Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi · Standalone
Gene Wars
A hundred years ago, humanity tried to rewrite itself.
Now the storm it started is coming back to finish the edit.
The Story
A Century After the Bombs Stopped Falling
The gene bombs were supposed to be a weapon like any other. Instead, they turned the human genome into an uncontrollable variable — twisting soldiers and civilians alike into short-lived, tortured combinations of species, city by city, until the governments that unleashed them had nothing left to govern.
A century later, the survivors have sorted themselves into what's left of a species. The Domes hoard the last of the old world's purity and technology behind their shields, breeding contempt for anything that changed. The Orbitals, exiled to space when the ground became unsurvivable, watch it all from above, unable to come home. And across the wasted continents, the Sapients — stable, breeding-true fusions of human and animal genetics — have built kingdoms and packs out of the wreckage, closer to a new civilization than anyone in the Domes wants to admit.
For decades, the survivors believed the worst was over — that the gene storms seeding the wastelands with fresh mutation would eventually burn out. The storm-trackers of the Eerie, the most advanced of the Sapient peoples, have just discovered the opposite. The storms aren't dying down. They're building toward something none of the four societies of Earth can survive alone.
There is no declared war left to win. Only a shrinking window to stop the next one from finishing what the last one started.
The Envoys
The People of the Eerie
Dr. Lyndsay Laferty invented the technology that made the gene bombs possible, and spent the century since trying to atone for it. His enclave in the Rockies — the Eerie, winged and clawed descendants of the scientists and families who fled with him — became the most stable, advanced society to survive the Wars. He never forgave himself enough to face what his work did to everyone else.
So it falls to the generation after his: envoys unburdened by his guilt, sent out from the safety of the mountains to make contact with Domes, Herds, and Orbitals who have spent a hundred years assuming the Eerie were either myth or monster.
They are not soldiers. They are the last, best chance for four fractured societies to recognize a common enemy before it's too late — and the first people in a century willing to walk toward the world that fears them.
Not everyone they meet will believe they've come in peace. Some won't get the chance to decide.
"Four societies, a hundred years of mutual contempt, and a storm that has never once cared which of them survives."
The World
Earth, 100 Years After the Wars
The Domes
Xenophobic enclaves of unaltered humanity, the last holdouts of pre-war technology and military power — and the ones most determined to see every mutation on Earth burned away.
The Orbitals
Descendants of those who fled to space as the Wars ended, permanently changed by decades in zero gravity. They've watched the coming storm build for years — and no one on the ground would listen.
The Eerie & Sapients
Stable, breeding-true fusions of human and animal genetics — eagle, lion, cheetah, wolf, and horse among them — who have built functioning kingdoms and packs from the wreckage of the old world.
The Gene Storms
The weaponized fallout of the Wars, still adrift on the wind a century later — and growing, against every prediction, toward a storm large enough to erase what's left.
Project Status
Currently in Development
Gene Wars is a standalone post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel by Chris Bailey-Smith, currently in the drafting and revision process. Updates on progress, world-building notes, and excerpts will be shared here as the manuscript develops.
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