High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Softwire is a series of four, young adult, science fiction novels by PJ Haarsma. It is set in space, in an original fictional universe of Haarsma`s creation. A group of around two hundred children are orphaned in outer space on their journey to the Rings of Orbis: giant, planet-like rings which surround a wormhole. The children`s parents are killed during an incident in the "seed-ship" in which they are traveling and the computer controlling the ship has raised the children—the eldest of whom are thirteen-years-old as the ship reaches Orbis.