For more team updates, check out our team page here.

The process

We began the competition with 25 books.

At least two judges sampled each of these, often three or all four of us. We conferred and discussed, and we settled on six Quarterfinalists.

The Final Season, by Andrew Gillsmith

Gamer, by Belinda Crawford

Who Nuked Silicon Valley?, by Mike Donoghue

The Warm Machine, by Aimee Cozza

The Triangle Age, by David Aumelas

Black Sails to Sunward, by Sheila Jenné

At least three of us read each of these books and posted individual reviews, which you can find linked from our team page here.

We enjoyed each of these books and the wonderful creativity and imagination that each contained, and each book was absolutely worthy of its progress in the competition. However, we have to pick two semifinalists. Each judge rated the quarterfinalists they read on a 1-10 scale, and we ranked them by their average rating by all judges who read each book. Our rating process led us to a very close finish between three books:

Our two semifinalists ended up with an average rating of 8.0, while our third-place book was just a hair behind at a 7.875. With sincere appreciation to the twenty-five authors who shared their books, their worlds, and their imagination with us, we are ready to announce our two semifinalists, each of which will go into the next round (and beyond, if they make it to the finals) with an 8.0 rating from our team.

Our Semifinalists Are:

Congratulations to the semifinalists, the quarterfinalists, and to all our authors for sharing your work and putting your cool, imaginative ideas out there into the world. We’re all the better for it.