Sci-Fi

Nemesis

by Noel Alcoba

Wrenna aspires to be more than mere tech support for the Bureau of Stewardship. She wants to be a real superheroine, like her idol, Bellatrix. Or at least her sidekick. That is, until she sees how brutal and cruel Bellatrix can be, with her godlike powers unchecked. Maybe Bellatrix doesn’t deserve a sidekick; perhaps she needs a nemesis.

This 20,000-word dystopian sci-fi won the grand prize in the 2020 3-Day Novella Contest. And for good reason. The worldbuilding, the tone, the atmosphere, the characters, the action…everything about this novella set it above an already impressive roster of manuscripts. Unanimously selected by all four judges as the best of the best in 2020, this book will make you marvel that such a masterpiece could be penned in just three days!

Cloud City Falling

by Gavin Masters

They killed his fellow space marines. They took his limbs. He vowed revenge.

Five years later, bionic-limbed bruiser Jake ‘Juggernaut’ Johnson is still stuck on Venus, in a cloud city slum.

He’s a thug for local crime lord Tommy Trejo. And he does very bad things to any who cross his boss. Like break his only friend’s leg. Or locate and recapture the escaped whore his boss brutalizes. And Jake has to obey, or Trejo can disable his limbs with the press of a button.

The whole solar system is run by the Hauer Corporation. The company that altered Jake’s limbs. They have an almost limitless army of nigh-invincible Sentry-3000 patrol drones, each capable of leveling an entire city. And they’re everywhere.

In this crapsack world, men like Trejo thrive. But when Trejo orders Jake to kill his only friend, he decides he’s had enough. He’ll take down the whole goddamn Hauer empire if he has to. But first, he needs to escape Trejo. Then, the cloud city. To do all that, he’ll need to make alliances with the people he’s hurt.