Love Sci-Fi?
So do we!
The Cygnus Awards is one of the inaugural Book Award Divisions at Chanticleer, and we adore the worlds that they’ve created.
Science Fiction often asks the question: What Could Be? At Chanticleer, we seek to discover those strange new worlds, from Space Opera to Alternate History, and Cli-Fi to YA Sci-Fi. Wherever your book lands on the Speculative Fiction spectrum, there’s a good chance that it will fit in here with us!
**Beam your book to us by June 30, 2024**
Join us in celebrating these amazing Hall of Fame Grand Prize Cygnus Award Winners!
The Shadow of War
By Timothy S. Johnston
The Chanticleer Editorial Review for The Shadow of War, book 5 in the Oceania Series is to come, but here’s what initial readers are saying:
A tightly plotted action-packed thriller about an undersea war. Beautiful and heartbreaking character development, best for those who want The Expanse but underwater. — Chanticleer
And on Goodreads readers say
As always, Johnston has written a thriller with hot-off-the-presses technology, edge-of-your-seat moments, separated into heart-pounding seconds, and characters who don’t always do what they’re supposed to. — Kelly
Timothy S. Johnston delivers another page turner that keeps the pace moving. — Ian
You can find The Shadow of War locally on Bookshop or from Amazon today!
The Last Lumenian
By S. G. Blaise
Nineteen-year-old Lilla could have an idyllic life, but in The Last Lumenian by S.G. Blaise, she comes face to face with a rebellion and their just cause.
Lilla’s father leads the Pax Septum Coalition, a nineteen-planet confederation. As a princess in her own right, she should be enjoying the status and wealth that comes from living on Uhna, the richest planet in the coalition due to the diamond mines found by her pirate ancestors centuries ago. She most definitely shouldn’t be worried about the rebellion brewing right under her father’s nose. However, when Lilla meets rebels in a refugee camp, she thinks she has found her destiny, a true purpose.
Wanting to fight against the injustice and horrific treatment of the refugees, Lilla tries desperately to prove herself, especially after a disastrous first mission where she not only crashes her ship but also ends up in the hands of General Callum, leader of the Teryn Praelium.
A War in Too Many Worlds
By Elizabeth Crowens
Musician-turned-time-traveler John Patrick Scott adds spy and saboteur to his resume while undercover in Germany in the final months of World War I, in A War in Too Many Worlds, the third installment of Elizabeth Crowen’s thrilling sci-fi series, The Time Traveler Professor.
Meanwhile, Scott’s once and future collaborator in psychic experiments, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is back in Britain sharing real time-travel adventures with the inventor of the fictional time machine, H.G. Wells.
Scott, after being wounded in the trenches, has finally been given an assignment in the Intelligence services. His extensive pre-war experience as a professor at the Conservancy of Music in Stuttgart, Germany, will do him good.
Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle for
The Luna Missile Crisis
Authors Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle come together to tell the tale of alien first contact gone awry in their epic science fiction release, The Luna Missile Crisis.
The year is 1961, and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is set to become the first man in space. But when Yuri, snug inside the Vostok 1, is launched from the cosmodrome and into the coming night, he’s met with a collision that changes the course of history. The Vostok 1 crashes into an oncoming alien starship. Assuming the collision was actually a missile fired from Russia’s space race opponent, the United States, the soviet nation quickly launches an arsenal of nuclear warheads in response. But those warheads never make it to their target. Instead, they detonate against the hidden starship, sending a wave of nuclear destruction over eastern Europe.
In the coming weeks after contact day, military troops from both sides of the cold war are sent into the ruins of eastern Europe – into an area now called the Dead Curtain – to search for useful alien technology. During a skirmish between the Russians, the Americans, and the Vulbathi (the toad-like alien race aboard the damaged starship), a combat medic name Kyle McCoy stumbles into the chaos and sparks a ceasefire. His actions create a domino effect, bringing about relative peace between all three parties. Three years pass, and in exchange for aid in repairing their damaged ship, the Vulbathi agree to offer some of their exceptional technology to mankind. And Kyle McCoy, once foot soldier turned head of the Department of Alien Relations, is given a desk job with a title that suits his place in history.
Insynnium
By Tim Cole
The dramatic premise explored in a new novel, Insynnium, is a wild, immersive leap into a world-changing (but fictional) drug. In other hands, what could be a dystopian thriller goes one step further in author Tim Cole’s capable hands. He focuses on the humans who first discover and use the drug and weaves his story with a devilish charm.
This is somewhat Bill Murray/“Groundhog Day” territory, a film exploring one man’s reliving a day in his life over and over until he learned new behaviors, new skills, and came out of it a better man. Unlike “Groundhog,” Max McVista takes multiple doses of the drug against all advice, then somehow expands time itself in what he calls an “AUE” or “Alternative Universe Experience,” enabling him to spend months and sometimes years becoming or experiencing whatever he wishes. When returning to real-time, he’s only missed a day or two. (For E=MC squared fans, it’s basically reverse engineering of Einsteinian physics.)
From a man with few basic skills, a drunk who all but abandons his wife and sons, he returns to his family with outsized skills as a musician, entrepreneur, carpenter, medical savant, and pilot. Skills he could not have learned in any traditional manner. He lies about how he learned everything, tracing it back to an accident, choosing to bury his drug-induced years of time-traveling across the world, spending concentrated periods exploring whatever he fancies with no time “penalty” in the real world.
Remember to add your next reads to your StoryGraph or Goodreads account! Now that you’re set on your next five reads, what are you waiting for? The only way to join this amazing list of Cygnus Winners is to submit today!
Will your science fiction story be next to join this stellar lineup? Those who submit and advance will have the chance to win the Overall Grand Prize of the CIBAs and $1000, but more importantly, you’ll join a community of visionary authors whose work shapes the future of the genre.
These celebrated works represent the best in contemporary science fiction—and your story could be next!
Enter the Cygnus Awards by June 30, 2025, and join this prestigious Hall of Fame!
The CIBA FICTION SERIES Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in any of our 16 Fiction Divisions where the author has written a series. The Fiction Series Book Awards is a division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (CIBAs).
