This is the fourth review of a full reads for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Wick Welker. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.
Black Sails is a well-paced, well written space adventure where the author drops a high sea pirate adventure into an geopolitical space opera. This is a fun read driven over a complex romance that is intertwined with the political brinksmanship that bubbles up over the length of the story. There is always a bit of contrivance when an author tries to hammer well worn tropes into a science fiction setting involving a terraformed Mars at war with Earth and the author rides close to that line but I found it to be quite successful.
There were immersion challenges as I first started reading the book. I found an equine Victorian social structure on a terraformed Mars to be a tad too demanding of suspended belief. My initial misgivings gave way as the story picked up with the aristocratic protagonist suddenly thrust into a war in which she must sail on solar wind space ships that function and are crewed remarkably like deep sea ships. Again, this demands a lot of the reader up front but then you realize the author has actually done quite a bit of work in working out the technology and science in which they are trying to immerse the reader. In other words, the author does get the pirate space ship thing to work and to be quite enjoyable. Once that’s out of the way, you get a story full of political and romantic tension which are most definitely related.
I enjoyed that the protagonist has quite the arc by the end which greatly impacts the wider conflicts of the story. And as I approached the end, the author provides more details about why the socio-political structure is the way it is which I found satisfying. The only thing missing for me was a more explicit backstory of the protagonist. The romance and the protagonist’s arc would’ve had more of an impact if an emotional connection was established first with those elements.
Overall, this is a fun and smartly written adventure that I found satisfying.
Wick’s reviews are also all posted on his Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.
My mom, known to other folks as Cindy Dobson, died yesterday morning, April 15, managing to conflate both death and taxes in one bold move. She was 84. She spent a week in hospice after a serious stroke a week before. I was able to speak with her briefly when I arrived after the stroke and convey love from me and my family, and she understood despite being a little confused about what was happening. She didn’t speak or respond much after that evening, and she slept for nearly all of the next week, so her final moments were peaceful. She never wanted to linger in hospital care or be further disabled, and she had lived a long and interesting life with many joys. She had been very clear about her wishes, so the decisions we made on her behalf were sad but very obvious.
To me, of course, she was Mom, not Cindy. It will be impossible to convey in a note like this what she meant to me, but I’ll give you some details, at least. She was tremendously smart, earning an M.L.S. and a Ph.D. in sociology. She specialized in gerontology, which meant she was able to predict, understand theoretically, and complain with scholarly authority about everything that happened to her as she aged. She taught at several institutions, and she spent many years as a bibliographer at the Iowa State University Library, where she helped scholars and students by selecting books and journals for the library in the social sciences. That relatively rare profession meant that our house was constantly full of 3×5 library cards describing all kinds of books, which we as kids used as scratch paper, construction materials, boardgame components, and all kinds of other uses. She was phenomenal at research, and even in retirement she volunteered to help with some scholarly projects. A lifelong progressive and feminist, one of her proudest achievements was being part of a USIA grant that got her and some colleagues to Uzbekistan, where she taught classes and ran programs to help Uzbek women learn to launch businesses and establish themselves in what was then a very male-dominated traditional society.
She was also had a keen appreciation of the arts. There was no museum she would not enjoy visiting, some with a quick tour, others with seemingly endless, painting-by-painting ordeals. While I begrudged that some as a kid, I now absolutely share her passion for such places. She attended concerts, operas, and other performances all the time, and she served on the boards of music and arts organizations. Although she ensured that her communities would be well-supplied with classical chamber music, it was far more likely to be Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, or Joan Baez that she cooked to. She was a voracious reader of all kinds of books, but her particular passion was mystery novels, which she’d often consume at a rate of three or four a week, and about which she always had strong opinions. If your mystery included recipes, or heaven forbid talking animals, it was headed back to the library with a hearty helping of scorn.
She traveled far and wide, both when we were little but even more as a retiree. We lived for a year in Ireland in 1979-80 on a Fulbright exchange, and she and my father lived in Scotland for two stretches later in life, which she loved. She and my dad always saved up their middle-class salaries for travel, and we had many grand adventures. She and my dad also went on a ton of foreign trips as faculty hosts with the M.I.T. alumni association, with my dad giving lectures to the tours about the places they went. This served both to get her to far away lands, where she loved seeing buildings and learning the history, and to do so quite cheaply, which was also a lifelong passion. She even reached Antarctica, giving her six of the seven continents.
As a person, she was fiercely loyal to family, and she had a big, big heart, helping many charities, with a growing focus on Native American communities after moving to New Mexico in her retirement years. She also always helped out friends and coworkers who found themselves in difficulty, providing whatever would help, whether that was money, clothing, transport, or a home-cooked meal. Her love ran deep, but that didn’t stop her from telling you when you were screwing up, which she did readily and sometimes with some gusto. She loved, respected, and emulated her parents, who met and fell in love in their thirties during the height of World War II. My grandmother’s radical thrift and efficiency, learned from growing up in a tiny community on Waldron Island in Puget Sound and honed by living through the Great Depression, passed on undiluted to my mother, who wasted nothing and always wanted to find the best use or the best home for everything in her house. That occasionally resulted in decisions I questioned, usually when searching through the long-expired food in the back of her fridge, but it was absolutely who she was, and she placed as little burden on the world as she possibly could.
For me, I could not begin to catalog everything she taught me and gave me, but I definitely owe her my love of books and of learning. She loved being curious and learning new things, and I was taught from a young age to learn and study and question. She got us to the Ames Public Library at least every couple of weeks to bring back a big stack of books, mine full of sci-fi and fantasy, hers full of mysteries, which is a cherished memory of my childhood. She was skeptical of (though proficient with) computers up to the day she died, and she didn’t understand or really condone my love of video games, at least early on, but as computers and games became more a part of my life’s work and success, she celebrated that with me. It was the books I wrote she liked most of all my achievements, though, particularly my mystery novels. I so enjoyed sharing those with her and hearing her suggestions and joys, and I will miss her love and support so much as I continue to write.
I learned most of what I know, the good parts anyway, about parenting and making a marriage work from Mom and Dad. Their 62-year marriage was full of adventures and challenges and joys and frustrations, but the care with which they raised my brother and me, and their constant respect, conversation, copiloting, and commitment to each other were the very best model, and one I follow to this day and beyond. Mom spent her last sixteen years using a walker and in frequent pain after a serious spinal incident and failed surgery, but she took that on with grace and will, and with frustration and regret, of course, but with very few complaints. Her mind was undimmed with age, and she conducted complicated financial and legal business even in her last years, not to mention critiquing mysteries, TV shows, politicians, and society with sharp wit and a deep understanding.
The picture above is Mom on the occasion of earning her Ph.D. in 1979. It’s one of my favorite pictures of her. How she managed to complete an advanced degree with her two idiot children placing demands on her time and sanity, I don’t really know, but if anybody was going to do it, she could. I’ll love and miss her always.
Here is a quarterfinalist reviews for a full read for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Archie Kregear. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.
Vlad’s parents died in a car accident; she can still feel the flames licking her skin, smell the burning batteries and fire-retardant. Except it wasn’t an accident, someone made it happen.
She’s has spent the last nine years tracking those responsible; planning, plotting.
She’s almost done.
When the last move is over, her opponent will wish they never played with the Angel of Death.
Get ready to jack in and play along as Crawford masterfully weaves a complex, action-packed tale of virtual reality and revenge.
My Review
I was skeptical as I first started reading Gamer. A young woman, traumatized by an accident that killed her parents and left her physically and emotionally scared. Her pursuit to find the person responsible takes her into the world of her mother, a gamer and her grandmother, an owner of a gaming corporation and player of corporate games. My initial take was this would go along the plot lines of Ready Player One, and there are similarities. I wondered if the book would fit into LitRPG, but after a few chapters that idea was erased and put it into GameLit and could be a techno-thriller but I am not familiar with that genre. If I had read this as a sample in the early rounds, I might not have given it a passing grade. However, once the author has established the characters and world, the book takes off and maintains a fast pace to the end. Then as the blurb says, “Crawford masterfully weaves a complex, action-packed tale of virtual reality and revenge.”
Plot and Characters
Note: Spoilers follow.
The book is in third person following the Vladana Tong whose parents were killed in a car accident. Vlad was seriously injured and traumatized by the accident. The author excellently describes the scenes through Vlad’s flashes back to the accident multiple times. To cope she has taken up gaming and become a hacker and notable character within the gaming world. A world with high end computers running hacked code and players jacking up on high performance drugs. In the real world she is obsessed with finding out who is responsible for her parents death. It is this obsession that drives the plot.
The corporate and family intrigue is dominated by Vlad’s grandmother who plays the stereotypical roles of demanding family matriarch and win at all costs corporate head. She works well in the story as the antagonist and Vlad’s initial suspect.
On the gaming side of the plot is the team Vlad is recruited onto. Initially the others on the team think she is only an excellent player and it isn’t until late in the book where they find she is a hacker. Vlad, being a loner most of her life, finds it difficult to accept being part of the team while the team slowly considers her a valuable member. In the end they are an integral part to discovering the answers Vlad is looking for.
As for the science of gaming the author did not stretch my imagination all that much. The world is futuristic but not so much as to provide new ideas or concepts. Jacking up a player’s performance using drugs and the use of player pods or game cubes are not new. With that said, the book is not about the hardware or software. They are part of the world and have been expertly woven into the plot. A reader who is a high-tech gamer would find this acceptable while a non-gamer I do not feel would be overwhelmed.
My thoughts
As the first book I am writing a full review for in SPSFC #5, I found it well written and enjoyable to read. The writing is excellent, but for my tastes somewhat wordy in defining environments as they slow the pace down. However, there are descriptions which are worth reading just for the excellent wordsmithing. At times the word crafting was worth a double or triple read which slowed down the pace. The wordiness did decrease as the story progressed and did not slow the pace in the last half of the book.
The main character, Vlad, starts off as a highly damaged person. Throughout the book, she suffers more damage and by the end, has not healed. She does find out who is responsible for her mother’s death and gets her revenge, but she remains a person who needs healing. There are hints that she is on the way.
Summation
For the gamer who has mounds of hurt inside, this is a book you will relate to. For the sci-fi fan who is looking for a book based on a leap in science, this will not satisfy your need. For me I can’t recall a book where the MC is so obsessed that they neglect the pain they suffer. It was trough for me to identify with someone who suffers to that extent and neglects their health. Overall, Gamer was exciting to read, fast paced and written well.
Here are three quarterfinalist reviews for full reads for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5 by team judge Wick Welker. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.
I’m a sucker for stories about amnestic self aware robots, so I was the target audience right away for Who Nuked Silicon Valley. What started out with somewhat vague plot points with very little exposition turned into a well crafted story involving a rag tag found family, a shadow AI super intelligence as well as a satisfying delivery of the cyberpunk premise.
This book was very Neal Stephenson-esque, and it’s not just because this is a cyberpunk book. This is like the updated cyberpunk novel for the 2020s. What I mean is, books like Snow Crash or works by PKD, which helped pioneer the genre, had to create anarcho-capitalist cyberpunk worlds whole clothe out of thin air because when those books were written modern society wasn’t even close to cyberpunk. But now? Our reality is unfortunately approximating much closer to actual cyberpunk fiction and that’s where Who Nuked comes into play.
Michael Donoghue is able to seamlessly take our current techno-corporatocracy, multiply by maybe only two decades, and drop us into his story. The world he creates here is unique not only because it’s immersive, but because it starts looking eerily what our own modern world probably will look like very soon. Instead of PKD inventing funny future brand names like “Ubik” or “Substance D” which separate the reader from the cyberpunk world, Donoghue just uses “Amazon” or “Facebook” without needing to contrive a new cyberpunk world. Because… why? Our real world is just right there to use and he makes it work really well. And that’s what takes this book out of the cyberpunk speculative fiction and brings it to cyberpunk realism.
The prose was economical and compelling. The premise was mysterious but not enough to turn you away. The storytelling is opaque and without heavy-handed narration. The characters Katie and the self-aware bot Livingstone really start to shine by the middle of the book and you begin to see how things connect. Donoghue makes the characters matter and this is clearly a character-driven story. Half way through, I was enjoying the book but felt like it lacked one thing: heart. But then… Donoghue pulls some stuff on you and you realize that he was making things matter in a very emotional way, relevant to all the characters’ backstory, and it lands very well in the feelies department. I’m not even mentioning the most impressive thing about this book: the techno babble. Wow, the author really knows his stuff when it comes to tech, computers and robotics. The author is clearly knowledgeable and it serves the story well. Overall I found this to be a well executed “modern” cyberpunk novel that cuts all the fat and makes the fiction matter. Lots of philosophy about personhood is all over this story.
The Triangle Age is an unconventional science fiction book. It blends several elements like a far-future arkship premise with a post-cataclysmic vibe. I was very intrigued by the hook of the book and the writing is diminutive, understated and very inviting. The chief characteristic of this book is that it is weird. It starts a little weird, enough to compel you forward and then it gets more weird. In science fiction, weird is good and if you want weird, then this book will check all your boxes. An interesting thing happens as you read along this book and it’s that the literal plot and the main character become more myth than anything else. What I mean is, something has happened to this world and this people in a literal sense but we only get the POV of the main character who doesn’t understand things literally but only within the mythic reality within which he lives. So what we get is a mythic context of what is happening and I think a lot of the weirdness is borne from that POV. This is almost a blend of Piranesi and something Ursula K LeGuin would’ve written. This book does what it sets out to do and it is executed well for what it is. The author clearly has a lot of skill.
I’m a huge sucker for self aware robot stories so I bought in immediately with this one. The tight prose and smart writing certainly made this an easy and inviting read as well. This is a story about Zev and Sterling, two self aware bots who discover their identities not only through the process of emerging consciousness but through the relationship they have with one another. And that’s what made The Warm Machine unique in this niche was that the characters discover who they are because of their struggle together. Zev and Sterling would be different without one another and most likely worse off. Their relationship did not feel token but organic and I found it well done.
This was a mostly character driven work but with enough plot advancements and action to really keep you going. The two protagonists are seeking a fabled asylum for self aware bots and I got to say I really loved how this worked out and how the story turns out for them. It was both melancholy but inspiring. Reading about two characters eeking out their existence and independence alone and against all odds was deeply inspiring. The technical aspects of the book were really well done and the author is clearly knowledgeable about lots of things. There’s a lot to think about with this story that goes beyond the pages but you can also just enjoy the story for what it is at face value. The author has skill and it really shines. I overall really enjoyed this brief read and highly recommend it.
These reviews are also all posted on Wick’s Goodreads profile. Wick’s website is here.
This is my first new review of a full read for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the first round of SPSFC#5. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.
Lucy, an officer of the Imperial Navy, and Moira, her former best friend, find themselves on opposite sides of a war that threatens their home. Yet the crackling attraction between them hasn’t faded, and it’s time for Lucy to make a choice between loyalty and her own conscience.
My Review
I really enjoyed my time with this book. From the scouting round, where we read the first part of each book to come to our quarterfinalists, it was my favorite of the ones I sampled, and it held up as I read the full book as an official quarterfinalist pick. It’s a book that combines a lot of different kinds of stories. It was a solar-system-based sci fi story of a war between Mars and Earth, but rather than a hard-sci-fi approach as in The Expanse, this threw in elements of British naval stories like Master and Commander along with regency romance. You might be wondering how that’s possible, but Jenné takes a semi-bonkers premise, mixes it with just the right amount of arm-waving, and comes out with a fun tale full of (astro)nautical adventure, romance, class conflict, canvaspunk, and politics. If you’re willing to go for that kind of head-spinning ride, the book absolutely delivers.
Plot and Characters
NOTE: MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW.
The book almost exclusively focuses on Lucy Prescott, a daughter of a Martian noble family who was destined for high society, but whose family has fallen on hard times, forcing her to enlist in the Martian Emprex’s fleet as the lowest rank of the officer class, a midshipman, complete with breeches, coats with brass buttons, and a tricorn hat. Lucy’s first voyage on the ship is a delight, showing how the ship operates, how the officers and crew deal with each other, and how she navigates some difficulties with crew and with Moira, a former servant of hers whom she discovers serving on the ship. There is a single chapter later on that somewhat jarringly jumps to Moira’s perspective, but otherwise, it’s the Lucy show.
The world Lucy lives in is a little far-fetched, and how much you enjoy the book will likely rest on how willing you are to accept this future. A background primer as I understood it:
Mars was settled by Earth scientists hoping to terraform it into a habitable planet
Earth corporations were more interested in stripping Mars of resources, setting up a conflict between Earth and its colony.
At some point in the recent past, there was a technological meltdown involving computers and AI, which massively disrupted both Earth and Mars.
In the aftermath, both Earth and Mars have sworn off computers entirely, leading them into a technological state full of contrasts. For example, they have hydroponics and space travel, but the ships are made mostly of heavily altered wood and have huge cloth sails to catch the solar wind. They navigate space like sailors of old, with sextants and mental math. They fight mostly with torpedos, but they switch to swords and knives when they board each others’ ships.
Mars has adopted a kind of a neofeudal system, with nobles descended from the original Martian scientist settlers presiding over a much larger peasant class. This looks and feels a lot like a kind of Martian Bridgerton.
Earth’s demands of Mars grew too onerous and exploitative, jeopardizing the terraforming projects, so Mars and Earth are now at war, with warring fleets of sailing ships traversing the space between them, conducting raids, captures against the enemy.
The plot centers around Lucy’s work as a new officer on a Martian warship, at first learning her role, then acting in it, which forces her to make tough choices and reevaluate the society and culture in which she’s lived a privileged life. As her journey continues, she faces Earth forces, pirates, hazards, deception, and romance. She changes and grows throughout her challenges as she decides what kind of officer and what kind of person she wants to be, and most importantly, where her loyalties lie.
My Thoughts
Like Bisection, Jenné’s finalist in last year’s SPSFC, this book is well-written and engaging throughout. That book had a big what-if central issue centered on the main character’s biology, while this one is much more of a traditional rollicking adventure, albeit in a tremendously weird (and delightful) imagined future.
For me as a reader, I loved the huge swing Jenné took here with the story. All sci-fi is speculative, imagining stories and futures that don’t exist, but this book is especially (and tremendously) ambitious, creating a society and technology reminiscent of 18th-century Britain, but setting it in space, and throwing in a rousing and harrowing naval adventure tale as the meat of it. To Jenné’s credit, she has solid and consistent reasons for why society is how it is and why technology is how it is, although believing this would all be possible might be a challenge for some readers. Jenné is also wise enough to give you lots of hints and snippets about how things work without trying to explain all the details. That gives you a sense of verisimilitude, at least a verisimilitude that the characters fully accept. Whenever you start to think too hard about how the tech or the military actions or the culture would actually work, you start to lose what is magical about the story, so I tried not to do that as much as I could. There’s a lot of technical detail shared about life on the ships, and there’s a bunch of physics, engineering, and zero-gee adaptation that are described ably, so it’s not all arm-waving – not in the least.
If you are willing to accept the setting and the tech, which is admittedly a big ask, then you get a really great, really imaginative story. Lucy’s journey through her challenges, and her interactions with people both savory and unsavory, are a delight to follow. I don’t want to spoil it, because it’s fun, but there are naval battles, crew struggles, betrayal, cutlass fights, stealth missions, subterfuge, and more. I really loved the Master and Commander parts of life as a minor officer on a ship of war – those parts really sang. Some of the story wrestles quite effectively with old-school naval officer issues like honor, duty, and the limits of what a society and a commander can expect of you, and what you can accept in the name of following orders.
Where the book showed a little weakness for me was in two areas. One was coincidence – Lucy frequently meets people (or re-meets people) that it seemed to me highly unlikely she would run into, unless there are only a few hundred people in space, which is not the impression I think I was supposed to get. There are also some deus ex machina moments in some of her adventures and misadventures where just the right thing happens at just the right time, whether it’s a discovery or a breakthrough or a foe’s mistake or a purloined tool. The other weakness I perceived was in Lucy’s internal journey. As a whole, it was interesting and effectively portrayed, with lots of real growth, but there were times where she seemed to retreat into a foolish, naive, and indecisive state which was in stark contrast to the plucky, whip-smart person we’d seen in the rest of it. Especially as she’s deciding on her priorities and actions at the end, I felt she wallowed in indecision and then made choices that seemed somewhat inconsistent with the thoughts we’d seen just pages before. This wasn’t a big problem, but it took me out of the story a bit, especially when her naive/foolish bits got turned up higher (e.g. when she was evaluating her relationship with annoyingly little perception or insight, or when she didn’t recognize her own initials). The love story that develops was interesting and fun to follow, but again, I’m not sure it felt completely real to me, although Lucy’s thoughts and desires and concerns were well portrayed, and it added a strong motivation and difficult choice for Lucy to make.
All of that is just minor nitpicks and can be easily ignored. The story was just fun for me throughout. The resolution was one I did not see coming, and it found a way to be far more satisfying than the terrible options it seemed might come to pass. I really enjoyed reading Lucy’s adventures, and I’m a sucker for naval derring-do, which this book has in spades. Jenné’s willingness to throw in some science and physics and engineering without overdoing it and spoiling the magic of her premise was a terrific balance to strike. Great fun, and ably constructed despite the tall challenge. Jenné embraces the bonkers and just flies with it in the best way.
Summation
If you’re willing to come at Black Sails to Sunward with an open mind and accept some of its fundamental audacity at face value, you’ll be in for a real treat. A heartfelt and thrilling tale of struggle, hope, love, and despair, all set in a canvaspunk (yes, I’m trying to make that a thing) future full of tall sails, fierce pirates, and broadsides in the black ocean between planets.
For more team updates, check out our team page here.
The process
We’ve completed our scouting round reads for all 25 of our books, and we’ve selected our quarterfinalists. In the scouting round, at least two judges read the opening of each book, usually the first 20-25%. We conferred and discussed, and we’ve come to consensus on this list of six books for our Quarterfinalists. Each of these will get a full read by at least two judges as we narrow these six to our two Semifinalists.
The Quarterfinalists
Note: There is no meaning to the order in which these books are listed.
For more team updates, check out our team page here.
The process
The four of us on the team are continuing to work on our allotment of indie sci fi books. We cut our first ten books of our group of 25 entries a few weeks back, then seven more last week, and we’re back with two more cuts today. Because this is the scouting round of the competition, we did not read the full text of these books. Our goal was to have at least half of our team read the opening chapters of the book, usually reaching about 20-25% of the total length.
These are the final two scouting round cuts for our group. Each of these books was marked as a “Yes” by at least two judges, so they all found some significant love in the competition and were under consideration for our quarterfinalists. Our policy in reporting these cuts is to not list what we didn’t like about each book we cut, but instead to send them off with a plug for what we liked and for what kind of reader we think would enjoy the story. The short summaries below were written by various judges. If you are an author of one of these books and want more feedback on your book, including some of the reasons we didn’t advance it, I’m happy to correspond by email and share more information. I’m at dave@davedobsonbooks.com.
The SPSFC is unusual in indie book competitions in that it allows re-entry of the same book in subsequent years, and we encourage any entrant that we don’t pick, including these ten, to enter again in a future year, where you may encounter judges who are a better match for what you’re writing.
NEXT STEPS: Our next post will highlight the six quarterfinalists, which will all get full reads from at least two judges on the team as we narrow that group to our official two semifinalists.
The cuts
Note: There is no meaning to the order in which these books are listed.
All judges praised the writing and the intrigue of the story’s opening. One said, “Nice opener into a scene without heavy handed exposition, tight and economic prose. Lots of mystery and back story that makes me want to read on.”
Judges enjoyed the writing style and humor, finding the alternative science of the title intriguing. They also cited the pacing, the explanations of scientific oddities, and the zaniness and creativity of the world as strengths.
Our condolences go out to these authors, along with our respect for your efforts and our sincere best wishes for your success.
For more team updates, check out our team page here.
The process
The four of us on the team are continuing to work on our allotment of indie sci fi books. We cut our first ten books of our group of 25 entries a few weeks back, and we’re back with seven more cuts today. Because this is the scouting round of the competition, we did not read the full text of these books. Our goal was to have at least half of our team read the opening chapters of the book, usually reaching about 20-25% of the total length.
Each of these books was marked as a “Yes” by at least one judge, so they all found some love in the competition, and each was sampled by three of our four judges . Our policy in reporting these cuts is to not list what we didn’t like about each book we cut, but instead to send them off with a plug for what we liked and for what kind of reader we think would enjoy the story. The short summaries below were written by various judges. If you are an author of one of these books and want more feedback on your book, including some of the reasons we didn’t advance it, I’m happy to correspond by email and share more information. I’m at dave@davedobsonbooks.com.
The SPSFC is unusual in indie book competitions in that it allows re-entry of the same book in subsequent years, and we encourage any entrant that we don’t pick, including these ten, to enter again in a future year, where you may encounter judges who are a better match for what you’re writing.
NEXT STEPS: Our next post will narrow the remaining eight books to our quarterfinalists, which will all get full reads from at least two judges on the team as we narrow that group to our official two semifinalists. We haven’t agreed on an exact number of quarterfinalists yet, but it will probably be around five.
The cuts
Note: There is no meaning to the order in which these books are listed.
Judges praised the author’s voice and the world-building, largely conveyed through conversations between the characters, with snappy dialogue that moves the plot forward and characters who reveal depth quickly. The intrigue and espionage were a real plus in the opening chapters.
Judges really appreciated the worldbuilding, including anthropomorphic hyenas and fennecs on a colonized world. Playful character dynamics with great descriptions of feelings and relationships made this cozy coming of age story work.
Judges were intrigued by this time travel book with a fascinating premise: a team sent back from the near future to precolonial America to try to undo European colonization, prevent the deaths of millions of Native Americans, and set the world on a better path than where capitalism and exploitation will lead us.
A book about a future wracked by religious bigotry, with sexuality playing a major role in who lives and who dies. Judges appreciated the strong characters and the worldbuilding, complete with class differences and oppression and a social structure that seems extrapolated from some of the grimmer societies of the past plus some modern bigotry mixed in.
Judges found the world interesting and really detailed. This included significant backstories, as a new character took on the POV role in almost every chapter. We were intrigued by how the different pieces started to interrelate, including the titular mysterious AI, and the society that seems sort of positive but with a strong dystopian edge, along with terror attacks and crime in the mix.
A judge connected closely with Bernard, an older protagonist waiting for the end who must deal with his world being upended by a mysterious visitor. The mystery hadn’t quite taken full shape in the parts we read, but big things were definitely afoot, and mysteries abound.
This is a silly, funny book with a rapid, chaotic pace and a lot of fun worldbuilding. It gave one judge in particular a frenetic Hitchhiker’s Guide vibe, and the goofy interdependence between the various officers (and hidden monsters!) on the ship, coupled with the pace at which new misadventures were thrown in, was a lot of fun.
Our condolences go out to these authors, along with our respect for your efforts and our sincere best wishes for your success.
I occasionally do reports of my financials as an indie author. I’ve also started doing an annual report a couple years ago, which some people found interesting, so I thought I’d continue with that. If you’re curious in my progress over time, here are the year-end reports from 2023 and 2024.
The Books
Here are my books and their relative sales through Amazon last year. My newest novel, Unwelcome Matt, had a more modest release than some of my others, although it has not yet landed a BookBub Featured Deal, which has really boosted other books, including my top earners. In addition to these figures, I have audiobook and direct paperback sales from my home shop on top of these figures, but Amazon provides the vast majority of my revenues.
All my books are exclusive to Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited except Traitors Unseen, which I use as a reader magnet giveaway on other platforms. Unlike other authors who don’t get much out of KU and prefer the increased sales that come with selling on places like Kobo, Apple, Google, and Barnes and Noble, I have done pretty well in KU, so well that I don’t feel comfortable giving it up. Here is my revenue breakdown for my sales.
Revenues
Here are my revenues by category for this past year. A total of about $5,588.
That represents a significant drop from last year, when I made about $6,600, but it’s above 2023, when I made about $4,800.
Here’s my year-over-year revenues, mostly complete, but occasionally missing a few of the minor sources:
That growth trend looks pretty good until things drop off in 2025. However, I spent a lot less advertising in 2025, and I also didn’t get as many BookBub featured deals as in 2024, which had an impact.
Expenses
Here are my expenses by category for 2025. A total of about $10,650, which is down a little under $3000 from last year.
Notes
I published one book and redid the cover for two others this year, so that was a higher cost than usual. I also paid a premium rate (much more than I have in the past) for the new cover art for The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar.
I have a very kind and talented friend, Tami Ryan, who has edited and proofed my last seven or eight books. She doesn’t like charging me money, although I try to send her payments. So, my editing costs are unusually low.
I reduced my expenses for advertising by quite a bit – that’s the major change this year, and I suspect also it’s the reason for my lower revenues.
I increased my spending on newsletter promos for my price promotions (free and $0.99 promos). Part of that is getting access to more of them on BookBub, which I’ve started to do with more regularity. However, I’ve found them to be less effective than they used to be, which may be because their reach is fading, but it may also be that I’m sometimes doing BookBubs for books I’ve already promoted there. They’ve also started a new service which is a little cheaper for free book promotions. I’ve tried that maybe 3-4 times, and it does not have the impact of the featured deals that BookBub is more famous for. I will keep trying to see how much of a return that has.
Analysis
I managed to cut costs this year by $2750, even with some single big-ticket items like part of an audiobook ($800 this year for the 2nd half of the narration) and new premium cover art for Lady Isovar (a little under $1000). With less advertising, though, my revenues fell by about $1000. That is sort of progress, in that I managed to lose $1750 less this year than last, but I’m still net negative by a good margin.
That puts me marginally better off this year than last, as this table (with numbers rounded to the nearest $100) shows.
This isn’t the image of a thriving business, although I am fortunate enough to be able to afford the losses as I try to make this work. Unlike many other indie authors, I also am not necessarily interested in (nor do I need) to have the business be profitable to sustain my livelihood. I’m far more interested in reaching more readers than in finding the highest profit margin that I can. If I could spend $95,000 to make $90,000, for example, I’d be much happier with that $5K loss than spending $15,000 to make $20,000 and netting a $5K gain.
That mindset means that I take some risks and make some indulgences in my expenses that I wouldn’t if I were trying to maintain a strict focus on the bottom line. With that in mind, I can offer some caveats for some of the expenses:
I already know that audiobooks aren’t a good investment for me. Over the several years I’ve had audiobooks out, I’ve made $1739 in revenue on about $7175 in expenses for the four books I’ve done audio for. I did have a slightly better year in 2025 than I’ve had in the past, so it’s possible they might eventually cover their cost, but I am doing them more for fun than for profit. That’s a luxury I have with the money I have available to invest. If I were trying to become profitable as fast as possible, I’d have skipped every audiobook after the second one once the pattern became clear. Therefore, the $800 spent on audiobooks this year could maybe lie outside my business model.
I also would not count my attendance at WorldCon against my budget. I was not a guest at the convention and wasn’t part of any sessions, so I was there as a fan rather than an author. I had a great time and learned a lot from the panels, but from a business perspective, it sure didn’t make sense to go. If we view that as sci-fi tourism rather than business expenses, that’s another $250 I could knock off the expense side.
I also splurged on new covers for two books, Got Troubleand The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar. For Got Trouble, I wanted all my mysteries to have covers by the same artist, Abby Blanchard, and for Lady Isovar, I thought it might be interesting to see if more expensive cover art from a higher-profile artist might translate into more readership. All told, those two redesigns were about $1,430. This was completely an optional expense, one that, if I were trying only to be profitable, I definitely wouldn’t have done – I had good covers for both already.
If I deduct the luxury splurges, i.e. $800 audiobook, $1,430 new covers, and $250 WorldCon participation, that knocks my expenses down to $8,170. That’s admittedly kind of fake, but that puts my return for the year at 68% of expenses with a $2,582 loss. Still not profitable, but at least comparable to the last couple years.
Here’s how the big picture looks year over year. The light-shaded areas in the 2024 and 2025 columns at the right are if I take out the luxury spending like I mentioned above. That’s probably a little bit of BS to make me feel better, but I’m giving both figures, so read it how you want.
2025 Successes
I had some good developments this year in trying to move my indie author career forward. Here are a few:
After winning the SPSFC in 2024 Kenai, I served as a judge last year and this year. The SPSFC is an indie sci fi competition founded by Hugh Howey of Silo and Wool fame, now in its fifth year. I’m in the midst of reading some fun indie sci-fi now, and I look forward to seeing how the competition progresses.
I got one new book out in 2025, the mystery Unwelcome Matt. It’s been doing pretty well, although I am really hoping to get a BookBub deal for it. That’s what really took What Grows From the Dead to its big start in 2024. I also had a story accepted for a long-running sci-fi anthology series, The Expanding Universe, volume 11. This appeared with stories by authors who’ve sold hundreds of thousands of books, so I was proud of that. I also co-wrote a romance novel, Best, with Sarah Estow. We’ve got that drafted, revised several times, and copy-edited, so it’s now just waiting for Sarah’s agent to take a look at it. It was a real blast writing that, and Sarah was a tremendously fun partner with whom to explore a new genre. I also made progress on three other projects, but none are ready for publication.
In terms of milestones, I hit my highest ever number of books downloaded from Amazon in 2025, as shown below. Because Amazon can only show ten books at a time, this actually leaves off the 6,032 downloads of Unwelcome Matt, so the 2025 bar should be around 86,000, and the total at the top left should be right around an even 200,000. The vast majority of these downloads (over 95%) are free books downloaded during price promotions I ran, many of which end up buried on Kindles and never read, but even so, that’s a lot of copies, and it’s still nice to see the numbers going up.
Light blue here is What Grows From the Dead, yellow is Daros, light green is the Inquisitors’ Guild box set, red is Kenai, and purple is The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar.
I had a good year for pages read on Kindle Unlimited, with nearly 800,000 pages this past year. The biggest single force driving the increase is Bookbub promos, which I can’t control. I didn’t used to get those in my first four years of this, but I’ve been getting more opportunities there in the last few years.
The light blue there is the Inquisitors’ Guild box set, with the yellow being Kenai and the red Daros. You can see the big reception for What Grows From the Dead in 2024 in dark blue, but it didn’t sustain into this year, for reasons I haven’t really figured out.
Thanks for reading! I’m happy to answer questions in the comments. If you’re interested in any of my books, please check them out on my book page here.
For more team updates, check out our team page here.
The process
The four of us on the team are making good progress on our initial allotment of 25 books, and unfortunately that means we’re ready to make our first cuts of this year’s competition. Because this is the scouting round of the competition, we did not read the full text of these books. Our goal was to have at least half of our team read the opening chapters of the book, usually reaching about 20-25% of the total length.
Obviously, the opinions of any four judges is highly subjective. If we cut your book, that in no way means that we didn’t like it or that it’s a bad book – it just means that there were other books that appealed to these four humans more. It’s the nature of these competitions to be subjective, and we know it’s stressful and difficult to endure cuts – our four judges have lots and lots of contest entries between them, most of which ended in being cut, so we’re sensitive to how much it hurts. Cutting books is the worst part of judging, just as being cut is the worst part of competing.
Our decision in reporting these cuts is to not list what we didn’t like about each book we cut, but instead to send them off with a plug for what we liked and for what kind of reader we think would enjoy the story. Our short summaries below were written by various judges. If you are an author of one of these books and want more feedback on your book, including some of the reasons we didn’t advance it, I’m happy to correspond by email and share more information. I’m at dave@davedobsonbooks.com.
The SPSFC is unusual in indie book competitions in that it allows re-entry of the same book in subsequent years, and we encourage any entrant that we don’t pick, including these ten, to enter again in a future year, where you may encounter judges who are a better match for what you’re writing.
The cuts
Note: There is no meaning to the order in which these books are listed.
With a complex world and a YA, dystopian, action-movie feel, there is a ton going on in this book, including mysteries about a society that brainwashes and controls its members. A Maze-Runner feel, although set farther in the future.
Dives deep into a faraway alien society operating under very different conditions from humans on Earth. The alien culture and government is interesting. At times felt almost like a parable. One judge wrote, “Great imagination for the alien world.”
Cyberpunk awesomeness focusing on a young woman with inexplicable clairvoyance that starts off a compelling mystery. For fans of mystery and a murky technically advanced world.
A dystopian military sci-fi tale of a world where regular humans exist in uneasy stalemate (and sometimes war) with genetically enhanced humans. A strong main character with a great voice. Two judges hailed the well-developed writing and interesting characters, including a non-speaking commando.
If you’re fed up with corporate control of society and want the people to rise up, this could be the book for you. A near-future dystopia (minus most of the -topia), where a corrupt system funnels people into jobs they don’t want, leads to a secret rebellion.
One judge writes, “I loved the enthusiasm and detail of the golem battles that really hit the ground running as soon as you opened the book. The main character and his family were easy to slip into and enjoy their dynamic. Overall great prose and perfect niche book for LitRPG fans.”
A complex dystopian story about the end of the world, with both superheroes and philosophy in abundance. Part of a series. Fans of Watchmen might enjoy this one.
A welcomed world on an established lunar colony with an inviting main character. There is a mystery going on in the background as you settle in with the characters. This would appeal to fans of YA science fiction.
What an opener full of intrigue and very good prose. The plot then takes off like a rocket with an interesting world where the solar system has been colonized and has been fractured into interesting political factions. There is good plot and intrigue going on in this story.
This is a perfect book for fans of arcane academia. The author does something really interesting by creating a common thread of all the great thinkers and inventors throughout history and begins to weave a story connecting them together.
Our condolences go out to these authors, along with our respect for your efforts and our sincere best wishes for your success.
