If there was a paucity of new science fiction in August, then September more than makes up for it, with everything from a long-awaited piece of speculative fiction from China Miéville to a short story collection paying tribute to the genius of Ursula K. Le Guin, with contributions from names including Ann Leckie and Kelly Link. Then there’s a new near-future novel from Station Eleven author Emily St John Mandel, a fresh sci-fi series from the bestselling Brandon Sanderson (and co-author Janci Patterson) and a strange but intriguing tale from one of my favourite writers, Naomi Alderman.
edited by Jonathan Strahan
This is something I absolutely cannot wait to read: a collection of 15 new short stories, inspired by the work of the one and only Ursula K. Le Guin and intended to honour her amazing legacy. The names contributing are super impressive, including Karen Joy Fowler and Charlie Jane Anders: what a treat.
by China Miéville
China Miéville is one of our great contemporary writers, master of the weird and author of masterpieces including The City and the City and Embassytown (my personal favourite). New book The Rouse comes in two whopping volumes, and its publisher promises it is a “decade- and continent-spanning epic of grief, global tumult, and grim conspiracy”. I can’t tell you for sure that it’s science fiction, as I’ve yet to tackle the two doorstopper tomes I’ve been sent, but I can predict it will definitely be weird, and speculative. Michael Moorcock, no less, calls it “completely without parallel”. Exciting times.
Advertisement
by Garth Nix
In my younger days, I was an avid reader of Garth Nix’s young adult Old Kingdom series, so I’m interested to see what this excellent author’s first venture into sci-fi will be like. It’s a military space opera, set in a universe where interstellar war rages between Earth and Mars – and where for over two centuries, humans have travelled into space on huge sentient mountain ranges known as Massifs. Then the crew of the ship Sassafras starts asking questions about why the Massifs carry humans to the stars – and talking to the powerful avatars piloting the ships.
by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson
This is the first in the new Skyward Legacy series from the mighty Sanderson, co-written with Janci Patterson. It’s a complicated set-up: humans have warred against alien oppressors for decades. Now they’re free, and Arturo Mendez, leader of Skyward Flight, is sent on a mission to make contact with a settlement of humans isolated during the long war. But Blightfall, the planet he’s sent to, is more dangerous than he’d anticipated.
by Naomi Alderman
I am such a Naomi Alderman fan. We read her previous novel, The Future, with the 91av Book Club, and I loved it. This latest sounds much stranger and more speculative, but I’m here for anything from this author (her recent non-fiction book, Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, is also a big recommendation from me). Anyway: the plot here is that the novelist Naomi Alderman, grieving the loss of her mother, sets up a wildlife camera in her parents’ garden, and takes the first photo of a new animal, the “mimmoth”. These creatures spread across the world, harmless apparently, but strangely intelligent – what will their eventual impact be?
by Emily St John Mandel
Emily St John Mandel, author of Station Eleven, is very good at thoughtful, near-future tales, and here comes another. Set in 2031, this is a world where America is in the middle of a civil war – but where something even stranger might be going on. Ari, newly out of prison, goes to a party in Los Angeles, where she meets someone who looks exactly like her friend, but isn’t… Living in Paris a long time later, Ari is haunted by what happened at the party, and by what might lie beyond the boundaries of her world. I’ve started this one, and it’s living up to its promise so far.
by Ken Liu
This collection of short stories from the award-winning speculative author moves between science fiction and fantasy – from techno-witches battling a world ruled by machines, to a consciousness on a starship watching the cosmos die and be reborn.
by Jo Martin
This new Doctor Who novel sees the Fugitive Doctor and Martha investigating a strange object in the British Museum. Apparently a medieval toy, it refuses to stay in one place, time or identity.
by Hernan Diaz
This novel by the heavyweight literary author Hernan Diaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, takes place centuries in the future, following the adventures of a pincher, someone who steals electricity from the grid and sells it on the black market. This pincher, an orphan, goes on to discover an experiment that, if she can power it, could “change the fabric of reality itself”.
by Chloe Benjamin
Laurel is a biologist turned dishwasher at an Antarctic research station. She doesn’t tell anyone in her new life about the tragedy which made her leave her old one – but she becomes convinced that the mysterious Arc that appears across the ice could lead her to a new world where she could turn back the clock. I’m halfway through this one and am loving the biology and the Antarctic side of it. Can’t wait to see how the physics holds up.
by James Islington
This sci-fi thriller is set in a world where the poor die young, and the rich live forever. Assassin Azure is usually hired to kill the richest of people – but then he’s given a job to protect one of them. The publisher promises that this fuses “the dystopian morality of cyberpunk with the explosive action of anime”, which sounds pretty cool.
by Jordan Prosser
Abby, suffering the burden of being in her 30s without having achieved any of her dreams, decides she has a new purpose: becoming the first person on Mars. Luckily for her, a Danish entrepreneur is planning a one-way mission.
by Ai Jiang
Jiang, who also has a story in the Ursula K. Le Guin anthology out this month, sets this piece of “science-fantasy” in a world where the royal advisors are plotting to overthrow emperor Yun. Yun’s sister Xilian escapes to the drowning continent of Opera, a place filled with strange tech and dreams of immortality.
by Adam Simcox
It’s 2026, and time travel is a luxury commodity. So, Rachel, who killed Oliver in a car crash in 1997 when she was 18, goes back to save him – only for the future to change in bad ways that may have something to do with Oliver, with whom she’s now fallen in love…
by Django Wexler
Taj is a scrapper, living in a junkyard and keeping his family alive with the scrap he finds there. His one salvation? A “construct”, or robot, that he built himself, and which he hopes will win big in the construct fighting circuits.
When you make a purchase via the links on this page, we receive a commission.
