As the world is being parceled out, Ayesha, born Bajau, a stateless Southeast Asian sea dweller, loses her mother in a traumatic accident. Orphaned in Sumatra, adopted in Singapore, her Leonardesque gift for drawing leads her to study design in France.

Upon returning to her beleaguered stilt village, Ayesha commits herself to helping her community by prototyping self-sustaining floating islands from salvaged plastic and low-tech ingenuity.

Neither utopia nor dystopia, the emerging artificial archipelago is called a Syntopia: places that design together. But when her half-moon, glinting Eden draws predation, relentless pressure and intimidation from hired guns follow.

Can the Bajau keep their future afloat when land-dwellers keep dragging it under?

SYNTOPIA EPISTEME is the first volume in a series of epic speculative fiction intended to make theory, and contemporary global conundrums vivid, thrilling, and cinematically engaging for design students. under.