Announcing the Season 10, Round 3 Lunar Award Winner for Science Fiction

Celebrating the best Sci-Fi stories from Round 3

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Jun 26, 2025

Today’s writers are inventing tomorrow’s reality. And that’s ultimately the power of a writer, a harbinger of worlds past, present, and future. The science fiction writer poses the most challenging questions: Will this happen? How could this happen? Should this happen? The answers aren’t always easy or readily available, but it’s the science fiction reader who has fun pondering the possible outcomes that generate our ever-shifting universe, or better yet, universes.

Our guest judge for Round 3, Simon K Jones, is a science fiction writer of his own multiverse serial called “Tales from the Triverse.” He also runs the “Write More with Simon K Jones” Substack. Based on his feedback, Simon thoroughly enjoyed reading your stories. He selected one winner and one runner-up from the 34 entries, and has included a write-up for each below.

Congratulations to those writers for your achievement, and to everyone who had the courage to hit “publish” on your story. You should be proud of your effort. I know I’m proud to showcase it. Keep up the great work! ~ WM

Lunar Award Winner - Twin Planets by
J.M. Ransom

I’d rather assumed that I’d be able to discount a good chunk of entries, based on my previous experience of judging literature awards. That turned out to not be the case, with an absurdly high calibre of submissions. The judging was blind, in that I didn’t know who had written the stories – that’s an intriguing experience in itself, and made me realise how much weight I usually put in being aware of the author.

For a time, I was worried about picking an overall winner, right up until I got to J.M. Ransom’s Twin Planets.

I find that the most satisfying literature is able to walk a clever tightrope, perfectly balancing our desire to be challenged with our need to be entertained. Writing an entertaining story is one thing. Confronting and challenging an audience is another. Doing both at the same time? That’s where you’ve made something special.

J.M. Ransom knows where that line is. Twin Planets is deeply peculiar in many ways, and pushes at the boundaries of a ‘normal’ relationship, and that’s exactly the point. It touches on all sorts of fascinating themes around tolerance, integration, identity, society – but does so with a lightness that keeps the story going. It’s powered entirely by its characters, and the world-building is just enough to intrigue without becoming too heavy. It’s also that rare thing: a depiction of an alien civilisation that feels properly alien. There’s an unknowable quality to it that is far more innovative than the typical sci-fi trope of putting a slight twist (and a prosthetic head) on a supposedly ‘exotic’ human culture.

I was entertained and I was challenged. I’m now off to read more of J.M.’s work.

Runner-Up - We, Novae by
Alex Soto

Picking a runner-up proved to be considerably harder than choosing the winner. I had a long list of hugely impressive stories vying for second place. I’ve selected We, Novae because it’s the kind of story that takes root in your brain and continues growing there long after you’ve put it down.

We, Novae is about right now, and that makes it exciting. It goes right for the jugular and wastes no time in its commentary. There’s an inherent risk to doing that, in that the story can become quickly dated, or be too on the nose, or tediously sermon-like, but Alex Soto finds dark corners to poke at and ties it all to character.

Alex handles the world-building elegantly and sidesteps the traps of including too many acronyms or focusing too much on the technology. Instead, the focus is on the impact of the tech on society.

It doesn’t escape my notice that both these stories explore what it means to have a hive mind; a gestalt consciousness. I’m not sure what that says about me.

What I do know is that these writers are well deserving of recognition, as are many of the others on the list. I strongly recommend you check out all the submissions. I guarantee you’ll find a personal favourite.

Thanks again to Winston for inviting me to judge this Lunar Award. The fiction community here is something to be protected, championed, and celebrated.

Closing Remarks

Lunar Awards Round 3 has officially ended. Congrats to the winner and runner-up. I’ll reach out to provide you with your optional offers and prizes. If not accepted, the publication offer will go to the next highest-rated story. At the end of the year, these stories will be compiled into a book, published by Storyletter XPress Publishing, and shipped to our annual subscribers. The book will also be available in our new bookstore!

Thank you, Simon, for taking the time to judge this round. It means a great deal to the writers on this platform. If readers like entertaining science fiction and useful articles about writing, publishing, and newsletters, check out Simon’s page linked below.

We’ll be celebrating the first half of Season 10 on June 30th (International Asteroid Day!) with some fun announcements and a recap of our winners and judges. Hope to see you then! ~ WM