moon pool – Injini Press

Hidden within a cave that can only be reach via an underwater tunnel on the south coast of France is a jewel of human culture.

The archives of human prehistory are small and fragmented. We have so little idea of how people thought ten thousand or more years ago but every now and then discoveries as amazing as archaeopteryx emerge out of nowhere to transform our understanding of the deep past.

“That got me thinking,” says Christian, author of the Moon Pool Trilogy. “There are cave paintings of sea creatures as well as land animals. In Cosquer Cave, France, there are paintings of jellyfish, a penguin and a seal. Over 19,000 years old! What if somewhere, waiting to be discovered, were painting that showed interactions between humans and dolphins way back in our distant past?”

It is not as fanciful as it sounds. In Laguna, Brazil fishermen and dolphins work together to fish.

The dolphins drive shoals of fish towards the shore then give a signal. The fishermen cast their nets, driving some of the fish back towards the dolphins, benefitting both humans and dolphins!

In the literary world packed with dystopias and magicians, author Christian Vassie wrote the Moon Pool trilogy for his daughters.

“There isn’t time to retreat into dystopias, sad tales of bad times to come, or solutions that pour from magic sticks,” he says. “The Moon Pool stories provide an adventure thriller packed with hope and the certainty that the real world is to be cherished and that it can be protected.”

A diverse cast of characters show that even the smallest of us has a part to play.

And at the heart of these stories are the dolphin characters, Calypso and Steve. Twenty years ago science had not yet understood the complexity of dolphin personalities, nor the fact that they call each other by name, nor the way they use sonar to communicate to each other.

While we continue to venture into space to find other intelligent life in the universe, the Moon Pool stories suggest that it is already with us here on earth.

“Learning about the science and our developing understanding of sentience in a variety of other species, including cetaceans, has been one of the joys of writing this series,” says Christian. “If these adventures help us to re-evaluate our place among the creatures on our planet I would be delighted. Though of course the primary goal is to give readers an inspiring and exciting roller coaster of a ride!”