C Gockel Writes

Featured Sci-Fi: Between Mountain and Sea by Louisa Locke

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Between Mountain and Sea by Louis Locke

FREE as of April 27, 2025
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Mei Lin Yu should have been looking forward to the next stage in her life. As a descendant of one of the Founding Families who led the exodus from a dying Earth and now rule New Eden, Mei’s choices are endless. But she has never felt part of the Yu Family or the world of technological marvels and genetic perfection the Founders created.

All that will change the summer she spends at Mynyddamore, the home her ancestor Mabel Yu built in western Caelestis. Here, living among the Ddaerans, the original inhabitants of New Eden, Mei will discover secrets about Mabel Yu that her family want to keep buried and a truth about herself that will forever change her own destiny.

Between Mountain and Sea is a coming of age novel, the first book in USA Today Bestselling author Louisa Locke’s Caelestis series in the Paradisi Chronicles (an open source, science fiction world created by multiple authors).

Featured Sci-fi: Non-Stop (Sci-fi Classic) by Brian W. Aldiss

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Featured Sci-fi: Non-Stop (Sci-fi Classic) by Brian W. Aldiss

$1.99 as of April 26, 2025
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A “brilliant . . . classic of the field” generation ship adventure from the Golden Age of Science Fiction by the author of the Helliconia Trilogy (Encyclopedia of Science Fiction).
 
Non-Stop is Grand Master of Science Fiction and Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss’s debut novel. Written in response to Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky and published in the late 1950s, it is set in a primitive world, home to tribes of inhabitants who endure their harsh and stunted lives in a maze of corridors. Though legends exist that they’re actually on a ship traveling through the universe, no one really believes it. But that conviction doesn’t stop a group of people from embarking on a mission to find the rumored “Forwards” section and its control room. Through a tangled, hydroponic jungle, they’ll encounter telepathic animals, giants, outcasts, and mutants in an epic race to uncover the truth—and survive . . .
 
“A breakneck ride filled with some truly disturbing and chaotic imagery . . . Aldiss’ world is visceral and powerful.” —Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations
 
“Worth reading, and quite a significant contribution to the long SF history of generation ship novels.” —SF Site
 
Praise for Brian W. Aldiss
 
“A major figure in world SF . . . Whatever else Aldiss may be, predictable he is not.” —The Guardian
 
“One of the most influential—and one of the best—SF writers Britain has ever produced.” —Iain M. Banks, award-winning author of the Culture series
 
“One of the most important SF writers of the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly

Featured Sci-fi: The Glass Complete Series by Nathan Hystad

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Featured Sci-fi: The Glass Complete Series by Nathan Hystad

99¢ as of April 24, 2025
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THE GLASS: THE COMPLETE SERIES is over 1200 pages of thrilling adventure, inspiring characters, and mysterious aliens. With over 5000 ratings, you won’t want to miss out. What’s really behind the Glass?

A hush falls over Earth as invisible barriers appear at random. Cars crash into them; trees are sliced in half, but nothing prepares humanity for what comes next.

As the effects take hold, Ransom learns his young daughter Chrissy is prone to inclinations, which is exactly what he’d feared the most. Drake, a seasoned detective, joins forces with Britt, a brilliant journalist, as well as Peggy and Will, two small town lovers unwittingly thrust into danger.

The road won’t be easy, and they have no choice but to venture past the Glass. What they find on the other side is another story.

From the best-selling author of The Event, First Life, Echoes From the Moon, and Lost Contact.

Included Inside:

The Other Place (The Glass Book One)
The Hidden Space (The Glass Book Two)
The Secret Base (The Glass Book Three)

[Read more…]

Featured Sci-fi: Slice of Entropy (Pizza in Space Book 1) by Lawrence M. Schoen

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Featured Sci-fi: Slice of Entropy (Pizza in Space Book 1) by Lawrence M. Schoen

99¢ as of April 23, 2025
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Melody Wilder just needs to complete her dissertation and life will be perfect. Alas, that’s not going to happen.

She hasn’t picked a topic yet, her undergraduate loans have been “un-forgiven” with a vengeance, the university is about to strip her of her stipend, her job, and her apartment, and a pirate-priest minotaur is systematically destroying her hopes and dreams.

Meanwhile, alien bear cub physicists are trying to extradite her best friend on charges of violating the laws of conservation of matter every time he makes a pizza!

And things are just getting started.

With a blend of colorful aliens, explorations of new types of memory, the introduction of social predestination, and the healing power of pizza, Slice of Entropy is a rollicking romp of science fiction fun and adventure that will leave you hungry for more.

Featured Sci-fi: Take the Shilling (The Confederated Worlds Book 1) by Raymund Eich

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Featured Sci-fi: Take the Shilling (The Confederated Worlds Book 1) by Raymund Eich

FREE as of April 21, 2025
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“Military science fiction [concentrating] on the psychology and politics of societies in conflict.” —Analog, on the Confederated Worlds series

The Confederated Worlds implanted in his brain the skills to make him a soldier.

He had to learn for himself how to survive interstellar war.

Tomas Neumann seeks escape from his backwater planet and overbearing mother, and a mentor to replace his long-dead father.

“Taking the shilling”—enlisting in the Confederated Worlds military—promises both.

But the soldier’s skills implanted in his brain can’t prepare him for combat against fellow humans. Especially ones supposed to welcome him and his fellow soldiers as liberators. The war on New Liberty threatens to destroy him. Not just in body. Also in spirit.

Grieving for lost comrades, demoralized by harrowing combat, Tomas must learn what he needs to survive.

Because soon, with the fates of thousands of his fellow soldiers in the balance, he will face his war’s ultimate challenge.

Take the Shilling is the first book in The Confederated Worlds series.

Featured Sci-fi: Exile by Glynn Stewart

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Featured Sci-fi: Exile by Glynn Stewart

FREE as of April 20, 2025
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A shackled Earth, ruled by an unstoppable tyrant
An exiled son, and a one-way trip across the galaxy
A perfect world, their last hope for survival

Vice Admiral Isaac Gallant is the heir apparent to the First Admiral, the dictator of the Confederacy of Humanity. Unwilling to let his mother’s tyranny stand, he joins the rebellion and leads his ships into war against the might of his own nation.

Betrayal and failure, however, see Isaac Gallant and his allies captured. Rather than execute her only son, the First Admiral instead decides to exile them, flinging four million dissidents and rebels through a one-shot wormhole to the other end of the galaxy.

There, Isaac finds himself forced to keep order and peace as they seek out a new home without becoming the very dictator he fought against and when that new home turns out to be too perfect to be true, he and his fellow exiles must decide how hard they are prepared to fight for paradise…against the very people who built it.