Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Anthologies

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a Sri Lankan author, researcher, and activist.

He was born in November 1992 in Sri Lanka and is part of the newest generation of science fiction writers from south Asia. When he found The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, it inspired him to write “the Waste”, a 130,000-word story that was set in a world partly tech and partly magic. Yudhanjaya taught himself programming once he graduated and even worked in game development for some time on a project that would be set in the future, but not too far off. The project did not go anywhere, and the author transitioned to working as a tech journalist.

He also founded the tech news website Readme.lk, a Sri Lankan site of which he was the editor. He would also join the middleware corporation WSO2 in 2015. At the same time, he was also writing Numbercaste. He was also maintaining his blog “Icaruswept”, which had gained him attention in Sri Lanka for its analyses.

His research has been largely focused on networks, social media platforms, and language. Numbercaste received recognition in South Asia as well thanks to the focus on emerging tech as well as critiques of society and of a political novel. The 2017 book was not the only novel he wrote to gain acclaim, as The Salvage Crew (2020) was hailed as one of the year’s top fantasy and science fiction books. The author has been nominated for a Nebula Award, the second from his country to have the honor since Arthur C. Clarke.

Wijeratne has had his writing be published in Slate Magazine, Wired magazine, Foreign Policy, and more. His first story to be published was self-published and was a short story about an alcoholic individual that volunteers to be propelled into a Ring singularity. The story was received favorably. The author is known for being for A.I. and human collaboration when it comes to writing fiction. He has regularly appeared at the top of the best seller lists on Amazon and landed a four book deal in 2018 with HarperCollins that included Numbercaste, and Endemol Shine acquired the film options. The author followed it with Omega Point, a self-published short story.

He would follow that up with the Sri Lanka-set The Inhuman Race, which explores topics on A.I. sentience, rights and more in an alternate history and futuristic globe where the Indian subcontinent is still ruled by the British. He has also written Messenger with R.R. Virdi, considered one of 2018’s top sci-fi stories and a 2018 Nebula Award finalist. He also launched the cyberpunk anthology “2054” along with other artists and worked on “Genesis”, a comic.

The author co-founded the fact-checking organization Watchdog Sri Lanka, with the goal of countering propaganda and misinformation. He gave his own TED talk in 2018 where he touched on blogging and how he attempts to avoid ‘group think’ when possible. Yudhanjaya also would join up with the Global South think tank ‘LIRNEasia’ working as a researcher, focusing on analyzing communities through their social media presence, as well as analyzing hate speech, bot networks, and general misinformation. He has spoken about how to moderate content that is violent or related to terrorism on the web while at ForeignPolicy or the Internet Governance Forum.

He has also experimented with generated poetry using “OpenAI GPT-2” and has also tried to write a novel co-authored along with procedural generation tools and GPT-2, which resulted in The Salvage Crew, the 2020 novel. Nathan Fillion serves as its narrator and it was a best seller on Audible. It was also picked as one of 2020’s top sci-fi and fantasy books by Polygon. His influences include everyone from Terry Pratchett to anime and video games, Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, and more.

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is the author of the popular science fiction and dystopian fantasy novel, Numbercaste. This award-winning novel is set in the near future, one that doesn’t seem all that implausible once you read about it. The winner of the Virtual FantasyCon Award in 2017, check out this novel and the debut from this talented author!

Main character of the story Patrick Udo is given a job offer to work at NumberCorp. The offer is too good to resist, so he packs his things up and relocates to the Valley. Not everything is booming in the 2030’s, and Patrick decides to take advantage of this rare job opening. The only thing is that he has no idea that he will become part of one of the most ambitious projects ever.

NumberCorp works its way through data compiled and aggregated from various social media networks and is crunching that information as part of its journey to make a new society. Here in this society, social associations, activities, and importance to society will be examined and analyzed, and it will all end up resulting in a Number.

This is a place where the people that are deemed to provide value and have influence achieve status and where those who do not have it will not do as well. But would this society be too powerful to avoid corruption? How far can a company go before it’s finally too far? Read this engaging dystopian novel to find out!

The Salvage Crew is a science fiction novel from Yudhanjaya Wijeratne.

This salvage job is different than the other ones. When a crew of humans with their A.I. overseer go to a planet to try and salvage an old U.N. star ship, it’s a thankless job. Their overseer’s not thrilled to be there and the human crew is not even the top tier of talent or ability. Even worse, this planet is stuck in the middle of nowhere. It’s clear this job is going to be long and probably difficult. But they’re on Urmahon Beta, so why not give it a go and get out of there.

But when things go wrong, everything suddenly shifts. The crew thought an empty backwater was devoid of life, but it’s not. On top of that, the land is roamed by mega-fauna and there’s a crew with gear that is haunting their dig site. Meanwhile, a secret that has the capacity to alter humanity forever is out there in the dark.

Can the salvage crew conquer this planet and leave the job alive? Read the novel to find out!