For the first round of the Self-Published Sci-Fi Competition 4, The Space Girls have been allocated 29 books to read.
Each team has been randomly allocated approx 30 books as their initial ‘scout pile’. To decide who will move onto the next round, each member of The Space Girls will read up to 30% of each book. We then vote Yes or No on whether we think it should go through to the next stage. This first round will finish in January, giving us up to 10 books as our quarter-finalists.
For the quarter finals, each team member will read the rest of each book and rate them out of 10. The top 2 books will then be our semi-finalists, and will be announced in March.
Each team also has a third ‘Escape Pod’ choice – these are the third highest rated book from each team. If any team doesn’t have a second book that they would like to use as their semi-finalist, they can choose to read another team’s Escape Pod picks.
(Wondering who is on the Space Girls team? See my previous blog post, SPSFC4: Introducing The Space Girls Team!)
In this blog post, find out about the 29 books that we will be reading. I will link to the Goodreads page for each book, so you can read more about each book.
A Dirge for Cascius: Part I, by Calum Lot
Cascius Carcyde is on the brink of letting his addiction to reliving his sorrows claim his mind. When the Sages demand he take a new partner, Cascius must forfeit his old ways in order to solve the twisted Red Hand murders.
To unravel an interstellar mystery and stop the Red Hand, Cascius must pull himself from the very depths of despair and learn to change before the entire Velutra falls into oblivion.
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Cosmic Horror, Crime & Mystery, Cyberpunk, Galactic Empire / Colonisation, Genetic Engineering, Hard Sci-Fi, Noir, Space Adventure, Fantasy, Time Travel
Word Count: 170,737 words
A Quiet Universe, by Kay Atkinson
CERHA is a fabricant, and her job is simple: keep Annalise Fletcher safe, a role she performs dutifully and without fail, as she was designed to. Neither she nor her charge expected that this routine assignment could lead to love, but when feelings begin to bloom, neither see fit to stand in their way, and the two find themselves leading a shared life where both must walk a tightrope, precariously balancing between duty, and what domestic bliss is woven into the spaces remaining. For a time, they are as close to happy as they can manage.
Then Annalise vanishes away to the embattled starship ‘Upon Silver Tides’, leaving a cryptic warning in her wake, and CERHA finds herself frantically in pursuit, on an illegal mission to save her objective-turned-lover and bring her home alive. She isn’t sure what she’ll find. But what awaits is a web ensnaring both wayward lovers, far more tangled than either could possibly know, and lurking upon this forsaken vessel is a descent into insanity that will force CERHA to confront the bleak truth at the heart of her function.
Genres: Dystopian, Horror, LGBTQ+, Space Opera
Word Count: 109,647 words
A Wolf in Space, by Alex Valdiers
Gunslinger. Skyhorse rider. Lone Wolf. Malvius is a veteran gunslinger in Larragon, a six-planet solar system with two rivers: two train lines linking each planet together. The two rivers are a beehive for opportunistic merchants and feisty gunslingers.
All you need to survive in Larragon is a skyhorse to roam the open space and a gunblaster to protect your hide and earn your keep. Wild moons and saloons are aplenty, money is easily made and lost, but life for Malvius isn’t about money, it is about helping who needs helping, shooting who needs shooting.
Along comes the Raoke Gang, shattered, their leader wounded, half of the gang incarcerated. Malvius feels compelled to help. Little did he know that simply relaying a message from their leader to the survivors of the Raoke Gang will send him on a wild course of events that will see him facing off a space wizard, assisting a space train heist, and become Larragon’s most wanted man.
Genres: Fantasy, Galactic Empire / Colonisation, Space Western
Word Count: 103,991 words
After the Fall: The Engineer and the Apocalypse, by Gerry Gainford
Haley left Dublin for a six-week internship in Seattle.
Four years later and she’s living in the ruins of Washington State after the world fell in a cascade of nuclear bombs, computer viruses and human plagues.
When she is accused of her friend’s murder, she flees into the night, with one destination in mind. Home to Marley, the love she left behind.
To escape her pursuers, skip around the swathes of chemical and radioactive waste, avoid the Kings, a roaming gang of marauders, she will need to use every bit of engineering knowledge she has.
Can she make it across the continent and an uncrossable ocean to finally get home?
Does home still exist, or did it perish in the Fall?
Genres: LGBTQ+, Post-Apocalyptic
Word Count: 92,572 words
Echoes, by Phil Oddy
Estrel Beck doesn’t want to be a software salesman. Yet here he is, newly arrived in the city-state of Trinity, for a make-or-break meeting with the local Administration department. Under-prepared, under-motivated and over-sensitive, every little thing about this strange place seems to stress Estrel out. When he discovers a message scrawled on the back of a napkin, in his own handwriting, telling him he’s trapped in a time loop, he knows for sure that he’s in over his head. Then the Administration building explodes.
As Estrel struggles to make sense of his situation and find an escape, he is drawn into Trinity’s bizarre underworld and the struggles for power against Trinity’s corrupt Mayor Chaguartay. Combining science fiction and urban thriller, Echoes is a story about being trapped by your past choices and what it takes to break free.
Genre: Time Travel
Word Count: 82,548 words
Elegy of a Fragmented Vineyard, by Kaden Love
Forced to appease the policies of a foreign fiefdom, Phenmir must do the harvest organs from infants.
Ten years ago, a new generation of children began to manifest abilities from the gods. Now, nearly half of the continent has chosen to graft these organs into adults, granting them their powers.
Phenmir will no longer participate, but can he repent his sin before all morality is lost?
Meanwhile, Aerhee will give all to preserve the process of harvesting, silencing those who oppose her people
Will this land of peace resort to the barbaric practice of war? In a battle of preservation and progression, there can only be one victor.
Genres: Dystopian, Fantasy, Suspense, Weird
Word Count: 115,168 words
Even the Stars Deserve to Die, by Ramon Miravitllas Mas
On Earth, the cities of humanity crumbled to dust, turning into fossils. Forests burned and life went extinct. But, billions of years later, it rained one last time. The siblings were born from that rain, strange creatures of human appearance and mind. Their life on the desert of Earth has no purpose, until they discover the wick, a molecule burning around their genetic material, condemning them to death one hundred years and three months after birth.
In search to find out if life is worth living, a researcher explores a cave on Earth billions of years old. The brain inside a simulacrum misses its dead father. The commander of a spaceship travels to meet a mysterious satellite orbiting Mercury, perhaps an ancient artifact that humans left behind before extinction.
In this story of philosophical dimensions, the power of the word merges with the nostalgia for an irretrievable past, where fear of death coexists with the sadness of losing the parents you will never see again.
A hard science fiction book dealing with topics such as molecular biology, stellar evolution and the future of Earth, combined with poetry, sculpture and the early artworks of creatures who yearn to be human.
Genres: Dying Earth, Hard Sci-Fi
Word Count: 140,253 words
Far Flung, by Utunu
On the harsh, barren planet of Sands, in the small settlement of Oasis, live three young companions: the inseparable fennecs Bori and Tuther, and their best friend, the hyena Samna.
Bori is psionic—and on the distant planet of Verdant, psionics are fervently sought. When the two planets are in conjunction, a shuttle journeys between
them, bringing needed resources to Sands and hoping to take gifted psionics back to lush Verdant in return.
The shuttle’s imminent arrival signifies opportunities for Oasis, but for the trio it instead evokes dread. For if Bori is chosen, he’d be taken from his dearest friends and the only home he’s ever known.
Bori would be broken without Tuther.
Tuther would be broken without Bori.
And Samna? All he can do is help make their remaining days together a little brighter.
Genre: LGBTQ+
Word Count: 70,981 words
Lizard Girl and Ghost, by Olga Werby
A child lies dying. To save her, to preserve some of her identity, memories need to be retrieved from her avatar—Lizard Girl. Jude’s dad is using a cyber reality game to recover some of his sick girl’s memories in an attempt to restore brain function. The avatar’s personality patterns help patch the holes in Jude’s brain ravaged by the disease.
But what becomes of a virtual mind left to roam in cyberspace after its host falls sick? The Far Cinct is a cyber city forbidden to school kids and average citizens. The Far Cinct is where rogue entities go to hide and to innovate and to die. It’s where illegal cyber enhancements and compulsions are sold to those who have the money and the connections to find them. But that’s cyberspace for you—nothing is ever what it appears to be on the surface.
As Jude’s consciousness starts to slip, her cyber awareness gains independence. What is a girl’s avatar without her human? Can consciousness and identity be tied up in a digital world without the wet works of a human body? Jump into the world of weird and surreal, and as you journey to look for memories of a sick girl, you might accidentally discover a virtual soul of her avatar.
Cyberpunk meets Sleeping Beauty meets cats… werecats.
Genres: Cyberpunk, Dystopian, Fantasy, Weird
Word Count: 75,920 words
Lost Souls, by Ryan Skeffington
Living on the premier Ring, Maximus, a brilliant engineer, hungers for more than the monotony of daily existence mandated to him by those that control the Ring. The relentless pursuit of Infinite Existence is a collective purpose assigned to all, but for Maximus, it’s a hollow dream that leaves his soul yearning for its own legacy. Determined to escape his repetitive life, Maximus seeks out a destiny that will offer his life significance. When shocking revelations about the Ring’s underbelly intertwine with the hidden truths of his own lineage, he’s propelled into action. Fueled by a spirit passed down to him by his indomitable father, he devotes his unshakable resolve to reshape the Ring. Maximus embarks on a mission to challenge the unassailable leadership of the Rings. He’s ready to wager everything, even his own life, on liberating all those that have lived below him from the ruthless grip of their oppressors. In this high-stakes struggle for freedom and justice, Maximus must confront not the forces of tyranny but also the threat of losing everyone that has built him up to the man he is now. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, he stands poised to start a revolution that will ignite every soul that’s been lost up to this point.
Genres: Adventure, Dystopian, Space Opera
Word Count: 99,810 words
Malkontent, by Io Wallace
In the not-too-distant future, in a United States splintered by corporate warfare and social strife, an unlikely antihero just might be the lesser evil.
For someone living in a corporate hellscape, Warner Vogel could have it after all, his name is on a skyscraper in big neon letters. Heir apparent to the omnipotent VogelCorp, his life should be a dream, except his encounter with an enemy insurgent fifteen years ago cost him an eye and much of his sanity. He has his secret projects and his distractions in seedy nightclubs to keep his mind occupied, but his only desire is revenge.
Freya is a genetic masterpiece—a heavily modified supersoldier from the mythic Unit Six, an unstoppable human weapon conditioned to enjoy violence. Until the day her mission at the VogelCorp vault goes horribly wrong and she winds up in a titanium cage with a hole in her skull. Her only way out of this mess is to help Warner get revenge on Nero, her former handler, and it doesn’t take her long to realize they have not only a common enemy but a common to bring down Unit Six and end the decades-long war between their states.
But what they find out in the process makes Warner question everything he the people closest to him, his country, even his own humanity. He’s about to discover how far he’s willing to go in the name of vengeance—and the greater good.
Genres: Cyberpunk, Dystopian, Techno Thriller
Word Count: 92,165 words
Mission of the Ro’arck, by Ericka Evren
The Archarian Alliance is under attack. A merciless enemy has emerged with technology and weapons that rival their own. Their vendetta is clear: destroy the Alliance.
The Archarian council selects Kaytrix to command their best starship, the Ro’arck, to defend the Alliance, but there’s another reason they chose him.
During the rising chaos, Kaytrix uncovers a deadly secret, one that could destroy Archaria and the Alliance before the enemy has a chance to.
Kaytrix is eager to prove his worth, but can he sacrifice his morality for his dream?
Genres: Adventure, Galactic Empire / Colonisation, Military, Space Opera
Word Count: 57,229 words
On Impulse, by Heather Texle
When the Department trained me to catch criminals, I never dreamed I’d become one.
Agent. Suspect. Intergalactic fugitive.
I was one of them until I shot my partner in self-defense. Even though the Department cleared me of wrongdoing, my co-workers didn’t agree. They turned their backs on me, so I turned my back on them. My partner’s actions never made sense. After ignoring my gut for a year, I asked my tech-genius best friend to dig into it.
Now Jarrett’s gone dark, and I soon discover he’d been brutally murdered. An officer finds me standing over the body, blaster in hand. Even I admit it looks bad.
There’s no way I can trust the Department to investigate further—not if I’m already the prime suspect. My only option is to run. Is it impulsive? Sure. Will having law enforcement dog me across the galaxy make life difficult? Most certainly. I’ll have to stay one step ahead of them if I want to solve Jarrett’s murder and clear my name.
Doing that will require every trick the Department taught me—and a few I learned on my own.
Grab it now to find out what mystery Jarrett uncovered and to what extreme Reliance will go to in order to bring her friend’s killer to justice.
Genres: Adventure, Crime and Mystery, Space Opera
Word Count: 105,025 words
Orbiting Fortunes, by A. L. MacDonald
Alan Mercier’s life as a cop on Mars was years and almost two hundred million miles behind him. After his partner is killed he is ready to let others do the good deeds, play the hero, and suffer the consequences. He is ready for the wild, lawless world of flying a space junker.
The toughest part of space junking isn’t the it’s keeping the find away from other space junkers, and staying on the good side of the beautiful station manager, Kate. Then there are the finds in some are duds, some extremely valuable, and some cause more trouble than one can imagine.
It’s the latter such find that leads Alan from orbit to a remote island in the Pacific, then halfway to Mars, and all the way back to facing what really drives him – even if it could get him killed.
Genres: Adventure, Hard Sci-Fi, Humourous, Space Exploration
Word Count: 105,025 words
Proliferation, by Erik A. Otto
Population centers have been leveled and society has regressed to a pre-industrialized state. An advanced city rises from the ashes, enabling the rebirth of more such cities, each one subtly different, the result of an experiment in finding the best machine-governed utopia. Sovereign forces mobilize to exploit their power, and others, to contain them.
At the heart of this struggle is an unlikely pair; a dejected anthropologist whose life’s work has finally become useful, and a snarky pirate forced to serve a monastic cult. To survive, they must not only navigate escalating conflict, but also understand the broader implications of the rising machine cities for all of humanity.
* A stand-alone novel in the same world as DETONATION *
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic
Word Count: 139,609 words
Song of the Caged Warrior, by Maria A. Perez
Montor is a child, happily growing up on the planet of Aranda—until the Lostai, an imperialist alien race, invade his planet, then attack his seaside village. Soon, Montor loses his whole family to injuries, sickness, and punishment.
With his aggressive temperament fueling dreams of revenge, Montor seems destined to follow the same fate as his family and succumb to the cruelty of Lostai enslavement. Then the Lostai military discovers that Montor is no ordinary child; he possesses dormant telekinetic and telepathic abilities. Montor is transferred to a military science station where a devious commander intends to turn him into a Lostai super soldier.
Can Montor survive the brutal and humiliating bootcamp? How will he manage the anger, depression, and self-loathing that comes from serving in the very same military that decimated his people? Or will he refuse to be a pawn in Losta’s war and risk everything to take on the mantle of an Arandan warrior?
Genres: Galactic Empire / Colonisation, Space Opera
Word Count: 121,813 words
The Artificial Structure Formerly Known as the Moon, by I. K. Stokbaek
The Order of the Demolition has one objective – destroy the broken world. And Darlan dreams of joining them. His zeal and willingness to do anything takes him far from the abandoned school that has sheltered him throughout his young life.
In a world where AI has enhanced some people and replaced others, the Indigents have no purpose and nothing to look forward to. Marianne accepts her fate. She is in all ways the last person one would expect to lead a revolution – until the Order of the Demolition involves an innocent in its schemes, and beliefs come tumbling down.
Sabine’s uncle runs the Space Ladder Project. Her father is a prominent politician fitted with a brain chip. Her only friend is the governing AI – the Order of the Demolition’s main target.
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Dying Earth, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic, Time Travel
Word Count: 501,131 words
The Automaton, by Ian Young
Humanity is on the cusp of extinction. Deteriorating populations threaten the planetary economy and risk the collapse of humanity itself. In desperation, human-like machines are built to serve where man no longer can.
These are the Automata.
Five thousand years later, humankind no longer walks the Earth, but has ascended beyond biology to float above Earth in a hemisphere-spanning supercomputer. When an anomaly arises on Earth that not even a post-biological civilization can comprehend, XR-345x—a long-deactivated top-of-the-line automaton—is awoken in a derelict facility deep within the overgrown jungles of Africa.
With help from Hank—a mysterious holographic A.I.— XR must learn of the advent of the automata and the resulting civil unrest, to a war that destroyed humanity’s trust in their would-be saviors, to racial disparities that divided the globe, to love eventually building a bridge that ultimately saved the human race.
At the same time, a violent automaton faction threatens XR, the anomaly, and what they represent for the future of Earth. Time is one thing the automaton does not have.
Genre: Artificial Intelligence
Word Count: 71,104 words
The Blood of Houses: Vol 1, by J. A. Garza
A secret is trivial for one, adequate for two, and fatal for three.
There’s power in blood. Such is the legacy of House Vega, a Sovereign fiefdom standing on the brink against General Basil Zeren of Taras. There, Jase Vega of Attica declares neutrality in his family’s war, in vein and virtue. A militant pacifist, he ventures beyond the neon city to train his clandestine daughter, Seva, how to wield their inherited the roaring tides of Hydrokinesis and the collateral-inducing damage of Super Strength. Far across the Royal Strait, along the secular shores of Siteia, lie devote conjurers and more—an innate power severed from the dynastic kings during the generation-long uprising, yet emerging with grievous consequences and divine authority not seen in centuries.
But a more civil disturbance rises to the east, where Shoshana Vega, the General of War, has decreed an ultimatum for her heretic join the destructive conflict or face execution for treason. Now, Basil is charging west to Attica, bringing his daughter, the apostatized but fierce Rome, her daughter, the infamous, immeasurable acolyte Seva, and the indomitable genetic powers of House Zeren—the first an inferno like Dragon’s breath, the second a psionic enhancement of hearing. All are colliding in Attica, unaware of a fifteen-year mystery condemning Seva’s birthright that will link the two feuding houses in blood forever.
Meanwhile, in the City of Sin, Chaya, Czar of House Petra, which has never fought a war on Siren soil, prepares the Sovereign Summit of every nation on Madish—whose misanthropic ideologies will clash over proper course of defend their world from global annihilation, together.
Genres: Adventure, Alien Invasion, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, First Contact, Galactic Empire/Colonization, Genetic Engineering, Military
Word Count: 272,763 words
The Dryburgh Chronicles Part 1: The Existence of Shadows, by L. P. Halliday
Scotland is a land steeped in magic and mystery, but Lilian Darling doesn’t believe in such things.
She has dedicated her career at Oxford University to clearing the names of those falsely accused of consorting with the devil, and that never involves any actual witchcraft. Until now.
When she and her research partner, Edgar Falkirk, head to the misty hills of the Scottish Borders to meet a promising source, their journey takes an unexpected turn. Edgar’s accidental discovery of an ancient spell book, combined with an encounter with an overly enthusiastic research student, thrusts them back through time to the 16th century at the outbreak of the witch craze ensnaring early modern Scotland.
In this perilous era, the pair of astute academics must navigate a landscape where their modern knowledge and skepticism could mark them as heretics. As they race to find a way back to their own time, they must confront the very myths they sought to debunk and uncover a truth that transcends reason.
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Time Travel, Historical Fantasy
Word Count: 50,576 words
The Flow of Power, by David Aumelas
A flywheel stores energy in a spinning cylinder. After eight years of grad school, Margo is ready to give up on making a better one. Maybe she’s not smart enough. Maybe her aging advisor is stuck on his own failures and has tasked her with an unsolvable problem. She doesn’t really care, until she solves it. The revolutionary Crywheel brings fame and wealth, topples global energy challenges, and drags her into scandal when it starts causing blackouts and car accidents. But, surely, cutting all dependence on fossil fuels must be worth a few dead commuters.
Genres: Alternative History / Parallel Universe, Hard Sci-Fi, Humourous, Historical
Word Count: 88,135 words
The Long Home of the Soul, by J. Carl Denton
In the year 2095, when one of the most powerful men in the world is brutally murdered, Coleman Hawkins, a burned out Atlanta MetroPol detective struggling with PTSD, is tasked with finding the killer. His investigation leads him face to face with the endgame of global economic disparity, and to a secret too terrible to be believed, too horrible to be ignored.
Genres: Crime and Mystery, Dystopian, Noir, Suspense
Word Count: 114,059 words
The Sapien Empire, by Nathan Ogloff
Shindo Dacan is a socially awkward but gifted engineer who has made the most brilliant machines seen since before the All-Silence—machines that ruler Vibrun Magrite used in his creation of the Domain as he brought all four of the city-states within his iron grip. With the help of a friend of his, Shindo is secretly planning to provide prosthetic limbs to the many victims of the war his machines have waged.
When Magrite finds out and slaughters Shindo’s friend before his eyes, Shindo tricks Magrite into funding a warrior mech to wreak revenge and is unwillingly rewarded with a woman from Magrite’s harem, Jarim Alsaedon. With his mech machine and Jarim’s help, Shindo stages a coup d’état that leaves Magrite dead and him and his accomplice as platonic dual heads of state.
As Shindo and Jarim work to rebuild their civilization, they’re beset by factions both within and beyond the Domain’s borders. Can Shindo learn how to design a stable peace before the new world he’d envisioned becomes a wasteland of death and destruction?
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic
Word Count: 99,317 words
The Scotty!, by Eric J. Hildeman
The Scotty is a device which transforms matter into energy and then energy back into matter, just like Scotty used to do on Star Trek, hence the name. But the harsh reality is that this is no mere transportation device. Taken to its logical conclusion, it is a technology which gives its user the powers of an absolute god! And as the old saying goes, power corrupts.
In this fix-up novel, a series of short stories, each part of an underlying story-arc, illustrate the awesome power of the Scotty, and the disasters that can ensue by using it. Each tale builds upon the over-arching theme regarding the future history following its invention, and how it was both used and abused.
Genres: Dystopian, Humourous, Space Exploration, Time Travel
Word Count: 76,072 words
They Left Magic in Their Wake, by Marilyn Peake
At the end of the world, there will be magic.
Earth has been decimated by climate change. Humanity has fractured into isolated tribes. A child born in the southwestern desert of the United States appears to have magical powers, a strict taboo in his part of the world.
In four other locations, people discover magical items. No one knows how they work or where they’re from. Although these strange objects capture the imagination, using them is risky and dangerous.
Genres: Dystopian, Fantasy, Metaphysical / Visionary, Post-Apocalyptic
Word Count: 88,045 words
Time Travel Rescue: Escape from the 21st Century, by Tom Kranz
Could you live in a world where personal vehicles are outlawed? Where coffee is a luxury for the elite? Where you are limited to three ounces of alcohol a day? Where food is manufactured? Could you live in a cube measuring 21-feet on each side and connected to thousands of other cubes in a massive complex that sits on the toxic remains of Mother Earth?
This is the only life Rick has known in his 32 years. Now, in the year 2212, he has the means to go back in time and set things right.
A chance, online meeting with a young hacker named Chen leads to a perilous journey through a wormhole back to the 21st century where he and Chen hope to set things right before they go terribly wrong. Unbeknown to Rick is Chen’s propensity for violence. Rick’s 21st-century guide, the smart and attractive Jill Strawbridge, takes an interest in her visitor from the future, a work assignment that becomes more than just a work relationship. While Rick is charmed and intrigued by 21st-century life, Chen racks up murderous misdeeds that complicate their altruistic mission. In the end, did Rick accomplish his mission to change the course of events in Time Travel Rescue.
Genres: Adventure, Dying Earth, Dystopian, Time Travel
Word Count: 82,582 words
Unnatural Selection: The Quantum Realm Book 1, by Robert P. Edwards
At the end of the 21st Century, humanity is enjoying a renaissance—or so it seems.
For the wealthy, a quantum biotechnology called Stem has eliminated disease and seamlessly integrates with The Web.
So why are people dying?
Amongst us live the Quants, a meld of robotics, AI, and quantum computing. They carry out vital work in a world dependent on technology. Personal Quants can be built to order for the privileged few.
Sophie and her marine biologist father, Dr Christopher Reid, live in one of the few habitable zones left in the southern hemisphere. Like her mother, Sophie looks forward to a career in medicine while Chris works at the cutting edge of climate science.
Kazumi is the heir to the Mashimoto Corporation, a leading manufacturer of quantum technology. Kaz lives in New Tokyo, a Chinese megacity given to them after the Great Fall.
Mackenzie is the gifted daughter of technology billionaire Alistair “Ace” Abernathy. Ace is driven to make the world a better place. Mac is leading the development of Serendipity, the first human colony in space.
Love and loss will drive them together. Across a world scarred and divided by climate change. Only together will they discover the terrifying truth about who is really behind the death of their loved ones.
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Dystopian, Hard Sci-Fi, Techno Thriller
Word Count: 65,268 words
Vermilion Flames: Midnight War Book 1, by Adam Fernandez
In the pursuit of progress, how much of your soul are you willing to sacrifice?
In the shadow of a ruined Earth, the Republic and its church claim to offer safety and security while burning ideas and people alike. No moon or planet is free of flames and bloodshed, even as the rebel organization, the Vermilion Coalition, seeks to dismantle the Republic’s oppressive regime.
On a terraformed Mercury, Kaya al Vardan hopes to find the truth behind her mother’s murder; a difficult task when everyone insists it was a tragic accident. When Kaya’s adventurous spirit leads her into the forbidden Great Desert, she’s sent to the Republic’s capital on Mars to study under the watchful eye of the all-powerful church she despises. There she unravels mysteries about her mother’s life and faces a fall in line or risk everything to take up her mother’s mantle.
Silas Beckett, High Commander of the Pandora Fleet and hero of the Republic, can feel his time running out. Fighting terrorists has been his life’s mission, but his nemesis Hex—leader of the Vermilion Coalition—still eludes him. As his failures mount and his allies abandon him, he has few chances left to bring Hex to justice. Can Silas secure peace for his family and for the entire solar system?
Genres: Adventure, Military, Space Opera, Suspense
Word Count: 121,460 words
Your Service is Required, by Jeff Walker
Earth is now under the control of two artificially intelligent rulers. Angela and Malcolm – they govern the planet and use humanity to service their needs. David 00472 is one of those daily service attendants that must repair or do the commands of the two AI overlords. He suddenly becomes a person of interest to Angela as she takes a liking to him and helps him to improve his life. David is cautious about her true intent. Malcom, ever watchful of over all humans, wants to see why David 00472 has become Angela’s pet project.
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Dystopian
Word Count: 57,971 words
Good luck to all of the entrants!
