined the panel "Neither Skynet, nor HAL, nor the Culture: Writing Science Fiction in Today's AI Reality" on 30 May, alongside Annalee Newitz and Nnedi Okorafor, moderated by Gideon Lichfield and sponsored by the Protopian Prize.
The press so far
Variety. India's Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon on Building Maya, Their New Mythology for the Digital Age. 1 August 2025.
Esquire. The Mythmakers: Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon Reunite to Build MAYA.
The Hollywood Reporter. MAYA: Anand Gandhi, Zain Memon Launch Ambitious, Eye-Popping Sci-Fi Fantasy Universe.
Screen Rant. Hugo Weaving Helps Kick Off Brand New Sci-Fi Fantasy Franchise MAYA.
Gizmodo. An exclusive text and audio excerpt, including a passage of Hugo Weaving's narration. 1 July 2026.
Nautilus. Omniscient Tree Networks and Immortal Amoebas: 9 Books We're Excited to Read This August. 28 July 2026.
Locus Magazine. A featured spotlight on Anand, Zain and the MAYA universe, in the August print issue and online.
Comic Crusaders. Introducing MAYA: A Sci-Fi Epic Ft. Hugo Weaving.
Kirkus Reviews, on the audiobook: "Weaving elevates an exceptional story that raises questions about modern society in a compulsively listenable experience." A review of the print edition follows in September.
John Scalzi's Whatever publishes Anand and Zain's Big Idea essay on 25 August.
NetGalley's SFF Newsletter spotlighted the book to 50,000 subscribers (22 July 2026).
Reviews are underway at Locus, Foreword, and the San Francisco Book Review. The novel has been submitted for the Prometheus Award.
What early readers and critics are saying
"A narrative superstructure… a story that rewires the way we tell stories in the first place." Esquire
"Uncomfortably close to our current relationship with technology and social media algorithms, and that's entirely the point." Variety
"A book of extraordinary riches… provocative philosophical nuggets wrapped in a narrative both sweeping and immersive." Anil Seth
"I have spent years arguing for the revival of species-specific sensory worlds in contemporary neuroscience, and I have never seen it explored with such biological seriousness in fiction." Anil Seth, from the foreword
"The ability to shape the context, to shape the narrative… is one route by which minds become governable." Anil Seth, from the foreword
"An ambitious, eye-popping sci-fi fantasy universe… an allegory of our hyperconnected world." The Hollywood Reporter
"A sweeping story of chaos and control, agency and prediction, the powerful and the expendable." Screen Rant
The launch
MAYA: Seed Takes Root releases on 25 August 2026. 416 pages, $30.00, published by Authors Equity and distributed by Simon & Schuster, with editions through Simon & Schuster UK, Australia and India. The India edition follows through Westland Books.
Hardcover 9798893311891. eBook 9798893311778. Audio, narrated by Hugo Weaving, 9781668157992.
Launch events run across California through the final week of August, closing at LAcon V, the 2026 Worldcon, where Anand and Zain appear on a MAYA panel on 27 August, moderated by critic Andrew Liptak.
Order: Amazon. Audible. Barnes & Noble. Bookshop.org.
The universe keeps growing
Trials of MAYA, the first tabletop game from the universe, is ready. A tactical, card-driven battle arena set inside Maya's simulations, played as Champions from the novel, with more than a hundred artists painting the characters and cards. Gamefound.
Maya: Whispers in the Soil, the second novel, is underway. Backers will have the option to read it chapter by chapter as it is written.
The lore book and the book of built environments are in their final stretch. The architecture volume will carry the work of fifty young architects from our speculative architecture program at CEPT, now in its fifth semester, imagining the cities and settlements of Neh in rigorous detail.
Also in development: the first graphic novel, a film screenplay, a children's fiction series, and a short-story anthology.
The community gathers on Discord.
Welcome to Neh.