Mar 16
2026
“Spire, Surge, and Sea” is a Finalist for Best Game Writing in the 61st Annual Nebula Awards
Posted by: Mary Duffy | Comments (6)
We are thrilled to announce that Spire, Surge, and Sea, by Stewart C. Baker is a finalist for Best Game Writing in the 61st Annual Nebula Awards and is on sale on all platforms for 30% off until March 22nd!
Spire, Surge, and Sea is a 380,000-word post-apocalyptic science fantasy novel by Stewart C. Baker. Amid the turbulent waves of the Worldsea stands Gigantea, the walled island city. It is the last haven of humanity, and the last remnant of the days before: before the gods grew jealous of humanity’s overreaching; before the king’s ancestors took up their burden of rule; before the gods sent the curse of the Rot to corrupt and destroy all of the rest of civilization. Only the king’s magic can sustain the fortifications that hold back the Rot.
To celebrate, we are also putting every previous Nebula Finalist game on sale:
- The Ghost and the Golem
- Restore, Reflect, Retry
- The Bread Must Rise
- Vampire: The Masquerade—Sins of the Sires
- The Luminous Underground
- The Road to Canterbury
- The Magician’s Workshop
- Rent-A-Vice
- The Martian Job
Check out our Nebula Finalists bundle on Steam for an even bigger discount!
This is the eighth year that there has been a Nebula award for game writing—and the seventh year that Choice of Games authors have been finalists. Past Choice of Games Nebula finalists are: Benjamin Rosenbaum for The Ghost and the Golem, Natalia Theodoridou for Restore, Reflect, Retry, Vampire: The Masquerade—Sins of the Sires and Rent-A-Vice, James Beamon and Stewart C. Baker for The Bread Must Rise, Phoebe Barton for The Luminous Underground, Kate Heartfield for The Road to Canterbury and The Magician’s Workshop, and M. Darusha Wehm for The Martian Job.
Since 1965, the Nebula Awards have been given annually to the best works of science fiction and fantasy published that year, as voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The 61st Annual Nebula Awards ceremony will be streamed live during the 2026 Nebula Conference, June 3-7, 2026. Stay tuned for more!
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It is such a thrill once again to see a game that has a special place in my heart being recognized by the wider genre literature community. I was privileged to be an alpha reader on Spire, Surge, and Sea, and I got to watch this incredible game grow from its earliest chapters into the strange and wonderful dystopian fantasy we have now.
Whether you’re already a fan of Spire, Surge, and Sea or grabbing it on sale this week, be sure to check out this little companion game Stewart Baker wrote last year in Twine.
This is wonderful news!!! Congratulations to Baker and the whole Choice of Games team.
I’m glad I remembered to take advantage of this sale and buy the game (and two others). It’s the last day! It almost passed me by.
I watched the Nebula Awards tonight, obviously cheering for Stewart Baker to win for Game Writing and Natalia Theodoridou to win for Best Novel. Neither won, but they had some tough competition this year, and it’s both awesome and unsurprising to see them mentioned in the same breath as some of this year’s most notable critical and popular successes. (And the presenter introducing the finalists for best novel admitted to a special fondness for Theodoridou’s work!)
And there were CoG authors onstage tonight, not to receive awards but to present them!
The Game Writing award was presented by none other than Benjamin Rosenbaum, who was nominated last year for The Ghost and the Golem. His remarks were brief, but memorable, a celebration of games that allow you to immerse yourself in the narrative.
There’s something called the Infinity Award that is awarded posthumously to someone who was never named a SFWA Grand Master during their lifetime, but had an impact on the world of science fiction and fantasy that matches those who have received that honor. This year’s honoree was Roger Zelazny, and now I’m thinking I might have to borrow that copy of The Great Book of Amber I got my husband for Christmas a few years ago, but I digress. The award was announced by the President and Vice President of SFWA, Kate Ristau and Anthony W. Eichenlaub. Eichenlaub is the author of CoG’s most recent release, the historical urban fantasy noir Wizard Confidential. I was a tester on that game, so it was pretty surreal to realize if I’d missed the announcement of who was presenting, I would have had no idea I was looking at the man whose imagination I have spent dozens of hours this year crawling around in.
One of the authors whose praise of Zelazny was quoted in the presenting of the award was Max Gladstone, author of Choice of the Deathless. I don’t know if Gladstone was there tonight, but if not I hope he was at least watching remotely. In addition to his words being used to honor one of his favorite authors, he would have seen Amal El-Mohtar, with whom he wrote This Is How You Lose the Time War, winning Best Novella for The River Has Roots.
Even without a win, I came away feeling very proud of this quirky little corner of the literary world.
Wow… I recently read This Is How You Lose the Time War and had a lot of fun with it. I was also recommended to read Choice of the Deathless a while ago but never got round to it. It never clicked in my brain until you pointed it out that they were both written (at least in part) by Max Gladstone. I knew that name was familiar! All the more reason to go check out Choice of the Deathless, then, I think.