Here’s a preview of our 25 entries for the fifth annual SPSFC #5! Visit our team home page here for more information.

Note: These initial summaries don’t include any feedback from judges, who are only just starting to read for the contest. They’re just an advance look at the team’s allotment.

We’re excited to announce our allotment for the 5th annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition. There are 125 total entries, and our team has 25 of them to read. We’ve been introducing five of them at a time. Here is the fifth set of five:

Points of Origin
by E. S. Fein

One reviewer calls this “A hyperdimensional transhumanist space opera thriller.” A normal guy forced into a ship with a killer, sent on a trans-galactic hunt for mysterious artifacts called ‘points.’ Amazon reviewers agree that it is thought-provoking, well-written, and significantly mind-bending. One reviewer says, “a great merger of philosophy, science, and drama that draws heavily from the eastern mystic heritage.“

Ret
by Dan Miwa

Ret is the story of a brilliant inventor who becomes an outcast in his society, taking his family down with him, and launching a struggle against oppression. One Amazon reviewer says, “The story is situated in another universe, but still deals with modern day issues, life, love, heartbreak, family, conflict. struggles and social biases that all can relate to in today’s society.“

SAIQA
by A. L. Whyte

Winner of two other book awards, this tells the story of a human society that has expanded throughout our solar system. Humans are under hidden threat by aliens, and war is imminent. One Amazon reviewer says, “The more i read of this book the more i loved the details worked into the characters, the unfolding of the plot, and especially the thematic nuances that beckoned to some favorite classic authors of mine like Hermann Hesse and Isaac Asimov.“

The Warm Machine
by Aimee Cozza

This book has a thought-provoking concept at its heart: Can robots fall in love? One Amazon reviewer gushes, “There is something so special about THE WARM MACHINE that I haven’t quite gotten in anything else. The writing style is perfectly matched to the themeā€”mechanical and completely logical but with an underlying level of “anomalous” emotion that SWELLS throughout the book.” A 4.7 average rating on Amazon from 21 readers.

You Cannot Kill the Root
by Nathan Kuzack

Kuzack’s book Wakers of the Cryocrypt was a semifinalist in last year’s SPSFC, emerging from my team. In this new book, he looks at a broken future governed by greed and corruption, where one man, denied his dreams, joins an underground resistance, where he will pay a steep price for fighting back.

And that’s all our intros! If you’d like to see the others, they’re all linked on our homepage.