Space Wizard Science Fantasy is a queer science fiction and fantasy indie publishing company which opened its doors in 2021 to publishing outside authors.
- In 2022, the Space Wizard Science Fantasy Year 1 campaign raised nearly $18,000 to pay authors top rates, create amazing book covers, fund an audiobook recording, and publish 12 books between June 2022 and June 2023.
- In 2023, Year 2 raised over $18,000 for 12 more books released from June 2023 to June 2024 with more excellent covers, custom illustrations, and pro rates for our anthology writers! This year we added exclusive collector's hardbacks!
- In 2024, Year 3 just concluded in July with another $17,250 raised for for 13 books, one omnibus, and 2 TTRPGs!

We're back again this September for one more anthology, this time with a bunch of incredible authors participating in Booktopia. Lesbians in Space has a stellar (ha!) lineup of writers already on board, including (in order of confirmation):

- Seanan McGuire, multiple Hugo Award-winning author of the Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, and the Incryptid series!

- Travis Baldree, author of Legends and Lattes, shortlisted for the Hugo Award for best novel in 2023, as well as exceptional audiobook narrator!

- Emma Newman, Hugo Award-winning podcaster and author of the Planetfall series, which was shortlisted for the Best Series Hugo Award in 2020!

- Mary Robinette Kowal. Hugo Award-winner Mary Robinette Kowal has written: The Spare Man, The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, the Lady Astronaut Universe, and many short stories.

Also see our "writers" section below for our current roster, and for how you can submit your story!

Peanut butter and chocolate. Cheese and wine. Sex and rock n’ roll. History is full of great pairings.

Get ready for the next great one: Lesbians and Space! Join a host of intrepid explorers heading to the outer reaches of the galaxy, exploring planets, space stations, strange new worlds and interesting aliens. Focusing on lesbian / sapphic protagonists, this anthology will contain works from numerous established, award-winning, and lesfic authors, and a few new faces as well.

Launch into stories from your favorite established worlds and explore entirely new offerings that span the cosmos. From spaceship mechanics to intergalactic colony queens, heists, smugglers, gods, and sentient planets, Lesbians in Space explores the galaxy from the unique perspective of the lesfic world, blending the best of sapphic literature with modern sci-fi and space opera tropes.

We have an amazing cover already created by Serene Chia, and we have a bunch of great addons and gifts for you as well! This anthology is going to be packed with fully-inclusive, sapphic stories about space, space opera, science fiction, exploration, adventure, and of course, romance. The stories will have representation of all sorts, including cis, trans, bi, sapphic, non-binary, ace, aro, and many other types. There's lots of room for Lesbians in Space!

We have our invited group of writers already working on stories for the anthology, but we're opening up to any and all submissions as well! So if you're a writer, polish off your best story about Lesbians in Space, and send it in! See the details below.

📚 Welcome to Booktopia — a celebration of creativity and collaboration from a vibrant collective of writers, authors and artists collectively running crowdfunding projects from September 5th - September 26th.

🔥 Limited Cross-Collaboration Freebies — All 50+ Booktopia creators have paired up with a fellow participant to create two unique and limited freebies together. If BOTH projects successfully fund, backers who support BOTH projects at any physical level will get the cross-collab freebies listed on their campaign page. One will ship from each creator. The more pairs of Booktopia creators you support, the more freebies you will earn! ✨

I'm partnered up with Aimee Cozza, whose project is The Warm Machine. This is a new book written and illustrated by Aimee, about two robots destined for (gay) love! If you like Becky Chamber's A Psalm for the Wild Built or Annalee Newitz's Autonomous, go back her campaign, along with Space Wizard's Lesbians in Space anthology!

If you support both of our campaigns at any physical rewards tier level, and both campaigns meet 100% of goal, you will not only receive the awesome books you supported during the campaign, but you’ll also receive 6 free cards – three from each campaign!

But wait, there's more! (I've always wanted to say that!)

Don't forget to check out all of the other campaigns that are producing oracle cards for this unique Booktopia 2024 oracle card deck! Back all campaigns, as long as it's any of the physical reward levels, to complete your oracle deck with over 50 cards! They're great to look at, plus, if you want to use them as a sort of mini-game, each card is associated with a single word. It's a great way to support creators and get an amazing product that will never be available again!

Not only that, but BackerKit will send you a freebie too! You'll get 1 FREE Limited Edition Booktopia 2024 Black Metal Bookmark if you back FIVE or more projects. Here's a great list just waiting for you!

Here's the list of all the people participating in the Oracle Card deck. Gotta collect 'em all!

Lesbians in Space | The Warm Machine | Dire Contact | The Fractured Balance | Nuclear Strudel | Mermaid Song | Gamer | The Bright Spot | Like Warm Plastic | Weave of a Thousand Lies | The Eyes of Mandoral | Sombulus | Violet's Pretty Purple Playground | Shuttered Stanzas | First Life Duet | Blood Ties | Ruthless Wolves | Silver Series of Grown-Up Wisdom | My Body Beeps | Reimagined: The Relic Saga

Finally, we're also offering something special for our fellow writers. Space Wizard has full developmental and copy editing services. So if you've got that book almost ready to go, and you want a professional to give you feedback on plot, setting, and character, or you just need a final proofing and consistency check, you can pledge for either of those services in this campaign!

What authors are writing Space Lesbian stories? We have some amazing award-winning and bestselling authors already set to contribute, and if you're familiar with Space Wizard Science Fantasy, you'll probably also recognize our publisher and editors, and maybe see some other familiar faces too!

Travis Baldree is a #1 New York Times Bestselling author, a Locus, Nebula, and Hugo finalist, and a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Spare Man,The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, and the Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, also performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi. She lives in Tennessee with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit maryrobinettekowal.com

Seanan McGuire was born in Martinez, California, and raised in a wide variety of locations, most of which boasted some sort of dangerous native wildlife. Despite her almost magnetic attraction to anything venomous, she somehow managed to survive long enough to acquire a typewriter, a reasonable grasp of the English language, and the desire to combine the two. The fact that she wasn't killed for using her typewriter at three o'clock in the morning is probably more impressive than her lack of death by spider-bite.

Seanan is the author of the Wayward Children series, the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies. In case that wasn't enough, she also writes under the pseudonym "Mira Grant." For details on her work as Mira, check out MiraGrant.com.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

Emma Newman writes short stories, novels and novellas in multiple speculative fiction genres. She is also a Hugo Award-winning podcaster and an audiobook narrator.

She won the British Fantasy Society Best Short Story Award 2015 for “A Woman’s Place” in the 221 Baker Streets anthology. 'Between Two Thorns', the first book in Emma's Split Worlds urban fantasy series, was shortlisted for the BFS Best Novel and Best Newcomer 2014 awards. Her science-fiction novel, After Atlas, was shortlisted for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke award and the third novel in the Planetfall series, Before Mars, has been shortlisted for a BSFA Best Novel award. The Planetfall series was shortlisted for the 2020 Best Series Hugo Award.

Emma currently creates a podcast called 'Imagining Tomorrow' for Friends of the Earth. Her hobbies include dressmaking, LARP and tabletop role playing.

THAT'S RIGHT!
Are you a writer? Do you like Lesbians in Space? We will be holding juried selections for more stories for the Lesbians in Space anthology.
To enter, simply polish off your writing skills and craft a story of around 2000-4500 words, but definitely not over 6000.

This anthology will focus on lesbian relationships of all types, including cis, bi/pan, ace, non-binary, intersex, trans, and others that fall under the ‘sapphic’ banner as long as the primary pairing is lesbian. Give us your best story featuring sapphic protagonists at least partially located in space. This could be on a spaceship, with magic, on a planet or asteroid, in another dimension or realm, or any other connected idea. Surprise us!

Stories will be juried and final selections will be made (hopefully) by end of January 2025. Projected publish date is June 2025. Selected authors will be compensated at semi-pro rates or higher. Send your completed story in by midnight EST, December 31st, 2024 using the instructions at https://www.spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/submissions

We are hoping to publish Lesbians in Space around June 2025.

So how is this anthology getting published? It will be released through Space Wizard Science Fantasy, a small press focusing on queer SFF, and compiled and edited by a team with multiple years of experience editing and publishing novellas, novels, and anthologies of short stories.

William C. Tracy writes and publishes queer science fiction and fantasy through his indie press Space Wizard Science Fantasy, which he owns, operates, and acts as developmental editor for. He writes tales of wonder, adventure, strange people, and interesting places. He is the publisher of Lesbians in Space.

J.S. Fields is a scientist who has spent too much time around organic solvents. They enjoy roller derby, woodturning, making chainmail by hand, and cultivating fungi in the backs of minivans. They live in the Pacific Northwest with their wife, kid, and Flemish giant rabbit. J.S. is the editor for Lesbians in Space.

Heather Tracy is a travel agent by day and a masked copy editor by night. She's found hundreds of typos, comma splices, and other grammatical nitpicks for Space Wizard Science Fantasy since before 2016. With over 30 titles copy edited, this year she turns her hand to her first published short story and novel. Heather is the copy editor for Lesbians in Space. 

Lesbians in Space is a labor of love, and we also seek to pay people their worth! This campaign will help make that happen. The base funding goal will be used to pay semi-pro rates for all submitting authors, as well as the book cover costs.

-> UNLOCKED! <- At $6,000, The first stretch goal will be to pay all our writers another $0.01 per word!

-> UNLOCKED! <- At $7,000, The Lesbians in Space anthology will get 5 illustrations for select stories, courtesy of the talented Katie Cordy, who drew all the illustrations for Distant Gardens, Farther Reefs, Lofty Mountains, and Fiery Deeps.
-> UNLOCKED! <- At $8,000, We'll pay all our writers another $0.01 per word!

-> UNLOCKED! <- At $10,000, We'll make the hardback version fancy with the possibility of a cloth bookmark, head and tail bands, colored end papers, spredges, and a dustjacket! (We'll determine the final fanciness if we hit this goal)
At $11,500, We'll pay ourselves! Crowdfunding campaigns are break even for us. All the money collected goes back into the business to bring you great books. We don't even pay ourselves for the stories we write. So this time we're actually including a goal that is just paying the owners of Space Wizard for their work. If you like what we do, help us meet this stretch goal!

Do you love books? We do too. That's why Space Wizard strives to make exciting adventures across time and space. We have almost 40 books currently released, not even counting Lesbians in Space. If you're looking for more queer science fiction and fantasy, feel free to browse the Space Wizard website and read about any of them! If there's juuuust one more book you want, you can add it on when you pledge, in eBook or paperback format.

Not only that, but we have some awesome pins, keychains, and stickers, including NEW Lesbians in Space versions! (Our Lesbians in Space stickers have a rainbow holographic coating...)

 

Simply choose your addon(s) when you pledge, in the pledge manager. If you picked a digital pledge level, you'll be asked for your address when choosing a physical addon.

My shipping fees are from my experience in the last six campaigns. Note the above numbers are estimates. Shipping will be added when you fill out your survey form, and is based on your location. Generally, US shipping for one book will be about $7, three books will be about $9, and five books is around $11. See below for International shipping.

Yep. It's expensive. The cost starts around $30 for one book, shipping to Canada, and $50 international. The price will go up for extra books by weight. For example, another 2 books will add around $5-10 in shipping. This is the cheapest I've been able to find it for, especially if you are getting multiple books. I'd recommend getting the eBooks, and then you can get as many as you want!

There are always risks and challenges with determining a budget for a campaign such as this, but I am a Professional Engineer by training, have spent the last 20 years in cost and benefit analysis, and now do data analysis for a living (along with publishing). I have accurately assessed costs for large projects in my work environment so I have a good understanding of how and where money is spent, and I have applied that knowledge to six previous campaigns. See below for how the money from the campaign is used:

Even if you don't pledge, thanks for taking the time to read this through! We strive to deliver quality queer stories to you with a professional feel. We hope Space Wizard will continue to expand, giving making plenty of stories where everyone can see themselves.