Alina: Before the Selection

Alina: Before the Selection is Novella 1.2 in the reading order of SOLEN: The Eden Archive, a hard science fiction series by Warren Pulley. Read it after Carter: The First Record and before SOLEN: The First Record. It is on Amazon in Kindle.

About the book

Before Mars, there was Manila. Before the mission, there was a girl who learned to grow things in places they were not supposed to grow.

Alina Rosa Vasquez grew up on Floor 14 of the Manila Highlands Resettlement Zone, in a world recovering from the floods that had taken the low city. Her grandmother kept an illegal rooftop garden — twelve containers of soil in a building that allowed none — and taught Alina everything she would eventually need to know about how life survives conditions it was never designed for.

At twelve, Alina began documenting a weed that grew through a crack in the east stairwell composite flooring. Maintenance removed it every seven to ten days. It came back every time. She watched it for four years and never stopped believing it was telling her something.

At fourteen, she published her first scientific paper anonymously — a rigorous analysis of mycorrhizal behaviour in closed environments that was cited by university researchers within six weeks of publication, by scientists who had no idea the author was a teenage girl in a resettlement zone who had written it about her grandmother's tomatoes.

At twenty-two, she sat with the NovaSeed application for three months before she submitted it. Not because she was uncertain about her qualifications. Because she needed to be certain she was going for the right reason. She had watched the world make large decisions for small reasons her entire life. She was not going to do that.

This is the story of how Alina Vasquez became the woman who found life on Mars on Sol Three — and what she had to leave behind to become her.

Alina: Before the Selection is a companion novella in the SOLEN: The Eden Archive series. It is best read after NovaSeed: Eden Rising or alongside Carter: The First Record.

Quick answers

Where does Alina: Before the Selection fit in the SOLEN reading order?

It is Novella 1.2 in this site's reading order. Read it after Carter: The First Record and before SOLEN: The First Record. The full order is on the series hub at novaseedbooks.com/solen-reading-order.

How long is Alina: Before the Selection?

The Kindle edition is 50 pages, published April 30, 2026.

Where can I buy Alina: Before the Selection?

On Amazon in Kindle. Availability changes, so check Amazon for current formats and prices.

Who wrote Alina: Before the Selection?

Warren Pulley.

Explore the archive

• Crew file: Alina Vasquez
• The cutting on Sol Two
• The network beneath the floor
• The real science behind the Hellas Planitia discovery
• Full reading order
• Series timeline
• Glossary of terms, places, and people

Reading guides: Mars science behind the series · Mars colonisation novels · Books like The Martian

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