A first look at the cover for my upcoming hard science fiction novel—set in a near-future India where physics, geopolitics, and deep space engineering collide.
Zero Dimensional Space – Book 1 begins not with warp drives or alien signals, but with a physics anomaly in a Casimir force experiment at a national lab. What follows is a tightly woven story of discovery, sabotage, and global escalation. The book is grounded in empirical science and informed by real-world institutions like IRSO, the CSNA, and elite research institutes.
Today, I’m excited to share the cover—and speak about the thinking behind it.
When I first began writing Zero Dimensional Space, I knew Book 1 would remain close to Earth. The action unfolds in labs, launch centers, and underground facilities—places where the scientific method rules, where protocols matter, and where geopolitics constantly intrude upon progress. The story begins not with faster-than-light travel, but with something much harder: an original discovery that defies known physics, and a global race to understand and control it.
So when it came time to design the cover, I wanted to reflect that grounded, technical world. No abstract cosmic shapes. No hyperspace tunnels. Just a moment of precision and scale: a rocket about to launch.
The brief I gave to the cover artist, Prerona Mazumder (@prerona.mzd), centered around a scene from the chapter Spaceborne. A heavy-lift Indian rocket—the NGLV—stands tall on the pad, cryogenic tanks venting cold gas. The sky is still thick with clouds after a storm. In the foreground stands a lone astronaut in a GAISE spacesuit, helmet in hand, facing the rocket.
That’s the image Prerona captured—clean, composed, and disciplined.
The astronaut’s stance is not romanticized; she’s not saluting or posing. She’s standing with measured resolve, her back to the viewer, grounded in physical presence. You can read the ISRO and GAISE markings clearly on the rocket. The Indian flag is there too—subtle, not dominant. The clouds aren’t just for effect; they’re launch atmosphere, the kind of turbulent moisture you’d expect from a cryo-fueled stage at T-minus minutes.
This cover does what I hoped: it signals that Zero Dimensional Space isn’t a fantasy. It’s a speculative but plausible near-future science fiction novel, rooted in physics, driven by institutions, and shaped by the geopolitical currents of our real world.
I’m grateful to Prerona for bringing this scene to life with precision, restraint, and clarity. The result is a cover that feels like a still from the mission log, not a concept sketch. And that’s exactly right.
— Manoj K.
Zero Dimensional Space is available in Kindle and paperback, globally on Amazon.
Artwork Credits
Cover art by Prerona Mazumder
Instagram: @prerona.mzd
Design based on a scene from Zero Dimensional Space, Chapter – Spaceborne.
Paperback cover
