Welcome, friend! Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to the 17 SciFi nominees for this year’s Small Spec Book Awards. Like the Fantasy and Horror lists, putting this together was a blast and I got to explore a wide range of storylines, many intersecting with the horror genre. There are cosmic epics and post-apocalyptic battles as well as stories set on lunar colonies. These books showcase a dazzling range of speculative futures. Whether you are a fan of thrillers, wish to explore identity and technology or want to read about hope in harsh worlds, I am sure one of these books will catch your interest.
First, you’ll find a visual gallery of all the nominated titles (borrowed from the SSBA official announcements). Then, dive into individual spotlights with insight on why you might love each book. I am excited to continue sharing the inventive storytelling happening in indie and small press publishing. Let’s get started!
🌌 The Root Of Hope by Ricardo Victoria
Publisher: Shadow Dragon Press
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
A blend of mythic fantasy and sci-fi, The Root of Hope promises an apocalyptic cosmic war where magic and science collide.
Quick Keywords:
Mythic apocalypse • Magic meets science • Cosmic stakes
From the synopsis:
In a world where magic and science intermingle, anything is possible, including saving the universe.
🍽️ Moon Dust In My Hairnet by JR Creaden
Publisher: Mythic Roads Press
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
This sci-fi adventure centers a neurodivergent heroine and promises a hopeful, hilarious, and heartfelt tale.
Quick Keywords:
Lunar colony life • Neurodivergent rep • Sci-fi with humor
From the synopsis: Moon Dust in My Hairnet is a fresh, hopeful, and diverse sci-fi romp following an autistic lunar lunch lady as she juggles relationships and threatening corporate overlords, all while adjusting to life on Lunar Trust One.
💾 Failure To Comply by Cavar
Publisher: Featherproof Books
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
If you are looking for narrative experimentation, Failure to Comply, told in fractured, poetic bursts,explores what it means to reclaim yourself in a world where even your memories are state-controlled.
Quick Keywords:
Epistolary sci-fi • Medical dystopia • Memory
From the synopsis:
Every story has its fugitives. I, a deviant self-hacker with three arms, two stomachs, and no name, is on the run from RSCH, an high-tech, authoritarian government that mandates wellness and carves the contours of truth itself.
🐇 The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits by Ben Berman Ghan
Publisher: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
This genre-defying novel explores centuries to tell a sweeping story of humanity’s transformation, exploring what it means to begin again.
Quick Keywords:
Literary sci-fi • Moon colonization • Time-spanning epic
From the synopsis:
A gorgeously complex work of literary speculative fiction that spans centuries The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits starts in 2014 with a winged alien sowing the seeds of a strange forest on the moon. The novel then moves through humanity’s colonization of the moon and its consequences, onto a war with alien beings within a space-going whale, a cyborg mind that sleeps for hundreds of years after sheltering the city of Toronto from the worst of the war and finally a re-creation of humanity.
📚 The Book Lovers by Steve Aylett
Publisher: Snowbooks
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
This book promises a genre-bending satire about free will, literary weirdness, and the unexpected power of reading.
Quick Keywords:
Steampunk noir • Literary satire • Brain love and book riots
From the synopsis:
Can the Raven Method uncover the big Truth? What powers Thousand Tower City? Why are books telling unfamiliar stories? How cosy is anarchy?
🧠 Her Gilded Voice by K.C. Aegis
Publisher: Elsewhen Press
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
In a future with neural implants, teen Lacey’s “voyce” keeps her safe—until it doesn’t. Explore the repercussions of an AI guide going offline.
Quick Keywords:
Neural AI • Deadly brain games • Dystopian sisterhood
From the synopsis:
Decades from now, technology has advanced, and everyone has a ‘neuro-net’ wired into their brain. This provides each person with a ‘voyce’ inside their head that offers advice that guides and ostensibly protects them
🪐 A Truth Beyond Full by Rosie Oliver
Publisher: Elsewhen Press
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
Set on the icy moon Miranda, this mystery-laced sci-fi blends grief, intuition, and conspiracy and promises a slow-burning thriller.
Quick Keywords:
Space colony mystery • Grief and guilt • Priesthood and mining
From the synopsis:
Don’t dig deep lest you regret what you find
🌍 Worlds Aligned by Terry Jackman
Publisher: Elsewhen Press
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
If you are in the mood for a quiet, reflective sci-fi, explore personal legacy, fractured futures, and the cost of evolution in this reflective story.
Quick Keywords:
Post-Earth humanity • Found fame • Legacy and evolution
From the synopsis: So Worlds Aligned is a second glimpse of the humans who survive long after OldEarth is abandoned.
👁️ A Voice In The Darkness by Mark Iles
Publisher: Elsewhen Press
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This:
Read about a unique partnership between Sheriff Andrews and a werewolf to stop an interstellar war.
Quick Keywords:
Earth quarantine • Military recall • Alien overlords & shapeshifters
From the synopsis:
A gateway and a changeling on a colony world, prompt a return to Earth to confront the aliens.
☁️ The Sea Of Clouds by Sheila Jenné
Publisher: Midnight Meadow Publishing
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: Follow the story of Lucy and Moira who are separated by planets but caught in the storm of shifting politics, murder, and rebellion.
Quick Keywords:
Queer political intrigue • Sequel with split storylines • Loyalty, love, and unrest
From the synopsis:
Will the common people finally make their voices heard, or will it all end in blood?
🌫️ Liminal Space by Vicki-Ann Bush
Publisher: Creative James Media
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: Liminal Space promises sci-fi horror laced with the supernatural, the power of friendship and eerieness of otherworlds.
Quick Keywords: Vanishing towns • Creepy casino visions • friendship duo
From the synopsis: Two worlds, a desperate fate, and the secret that binds them.
A weekend getaway turns dark when friends Jesse and Micah witness a woman drenched in blood screaming in the middle of a casino.
👽 More Bugs by Em Reed
Publisher: Knight Errant Press
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: Read a story where the main character, Amy, is broke, dumped, back at her mom’s, navigating ex drama and babysitting gigs when eerie lights and bizarre happenings begin to unravel her reality.
Quick Keywords: Awkward exes • Suburban weirdness • UFOs & unease
From the synopsis: Over a dull, torrid summer in the Pennsylvania suburbs, strange lights linger on the horizon, and subterranean connections reach out their tendrils in the dark, signalling another, otherworldly possibility.
🔧 Space Station X by A.Z. Rozkillis
Publisher: Space Wizard Science Fantasy
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: Lesbian romance meets cosmic horror in this sharp and witty sci-fi debut.
Quick Keywords: Space horror • Lesbian romance • Haunted station
From the synopsis: Deep space is unforgiving. The Station is dying. The residents are going bonkers. Jax discovers there are some problems that can’t be fixed by swinging an absurdly large murder-wrench.
🦀 Empress of Dust by Alex Kingsley
Publisher: Space Wizard Science Fantasy
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: If you would like to read about gigantic crabs, and a story where the protagonist is fighting for a future where humans and beasts might coexist, check out this book!
Quick Keywords: Post-apocalyptic • Giant desert beasts • Trans & sapphic rep
From the synopsis: Harvard never saw himself as a hero, but when the beasts of the dusts implore him to aid their rescue mission, he holds the lives of crabs and humans alike in his trembling hands.
🛰️ The Rigel Redemption by Robin C.M. Duncan
Publisher: Space Wizard Science Fantasy
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: The dysfunctional duo of Quirk and Moth, are caught in a galaxy-spanning conspiracy. The Rigel Redemption promises a fast-paced, interplanetary mystery-thriller.
Quick Keywords: Space mystery • Interstellar politics • LGBTQ+ leads
From the synopsis: Old debts are coming due, deadly legacies inherited, and Quirk may not even survive being reunited with his family, much less his enemies.
🦠 The Mosquito Fleet by Andrew Penn Romine
Publisher: Broken Eye Books
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: This fungi-laced space horror promises a haunting blend of biotech, cosmic dread, and psychological tension.
Quick Keywords: Biopunk • Fungal horror • Space survival
From the synopsis: The Mosquito Fleet is a novel of three interwoven tales that concern Lira, a synthetic spacer whose ability to interface with biotic stardrives ordinarily would make her an indispensable navigator.
🌌 The Pheeworker’s Oath by Adam Gaylord
Publisher: Mirror World Publishing
Links: Purchase from Publisher’s Site, Add to your Goodreads shelf
Why You Might Love This: The Pheeworker’s Oath is a first-contact epic that promises rich alien cultures, high-stakes diplomacy, and stories about found purpose in under 100 pages.
Quick Keywords: First contact • Elemental magic meets sci-fi • Healer protagonist • Cross-species conflict
From the synopsis: when the Atipok queen is murdered and her death blamed on an orphaned human child capable of pheework, the first of her kind, a rift is torn between the two races that could spell the end of humanity.
What’s Next for SSBA 2025 on the blog
It feels so good to finish this mini-series about the nominees. Finalists and winners will be next.
Be sure to check out:
- I also had the pleasure of chatting with SSBA founders Millie and LN in an interview you can read here.
- Don’t miss the Indie Recommendations from Millie and check out LN’s favourites here.
- In September/October, I’ll be featuring the semi-finalists in another possible roundup.
- Finalists and winners will be highlighted and reviewed on the blog!
- You know I won’t miss the opportunity to chat with the winning authors. 😀
You can follow along and catch all the latest updates at the links above. Indie publishing is doing exciting things in speculative fiction, and I’m so thrilled to be part of sharing it with you! Thanks for reading! 🙂
Check out the links below for updates on the Small Spec Book Awards: Official Page, X, Instagram, BlueSky.
Fantasy 2025 SSBA
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