Salt & Seeds

Are you yearning for climate fiction that inspires rather than terrifies?

In a world overrun by dystopian futures, Salt & Seeds offers a different vision: adaptation through connection, not conflict.

After rising seas redraw England’s coast faster than anyone dared predict, signal station observer Rowan discovers impossible growth in poisoned soil.

Aboard the biomimetic research vessel The Wild Margin, he joins Dutch researcher Ash on a journey to protect fragile knowledge that belongs to the people, not to power.

Blending rigorous science with ancient wisdom and community resilience, Salt & Seeds is a solarpunk odyssey for those who still dare to hope.

Because not every future has to be bleak.

About the author

Alan Raw writes speculative stories of future adaptation, eco-tech, and climate resilience. A former broadcast journalist and a passionate sustainability practitioner, Alan lives near the Yorkshire Coast, where he supports creative community projects as a permaculturist, social entrepreneur, and mentor for new artists and writers. His work is deeply rooted in collaboration, drawing on connections with like-minded communities such as the Association of Sustainability Practitioners, the Schumacher Institute, and the RSA Space Network, which he co-founded, as well as the Grokkist Network.

Alan’s diverse career, shaped by curiosity, creativity, and care, spans media, sustainability, and the arts. Now semi-retired from social entrepreneurship, he is focused on writing stories that imagine flourishing futures. His knowledge of sustainable systems, space technology, and community resilience—along with his deep love of speculative fiction—infuses Salt & Seeds, his debut novel.

Publisher’s Preface

Salt & Seeds is the first book published under the Grokkist Press imprint, and it feels entirely fitting that it should be this one.

Grokkist Press exists to nurture works that re-enchant our attention, rekindle ethical imagination, and offer practical hope for living and flourishing in an unfinished world.

We are drawn to creations that nourish rather than alarm—works that treat care as a form of courage, that resist the easy lure of cynicism, and that insist not on grand declarations, but on the slow, stubborn practice of flourishing.

Alan Raw’s Salt & Seeds is a gift of precisely this kind. It is a story born of embodied wisdom, lived curiosity, and a radical trust in community—qualities that feel increasingly precious in a world that often mistakes acceleration for progress. It offers a vision of future-building not through grand revolutions, but through the quiet revolution of tending, connecting, and refusing to look away.

At Grokkist, we believe that imagination is a serious form of action, and that publishing is itself a generative practice—one that opens space for possibility to take root and grow.

Publishing this work is an act of faith in the unseen gardens it might inspire—on the page, in the soil, and in the slow work of becoming who we need to be.

We are honoured to share it with you.

— Grokkist Press

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How to Use this Book

Carry this story with you.
Gift it. Leave it behind in waiting rooms, on bus stops, in library corners.
Grow it in places that feel forgotten.