What if Native Americans were to use their casino wealth to settle Mars and terraform it into a pristine paradise, a "Red Eden" far from the woes of a ruined Earth?
"Native Americans have transformed the land before," Greg Simay, sci-fi fan and first-time graphic novelist, said. "We now know that they had turned the Great Plains into a giant game preserve. And if any group of people can successfully join high-tech with high spirituality to create a promising new world, it would be the Native Americans."Simay's vision of Mars fired up co-writers Michael A. White and R.J. Johnson.
With classically-trained oil painter and comic-book artist Kyle La Fever, the writing trio brought a Native American Mars to life in a 122-page full-color graphic novel that has just been released.
Jolene Nenibah Yazzie created the cover art for "RED EDEN."
She grew up on the Navajo reservation in Lupton, Arizona, and has gone on to see her work exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.
"Ms. Yazzie is renowned for her stylish and dramatic portraiture of indigenous women as warriors," Simay said. "This perfectly suits Red Eden's courageous heroine Takenya, who comes of age and leads her people's fight against the desperate crime bosses from Earth who try to take over Mars."
Simay said, "This isn't the first time outsiders have traveled a long distance to dispossess Native Americans from the lands they cherish. But when Takenya rallies her people, and a long-dead Martian race literally resurfaces on the planet, Red Eden's invaders from Earth get a lot more than they bargained for."Read an excerpt from the graphic novel at www.marsrededen.com. "Red Eden: A Vision of Mars" is exclusively available for download at amazon.com.