Becky Chambers, who raised money on Kickstarter to write and self-publish her first novel, has been shortlisted for an award celebrating the year’s “most progressive, intelligent and entertaining” science fiction.

One of eight self-published novels among 198 submissions for the Kitschie awards, a series of prizes for fiction “containing elements of the speculative and fantastic”, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet tells of the crew of a spaceship tasked with building worm-holes around the galaxy. The author, a freelance writer, turned to Kickstarter three years ago to raise the $2,500 she required to finish writing it. The debut is the first self-published novel to make it to a shortlist in the Kitschies’ six-year history, although organisers have always accepted submissions from DIY authors.

Chambers’s novel was shortlisted for the Golden Tentacle award for the year’s best debut alongside Monica Byrne’s The Girl in the Road, the story of a woman who must flee her home in late 21st-century India (described as “glorious” by Neil Gaiman), Hermione Eyre’s historical fantasy Viper Wine and Emmi Itäranta’s dystopian, post-climate-change novel Memory of Water. Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees, about a scientist who discovers the secret to longevity on a Micronesian island, completes the line-up.

“We’ve always allowed self-published books for the Kitschies – and I think our past history shows that we’re pretty good at uncovering the books that people don’t initially think will be awards-worthy,” said judge and Kitschies director Glen Mehn. “Chambers’s book very much fits the Kitschies criteria – it’s very progressive in terms of the storytelling and the character relationships, it’s intelligent both in its science and in its approach to sensitive issues, and it’s a big barrel of fun.”

The acclaimed science fiction novelist Adam Roberts, who joined Mehn on the judging panel, called the novel’s inclusion “a sign of the times”.

“I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say that all the self-published novels were high quality ... but some were,” he said. Judges come to debut novels in contention for the Golden Tentacle award “without preconceptions”, he continued. “You’re not influenced by the author’s prior reputation, and in most cases you’re not even influenced by reviews and buzz and so on. So you just read the story – and whether the book is self-published, or put out by a major press, has no real bearing on how you judge it.

“We judged by quality, entertainment and by how progressive the books were – and A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet was just a huge amount of space-opera-y fun, with some interestingly nuanced perspectives on gender woven into the whole.”

The shortlist for the Red Tentacle award for best novel was also unveiled this morning, with science fiction legend William Gibson’s The Peripheral, about a virtual reality drone strike which kills someone in the real world, competing with Nnedi Okorafor’s World Fantasy award-winning novel, Lagoon, in which a tidal wave hits Lagos. The list also features Will Wiles’s The Way Inn, Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle, and Nina Allan’s The Race.

“This was the first time I’d judged a literary prize. My main take-away from the experience is how much really good stuff if being written at the moment – especially (but not exclusively) by women, especially (but not exclusively) in YA and what we could call ‘near future dystopia’,” said Roberts.

Roberts and Mehn were joined on the judging panel for the Golden and Red Tentacles by the authors Kate Griffin, Frances Hardinge and Kim Curran. This year’s awards also saw the introduction of a new category, the Invisible Tentacle for natively digital fiction, with works including Inkle Studio’s 80 Days, about the globe-trotting interactive adventures of one Phileas Fogg, and Simogo’s Sailor’s Dream, the exploration of an ocean dream world, in the running.

“Being part of a new award is terrific fun: weighing options, arguing about parameters and boundaries, discovering new works and creators, and diving into intense discussions with fellow judges,” said judge James Wallis, praising digital storytelling as “explosive and original”.

The winners of the prizes, sponsored by Fallen London and won in the past by names including China Miéville, Patrick Ness and Lauren Beukes, will be announced on 4 March.

Shortlist for the Red Tentacle (novel)

Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor (Hodder & Stoughton)

Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith (Egmont)

The Peripheral, by William Gibson (Viking)

The Way Inn, by Will Wiles (4th Estate)

The Race, by Nina Allan (NewCon Press)

Shortlist for the Golden Tentacle (Debut)

Viper Wine, by Hermione Eyre (Jonathan Cape)

The Girl in the Road, by Monica Byrne (Blackfriars)

Memory of Water, by Emmi Itäranta (Voyager)

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers (Self)

The People in the Trees, by Hanya Yanagihara (Atlantic Books)

Shortlist for the Inky Tentacle (Cover Art)

The Ghost of the Mary Celeste, by Valerie Martin, design by Steve Marking (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

A Man Lies Dreaming, by Lavie Tidhar, cover by Ben Summers (Hodder & Stoughton)

Through the Woods, by Emily Carroll, cover by Emily Carroll and Sonja Chaghatzbanian (Faber and Faber)

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, cover by Rafaela Romaya and Yehring Tong (Canongate)

Tigerman by Nick Harkaway, cover by Glenn O’Neill (William Heinemann)

Shortlist for the Invisible Tentacle (Natively Digital Fiction)

@echovirus12 (twitter fiction), created/curated by Jeff Noon @jeffnoon, Ed @3dgriffiths, James Knight @badbadpoet, violet sprite @gadgetgreen, Richard Biddle @littledeaths68, Mina Polen @polen, Uel Aramchek @ThePatanoiac, Graham Walsh @t_i_s_u, Vapour Vox @Wrong_Triangle

Kentucky Route Zero, Act III, by Cardboard Computer

80 Days, by Inkle Studios

Sailor’s Dream by Simogo

• This article was amended on 13 February 2015 to correct the spelling of Nina Allan’s name.

