It started as a joke.
With Starfleet Academy being so atrociously bad written and having no semblance of serious sci-fi to it, I’ve been posting a lot to X about the show, making fun of its nonsensical writing. The latest on that front:
It’s been growing my following tremendously, and it’s also garnered the attention of Robert Picardo, who plays the holographic Doctor on both Star Trek: Voyager and Starfleet Academy. We’ve posted a couple of articles based on his coming on my feed and ranting, usually involving subtle personal jabs at me because I noticed the poor quality of writing in the show.
One of such interchanges involved him doing the standard, “if you think you can do better, why don’t you make one?!” kind of jabs, to which I promptly replied, “Challenge accepted.”
I made a quick cover in NanoBanana of space marine types with the title Space Fleet Academy and posted it a couple of places, saying, “Should I do it?”
The response was overwhelming.
Dozens of people began saying they wanted this and that they really wanted me to work on it. I talked about it with Vox Day, a Hugo Award finalist editor in science fiction, and #1 bestselling biology author for his recent work with genetic theory, and we came up with an idea.
At this point, it stopped being a joke. We built a world with real science behind it that was some of the most interesting worldbuilding conceptually I’ve seen in decades. This wouldn’t be a parody of Starfleet Academy or even attempting to do anything aping Star Trek, but we had a concept for a military academy in a harsh environment of space, where the entire future of humanity’s evolution would be on the line.
The goal was to put out the book in a week because we wanted to show that we could quickly work and come up with something better than $100 Million in budget and years of development at Paramount, but because we really wanted to dial in the story and get the characters right, we ended up taking about a month to do so.
Now, we have one of the hardest-hitting sci-fi out there since Niven and Pournelle’s team-up with Space Fleet Academy: Year One.
We’ve named the universe and world Biostellar, as real biology plays a large part in what we’re doing, and we’re going to build multiple series that dovetail from this. Both of us have ideas which you’ll be very pleased with when they drop, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
For now, we have Space Fleet Academy. This shows life at a military academy as it should be, as it could be, with real characters and a sci-fi world with teeth. It stands as real science fiction, the opposite of what they’re doing on TV.
The book came out yesterday and is already a #1 new release in genetic engineering sci-fi. The book is here for you for a low price of $2.99, as we want people to get in on reading this and see what the future of sci-fi can hold.
Check it out this weekend here, and thank you so much for reading!
I ended up getting this on Amazon and audible. For some reason the book was free for me in audible, even without using a credit. Looking forward to reading it.
Saw Vox Day's blogpost on it, real interesting!
Bought it, will start reading it right after this comment actually.
That said.
Hate.
Absolutely hate that cover.
For how flavourful and captivating the blurb was, that cover almost completely fails to convey any of that promise.
It's painfully generic.
One exception though, the Biostellar lettering is stellar!
Real iconic looking, you can plaster that sucker across all Biostellar works and it'll look great and instantly recognisable! Fantastic work.
Anyway that's this teller's small but annoyingly persistent gripe, chances are people won't be as bothered as him.
It was mostly the contrast of how standout the blurb was and how bland the cover was, admittedly carefree plainclothes/training uniform students sitting in sci-fi chairs that are supported by an indistinct stylised mountain of corpses while the uncaring alien stars look down could be going too far, but it really was jarring what was there instead...
Here's the tailend of that stellar blurb;
"The cadets who enter the Academy arrive believing they understand what is asked of them. They do not. True understanding can only come later, in the crucible of training, in the weight of choices that permit no easy answers and the recognition that someone must ensure the sacrifice of millions is not made in vain.
This is their story."
Bam, bam, intro music swells! Especially after the paragraphs before it.
Then three generic spacesuits wearing people with what looks like their helmets off in outside space.
It hurt.
Anyway the blurb sold this teller completely on it!
Already a bestseller in one category, hopefully it can be one in multiple!