The biggest story in sci-fi this weekend remained Space Fleet Academy, which has maintained the top spot in all of Amazon’s major science fiction categories as a #1 bestseller for three days.
There’s a lot to unpack with this incredible, dominating success. Obviously, without the abject failure that is Starfleet Academy, we wouldn’t be here. What Paramount did to Star Trek is horrific, and it’s drawn a lot of eyeballs to watching the trainwreck with Nerdrotic and Critical Drinker shining a giant spotlight on how horrible it is to the normie masses that allowed for this perfect storm.
It created an environment that people have been looking for content related to Starfleet Academy, even if the show is not doing well in the ratings. That allowed an opportunity to seize the day.
Now if we weren’t on top of it and willing to work day and night to get this concept off the ground and ready to go while the zeitgeist was primed, we’d have been out of luck, but we sat down and hammered out a science fiction world with Biostellar which has depth of concepts that hasn’t been around since Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle collaborated decades ago.
People have been starved of decent science fiction in recent years, not just on television, but in books as well, because the establishment in traditional publishing refuses to produce it. Mainstream publishers like Tor Books and Baen Books have completely ignored this need, despite it being their job to scout for new talent with the sense of wonder and interest in science that could come up with interesting and harrowing futures.
Organizations like SFWA and Worldcon have also forsaken science fiction in the name of left-wing politics, turning both organizations into glorified signaling over sexual fetishes and skin color, which has transformed the genre into something completely unrecognizable from the days when Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury were writing their classics.
Even on the independent side, if you look at most of the top of the Amazon sci-fi charts, you don’t get a lot of real science fiction concepts. Amazon algorithm riders have produced a lot of generic battle fiction in space that don’t really add any ideas with their science, nor do they have much differentiation between one another. While there are some okay popcorn fiction reads, not a lot of new or interesting gets through, and most of those authors will tell you their whole game plan is to make something as familiar as possible to satisfy a cookie-cutter box of reader expectations.
When we wrote Space Fleet Academy, we didn’t want to fall into that trap, and despite using the name for marketing, our first task in this was to develop a world with Biostellar that had the hardest-hitting science concepts to it that real science fiction readers could actually get something interesting out of. It’s why we have an afterward in the back that talks (briefly) about the real science concepts involved.
While we expected this book to be a mild success, we had no idea that readers would be this voracious for the book, which really comes down to how tremendous you are in your support. You’ve picked up the book, read it, reviewed it, and shared it on your socials with your friends, which has made Space Fleet Academy break containment.
On the other hand, we’ve already been attacked by Robert Picardo, the holographic Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, as well as a mainstream gaming journalist who works with Gamespot and Rotten Tomatoes as a reviewer. That, as you might be aware, only amplifies the signal, encouraging people to check things out.
So now we’re going forward into a bold future with Biostellar as a concept. Not only will we have Space Fleet Academy, but Vox Day is working on a harrowing spinoff series that I won’t spoil because it’s an amazing concept that you’ll be pleased with. I’m hard at work on Space Fleet Academy: Year 2 to keep the momentum going, and the plot I’ve come up with is even better than Year 1. In the spirit of Star Trek, I aim to also send out a ship in this universe to explore strange, new worlds, seek out..
Well, I’ll have to come up with another tagline for it when we get there.
For now, to keep the momentum going, the focus will be on Space Fleet Academy: Year 2, which is up for pre-order. We will also be sure to get a print edition of Space Fleet Academy: Year One in the coming weeks for those who’ve been asking.
It’s truly incredible watching this series resonate so much with science fiction readers, and it shows that with the platform here and with what we’re doing, we can change the culture and show the establishment how it’s done.
Thank you, everyone, for being amazing readers!
When genetic engineering nearly doomed the species, humanity made a desperate bargain: let the frontier do what nature intended. In a harsh universe, these cadets have to make impossible decisions. Read Space Fleet Academy today.
That's awesome. Congrats!
Although I'm not a sci-fi reader, congratulations on your book.