About The Solarian Deep by David Deane Haskell
The Solarian Deep Book 1 of the Technoquatics Series
In the undersea city of The Shallows, humanity has engineered its own survival. Relying on mechanical breathing gear, strict social hierarchies, and highly regulated borders, the “Technoquatics” live in the safety of the continental shelf, generations after a cataclysm left the surface world uninhabitable. For orphaned teenager Calistya, life revolves around maintaining top grades and dreaming of the day she can afford a prestigious “full-gill” enhancement. But for her rebellious best friend Khrystal, the rigid, walled-in existence of their city is a cage she is desperate to escape.
Risking expulsion and severe punishment, the two girls sneak past the city sentries to explore the forbidden, uncharted waters of “The Dark.” There, Calistya encounters something impossible: an angelic, enigmatic boy named Kyle who navigates the crushing, freezing depths effortlessly—without any breathing apparatus or mechanical gear.
Drawn to the boy and the secrets of his survival, the girls are pulled into a hidden chasm that harbors a world entirely separate from their own. But their sudden disappearance sparks widespread panic back home. Paranoia grips the leaders of The Shallows, and as search parties scour the ocean floor, strange, unexplained telekinetic happenings begin to ripple through the currents, shaking the city’s very foundations.
Soon, an ancient, deep-sea civilization known as “The Solarians” emerges from the shadows of oceanic myth. With The Shallows mobilizing its heavily armed sentries for a preemptive strike, and the ocean itself pulsing with a mysterious psychic energy, Calistya and Khrystal find themselves caught in the crossfire. To protect the boy and prevent an all-out undersea war, the two friends must bridge the gap between two deeply divided worlds—and uncover what it truly means to belong to the sea.
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Author Bio:
David Deane Haskell is an author, world traveler, and performing artist. Long before charting out optimistic science fiction futures, he built a deep foundation in the marching arts, performing as a drummer with the Blue Devils and Disney, and composing drum cadences that are sold in Japan. Today, he lives as a nomad, working entirely from the road—whether that means drafting a new chapter from a monastery overlook in Thailand or editing from an impossible beach in Bali.
However, his path back to the open world was hard-won. For eleven years, David lived as a hermit, battling deep distress and hopeless addictions from a room with the shades drawn. That intense period of pain ultimately gave way to a profound spiritual awakening on a beach in Japan.
Clawing his way out of the dark shaped everything he creates today as a mindful, recovered trauma-healing guide and author. His catalog serves as a unified, interconnected map of survival, broken down into three distinct realities:
The Past: Raw, real-time inner-child work and memoirs aimed at healing the trauma that keeps us paralyzed.
The Present: Navigating a messy, noisy world through mindfulness, radical honesty, and real-world short stories.
The Future: Sweeping, optimistic science fiction. While his catalog touches on the past and present, his fiction is his primary focus, envisioning the beautiful, expansive world we truly want to build because we survived, thrived, and are looking forward.