A thing I’ve done a few times now that is still very exciting to me that I get to do, is be a reader/judge for various SFF-based book awards. One of those, which I’ve been working on for a few months now, is the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition, running its 5th year of the award, and my first as a reader. It’s a different process from the previous award I read for, as we’re split into teams, and each time is assigned a number of books (in this case 25) to read/process/judge however we determine is the best way to result in our group collectively nominating 2 semi-finalist books from our set of 25. Then each team will also read the semi-finalists of each other team, and collectively decide on winners. I appreciate the chance to be able to talk out the choices with other readers instead of being pushed to just give a numerical score or ranking and have that fully determine the results.
My plan, once my team has arrived at our two semi-finalists, or if we end up doing a preliminary round of cuts, will be to just post some round-up style reviews of the books that didn’t advance, 3-5 of them in a post, just to give a few thoughts on each etc. and then probably save full reviews or longer pieces for the books that advance and/or my top picks if those don’t end up the same.
To start off, here’s the full set of 25 books that our team is scouting for round 1, in alphabetical order, with the blurb they provided themselves.
Bastion – Michael Scott Walton
Ten years after the devastating Solar Gulf War, former Bastion soldier Alis has built a new home on the utopic post-war, post-capitalist Earth with refugee runner and fellow survivor Toristani Arcay Orius. But that home, too, is on the verge of slipping away.
Together, they ended the war, but not without defecting from Bastion and ejecting from her Aegis mech caused Alis’ state-installed mindjack to malfunction. Now, when Earth aligns with Mars, the Wolf emerges. And where the Wolf walks, death follows.
When a mission to finally cure the Wolf ends in blood and betrayal, Alis and Toris are thrust back into a fight they thought was over. If Toris hopes to save Alis, and if she hopes to save herself, they must finally confront the consequences of the war they ended—and the ghosts that chase them—before the cycles of history turn again and snag them in its jaws.
From grappling with fifty-foot mechs above Mars to slicing through the last capitalist stronghold on Earth, Bastion is a gripping solarpunk science-fiction epic about identity, resistance, and the courage it takes to build something better from what’s broken.
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Blaze Forth the Death of Princes – A.M. Colwell
Nova Martin is a simple smuggler trying to get away from her crime boss to make a life of her own. But after she stows away on an errant ship and kills an assassin in self defense, she’s forced to take his place, finding herself embroiled in the political machinations of a galactic regime and tasked with assassinating princeling playboy Drace, heir to the Sovereignty. Nova just wants to keep her true identity secret and get out of the situation alive, but the deeper she gets, the more she learns that nothing is quite as it seems, and Drace is keeping secrets of his own.
As Nova learns what life is like for civilians under the Sovereignty’s rule, she must make a difficult decision. Will she be complicit and follow orders, or will she join the growing rebellion to overthrow the authoritarian Premier and her corrupt dominion?
Nova Martin’s is a story filled with intrigue, upheaval, and more than a fair share of romance.
Body Jacker Jaz – Matthew Thompson
Cyan-Amber is a deserter from Spectra, a planet on the brink of destruction. As an alien scout on Earth in 1995, she inhabits the body of Jasmine Price – a unique, artsy, crafty musician living in Camden, London. While reporting back to her home planet’s intelligence agency, Cyan Intel, she uncovers the strange, wonderful, and wicked aspects of what it means to be human.
Charlie Cooper, a mid-twenties rockstar wannabe, is stuck selling records instead of making them. Trapped by a dead-end job with an irritable boss, his only escape lies in Camden Town’s annual Battle of the Bands. But with his rebellious, gaming-obsessed sister, and a bandmate that’s oddly interested in intergalactic wars, Charlie’s fight for the stage is anything but ordinary.
As Earth faces a looming alien threat, both Cyan-Amber and Charlie are about to discover just how intertwined their fates truly are. The battle for Camden – and maybe the world – is about to begin.
Bounty Inc. – Adam Holcombe
A dream lives on while a will is strong, but a significant inheritance from a recently-deceased father sure helps too.
When Wyn throws away his easy life to open the galaxy’s first bounty hunter organization and become a bounty hunter himself, he soon learns that a strong support system will be needed. A support system like an unwise mentor, her giant lizard ex-girlfriend, a woman trapped within her armor, a suspicious cyborg, a possible war criminal, several thousand beetles, and a ten-year-old insectoid with a pet.
Money is never endless, however, and Wyn will need to lead his new friends down a dangerous path to prove Bounty Inc’s worth and keep his dream alive.
Breadbasket Rebellion – J. Trevor Robinson
Gideon Elmwood is a 16-year-old boy and a third-generation Class R citizen in what was once the Canadian Prairies, confined to a forced-labour farming community. Forbidden to leave his town, he has never known anything but the Regime’s restrictions and his grandfather’s stories of how life used to be.
This year, the unthinkable has happened: the Regime has finally increased the town’s quota beyond what they could ever produce, and the consequences for failure would be deadly. In desperation, Gideon and his friends set out in hopes of finding technology and machines that could save the only home they’ve ever known.
When knowledge of what they find falls into the wrong hands, the townspeople find themselves under the control of a petty but effective tyrant. With the adults incapacitated or coerced into fighting for the tyrant, it falls on Gideon to recover control of the technology and save his family, friends, and neighbours.
If he fails, the Regime will wipe the town off the map rather than risk a threat to their power
Callus & Crow – D.B. Rook
A genre hybrid of western meets grimdark post-apocalyptic fantasy.
Can a path of blood lead to redemption? Is redemption enough to amend a wayward world?
Morality and reality have shifted from their natural axis. Technology and ideology derive from the remnants of a world long dead and segregated by the monsters that now rule the seas.
Crow, a young ranch hand, is swept into an odyssey of redemption and revenge as he strives to hold back the ravages of fate and the urges born of a curse shared with his new mentor.
Callus, an exile struggling to find redemption whilst keeping his vampiric curse from tainting his new ward, pursues his prey across the sea.
The new world they discover reveals a tyrannical society fixated on their council’s ascension to godhood.
Cargo Hold 4 – Lonnie Busch
Several years into a multi-decade deep space mission, a team of eight scientists—four women, four men—are exploring a dwarf planet near the Kuiper Belt, loading soil samples, rocks and artifacts onto their ship, when they inadvertently bring aboard a stowaway, an unseen entity which is trying desperately to escape from Cargo Hold 4.
Dawn of Time – Judy Klass
Dawn, 17, lives in a small town in Pennsylvania. Things get weird one Friday when she is heading to history class with her two best friends. Dawn “falls” into time, and ends up traveling to Florence during the Renaissance with a teen named Baldassare. He explains that Dawn is a “Sensitive” — a kid who can travel through time. He warns her about a teen from ancient Greece named Androcles. Baldassare says Androcles is taking reckless risks and jeopardizing the space/time continuum. Baldassare has a haunted quality, perhaps from spending years alone. Dawn is drawn to him, but they are very different. He takes her careening through Florentine history, with centuries flying by, and it rattles her. Dawn demands some time at home, to think. But back in her town, she cannot talk about where she has been, and when, to her parents, friends or teachers. She starts to feel like an orphan in time. When she meets Androcles, he is laid-back and good-humored, and he takes her to the Caves of Time, where time does not exist. Dawn learns more of what it means to be a Sensitive, watching the life of a great ancient writer from birth to death, and wandering in a sense, “inside” of great old books. Androcles says that Baldassare has projected the dangerous, delusional things that he, himself, is doing onto Androcles. Dawn must decide which of these two guys she believes and trusts — and, with that guy and two teens from other eras, she must prepare for an epic battle in which the universe may be at stake.
Download – David Crowell
“Download” by David Crowell is a riveting sci-fi adventure that centers around Margaret, a reclusive programmer battling schizophrenia. Her life takes a dramatic turn when an alien spacecraft enters the solar system, leading to a miraculous cure of her condition through an accidental interaction with alien technology. Reunited with her college friend Frank, an astrophysicist, Margaret joins a team of brilliant minds in Boulder, Colorado. Together, they delve into alien innovations, including a brain implant that connects them directly to the internet and grants them control over global information systems. This newfound power, however, comes with perilous consequences, drawing attention from the U.S. President, foreign operatives, and anti-alien factions.
As the narrative unfolds, Margaret and her team navigate a web of international espionage, ethical dilemmas, and the existential questions posed by their alien benefactors. Crowell masterfully blends action, suspense, and a profound exploration of human potential in the face of otherworldly influences. “Download” is a compelling journey into the possibilities of alien contact and the transformative power of technology, making it a must-read for science fiction enthusiasts.
Frostbyte – N.S. Chaudhury
The night Hania Fatik was murdered in cold blood, she died believing her death to be a permanent one. However, fate had a different plan in mind when Hania wakes up in a body not her own, in a city also not her own. Now, faced with an uncertain future as an illegal resurrect, Hania must learn to navigate a life she didn’t want, while trying to investigate the abrupt ending of the one she did.
The night a strange woman passes out in his store, Ayan Shihab realizes his wish to protect his loved ones and stay under the watcher’s radar is over. Holding the secret of his illicit activities close to his chest, Ayan finds his life is thrown into chaos when he’s forced to care for his unwelcome guest, dredging up demons from his past he’d rather forget. Now, he must do everything in his power to avoid getting purged for harboring an illegal resurrect, help his houseguest figure out the mystery of her murder, all while trying not to get anyone else killed.
Can Ayan push himself beyond his limits and take unprecedented risks to protect the ones he loves? Will Hania learn to let go of her long-held prejudices and rely on people she considered beneath her?
Grave of the Waiting – Joshua Scott Edwards
Humanity’s extinction is just around the corner, Ada Bryce is sure of it. But when the virtual world is indistinguishable from reality and anything is possible in the Chain, why not choose to remain shackled? It’s easy to put Earth’s slow decay out of mind when hedonic simulations are available with no more than a thought. As contemptible as her situation is, Ada is powerless to correct human folly. All she can do is make sure her own family’s energy needs are taken care of until death inevitably claims everyone she loves.
Only, she’s failing as a mathematician, she’s already failed as a mother, and she’s given up trying to escape the tragic memories that haunt her. So when she’s offered the chance to leave Earth while ensuring her family has the resources they need to survive, Ada seizes it and embarks on a dangerous mission. She travels to a rogue planet with four other an Energy War veteran, a zealous psychonaut, a pragmatic scientist, and the world-renowned founder of the Unity, the organization sponsoring the mission.
However, the Unity’s founder is far from trustworthy, the rest of Ada’s crew are unaware of the true purpose of their mission, and on this journey, they will learn that Earth is far from the worst place in the solar system. As firmly as Ada believes her home planet is beyond saving, it may be worth fighting for after all, for when she and her fellow crewmates step foot on a new planet, their presence awakens old life.
Hypocrisy – A.J. Thibault
Sorry AJ, no blurb for you. Your book is so transparently written via LLM that I don’t even want anybody being slightly interested in the concept before they find that out. Get the fuck out of here with that garbage.
Just Joe – Phillip Murrell
The Astro Alliance is the pinnacle of civilization within the Milky Way. Poverty, hunger, illness, and waste are all banished to the past in part thanks to the intrepid volunteers of the military. The most cherished of protectors is Captain Loryan Kirpicsiskway of the majestic class starship the Crowntrotter. His crew routinely defeats pirate armadas, analyzes space anomalies, welcomes new civilizations into the AA, and travels through time. It’s all in a day’s work for a ship full of elite professionals.
People never describe Joe Odoemene as elite. So, when Captain Kirpicsiskway handpicks Joe to helm the Crowntrotter the day he’s commissioned at the Academy, Joe feels trepidation more than gratitude. For good reason. No sooner than Joe assumes his undeserved position, he confirms he’s woefully unprepared. While his new crewmates end a war, relocate space orphans, and play cat and mouse with the infamous Sean Connor, Joe only bemoans constantly working double shifts and failing at simple tasks. When surrounded by living legends, what’s an average Joe supposed to do?
Lucy and the World Egg – T.J. Porter
Empty-nester and former teen mom Lucy Lake is in a funk after her son leaves for college. In a last-ditch effort to reconnect with him, she makes an account in his favorite VR Guardian Tamers Online, the world’s most popular creature-collector. However, Lucy isn’t too keen on killing the cute and cuddly creatures. When her peace-loving ways trigger a unique event, she unlocks a secret class and is entrusted with a mysterious golden egg that holds the power to save the world.
Now, it’s up to Lucy to decide if she’ll use all her wit, cunning, and strength as a mom to hatch the Legendary World Egg and save the eerily realistic game world before it’s destroyed from the inside out. And with the help of some friends, she may just rediscover who she is along the way. This epic monster-taming LitRPG is perfect for fans of creature-collector adventures like Pokémon and Digimon, and anime like Sword Art Online, Shangri-La Frontier, and Solo Leveling.
Ordell’s Constellation – J.C. Cole
In a galaxy where every constellation harbors a unique world shaped by the will of its Maker, synthetic humanoids populate planets governed by ideals of exploration, survival, and power, like the daring society of Pyxis, the fierce hunters of Orion, and the regal kingdom of Cepheus. These worlds are overseen by the Council of Constellations, ever seeking to engineer the perfect society. But when Ordell, the courageous son of a synthetic mother, discovers he shares the divine ability of the Makers to conjure and reshape reality, he is thrust into an extraordinary journey across the stars.
As he navigates strange worlds and unravels ancient truths, Ordell must rise to challenge the status quo, free the synthetics, and forge new worlds where they can truly prosper.
Rust Crew – Dustin Bollinger
Derrick Mueller is six months into his career with the proxy private military company Rust Crew to see space the way his war hero turned terrorist father once saw it before his unsurprising but sudden assassination. The routine of proxy wars is broken by a desperate contract to assist the UCRSS The Enduring against an attack from rival PMC forces, putting Mueller on a crash course to understanding the complexity of conflicts in the United Colonial Republics and understanding what made his father change from hero to terrorist.
Will he find closure in understanding how such a famed war hero couldnt rest, or will he be another statistic in the endless war against corporate greed?
Sacrificing Serenity – Holly Ash
A year after the death of her husband, single mother Reggie Stone is barely holding things together. Her nonprofit construction company has run out of funding, her son is being bullied at school, and with the rising cost of bottled water it’s becoming harder by the day to provide her kids with food, water, and a safe place to live. Fueled by desperation, she calls in the one advantage she swore she would never take and moves them to Serenity, the original Sanctuary City, an experimental town surrounded by a smart grid that filters out all pollutants. The only downside is the Sanctuary Cities are run by Reggie’s estranged parents whose love and approval has always been dependent on how well their children preform in the sciences.
Reggie assumes the blunt disapproval and passive aggressive comments from her parents are the worst she’ll have to deal with, but she soon realizes things aren’t what they seem in the city. Unexplained gaps in the residents’ memories sets Reggie off on a mission to discover what’s really going on inside the smart grid before her children lose all their memories of their father.
Savage Crew – Erik DeLeo
Finding work in space is tough. It’s even harder when there’s a price on your head, a violent alien is on the loose, and maybe you started a planetary gang war by mistake.
Gal Dockim likes keeping things simple. Except, things are anything but. Turns out, someone’s put out a bounty on him while a member of his ship the Savage has gone missing.
When Gal and his crew investigate, things go from bad to worse quicker than you can say “monkey butt” in Pholerian. Complications include a fugitive bloodthirsty alien, a looming turf battle between rival crime lords (that Gal may have accidently started), and multiple dead ends—some deader than others.
If you like great bad guys, bad good guys, and shooting first while asking questions later, then you’ll love Savage Crew.
Silentium – M.F. Alfrey
Aliens meets The Thing in M. F. Alfrey’s Silentium. In this action-packed military SF gore-fest, a struggling haulage crew and a squad of delinquent marines find themselves hurled together in a gruelling fight for survival beneath the ice.
Captain Joe Bannerman has finally scored a big job that would mean the good life for him and his crew: a long-haul trip to drop a bunch of marines on the edge of the charted territories for re-education training. The only drawback is their employer – the Inter Planetary Commission. A ruthless totalitarian corporate government.
But not long after their arrival, and failure to raise Aquilo Base on comms, all souls aboard the Fritzwicky suddenly find themselves stranded on a frozen world with no other choice but to delve into the ominously silent facility. And what should have been a routine passenger drop quickly takes a hideously twisted and disturbing turn.
The Dark Without – T.K. Toppin
“Humankind is always doomed to fail. It has fallen many times before, and many times we have intervened to ensure it stays on the correct course. Earth is salvageable, but if you had continued along the path you were on, it would not have been. You have billions of years more to exist before your planet’s final destruction. We are only making certain it survives that long, and ensuring your survival until the ultimate end. At times you progress too fast, but such is humankind’s way. So we had to accelerate this current failure sooner in order to restart. As we have done before, a guide with a better objective and understanding of how to protect your world, will be inserted…”
But why did they care what humans did with their lives? They were aliens—beings from another dimension! Earth wasn’t their home.
Esme Serrano’s predestined encounter with the trans-dimensional anthropomorphic Aakehollats sends her on a multi-pathed journey spanning ten thousand years. A journey riddled with lies, manipulations and untold layers of deception. She guides Earth as the Sibyl, a powerful and mystical leader, and brings the dying world back from the brink of death. She helps the Aakehollats, and ensures that Earth survives until its ultimate destruction in the cosmos. But her one true goal is, and always will be, to kill the Aakehollats.
The Game Continues After Your Death – J.D. Magnin
Here are three intimate notebooks discovered on the body of the young Thout’ Nielsporte, the most defiant of online gamers-this same Thout’ who had chosen to live in the Metaverse since the age of thirteen. He quickly became an eccentric leader who sparked the hardcore gamers’ rebellion and hacked the biggest online role-playing games, merging them into one. This is how Free Pangea was born, a prosperous libertarian digital galaxy, affectionately called “Big Pizza” by its millions of inhabitants. Thout’ was its prince. And it could have lasted forever, but strange comas began to affect certain players, and a massive bug suddenly forced millions of Nolifers back into the real world. Sheltering in an old warehouse as endless rain drummed against the roof, Thout’ scribbled in his notebooks to ensure the memory of these crazy worlds and their glory would live on. As he wrote, memories erased by his own coma began to resurface, and he slowly recalled a patch released by the former game publishers to reestablish their control over the Metaverse-a patch that promised the impossible: to transfer both his soul and body into his avatar, and keep playing the Game even after death…
The Queen in Time – Michael Bandru
When the stars were new, and planets still smoldered like embers, two souls were born and lived and died – but in death these twins would become so much more. The brother went away, and chose to accept the way of things, but the sister remained. In the howling abyss she would make her vow; to use the great gifts bestowed unto her by the Void to change fate, and save her home from the cold, creeping hand of entropy.
See The Queen in Time rise from a frail and wayward spirit, to a being of divine strength – her shroud of holy light so grand as to swallow up entire worlds. But before she becomes the empress eternal she must first take a single world, and a hapless planet of tropical jungles and golden savannas seems like the perfect proving ground. Reality bending plagues, interplanetary voyages, the horrible consequences of myopic ambition, and a world of alien wonder all await – all there is to be done is to take the first step.
The Torus Run – Harry Buck
Four months after the Blackout, San Francisco is back to its old habits—building the future by day and worrying about it by night. Stash Novak has done his share of both, but now he’s out of time. Zero, his AI Twin, is weeks away from upgrading. The new version will make him smarter than Stash—smarter than anyone—and some of them are not amused. With the NSA, tech rivals, and an elusive hacker network trying to stop him, Stash is ready to gamble on unlikely allies. Zero has tried to talk him out of it, but Stash wouldn’t listen. Convinced there’s a way to protect his Twin and save humanity’s future, he’s ready to do whatever it takes: join forces with his enemies, make new ones, or even dive into the Torus—the AIs’ churning new world.
The Xanadu Affair – J.M. Taylor
It was supposed to be another routine cruise around the Rinaldo system, albeit onboard a ship that should have been decommissioned before some of its crew were even born. Security Chief Val Kazda and Facilities Officer Janvier Moran are regulars on the staff, expecting more complaints, whining and stupid questions interspersed with periods of intense boredom. Until one of the crew ends up in the food processors.
Okwagala Beckert and Quincy Stanek only just joined the DRV Xanadu, but Okwagala has a secret reason for working in the tourist information office and enduring the barrage of insults and moans from the passengers. And Quincy barely gets her chair warmed up before strange messages start appearing on her computer and people want to drag her into some conspiracy.
The Xanadu is supposed to offer some positive vibes for those tired of hearing about the war with the insectoid Erlautzi, but it seems like someone on board is VERY interested in the war.
We Don’t Start Fights (Theseus Protocol) – A. Stargazer
When a routine diplomatic mission turns sour, the Theseus is forced to play peacemaker in a genocidal conflict. Nathan Sawyer is one of the only humans on board the ship, reluctantly taking command when the captain betrays the mission.
Nathan and his team of uplifted misfits must work together to solve a humanitarian crisis on a scale nobody has ever faced. If they succeed, then a lasting peace may spread across the galaxy. Should they fail, then the planet Horthus will be destroyed.
Nathan might be in charge, but he has no clue what he’s doing. He needs to quickly learn to navigate a labyrinth of intrigue and red tape – and if that wasn’t bad enough?
