Alison Flood, Author at New Scientist Science news and science articles from New Scientist Wed, 01 Jul 2026 08:54:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.1 242057827 The best new science-fiction novels published in July 2026 /article/2532492-the-best-new-science-fiction-novels-published-in-july-2026/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:48 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2532492
Chris Barrie as Arnold Rimmer in Red Dwarf – which fans can revisit in a new novel out this month
Nobby Clark/Popperfoto via Getty Images

I am on holiday later this month, so I’m pleased to find there’s a really wide range of intriguing new science fiction to take with me. I’m particularly keen to get cracking on a tale by Sheila Armstrong about strange ancient things found in a bog, but I’m also excited to read a new book by one of my favourite authors, Paul Tremblay (even if it does sound very disturbing). And I’m looking forward to the high-concept thrillers and classic space-set sci-fi on offer, too – not forgetting the first new Red Dwarf novel released in 30 years.

by Ruth Newton

This sounds a little Severance-like and ideal summer reading for those of us who enjoy a good high-concept thriller. It’s set in a near future where you can outsource your emotional pain thanks to a biotech company, Eudaimonia. Sounds good, right? You can get rid of your unwanted negative emotions. But the price is paid by a “Carrier” – a woman who is paid to take on your pain. When Viv goes to work for Eudaimonia, she discovers even darker secrets.

SELSEY, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 10: Workers from Chichester council clean spilt debris from a refrigeration container that fell from a tanker and washed ashore on the beach on December 10, 2025 in Selsey, England. A clean-up effort is underway to remove debris from England's southern coastline after sixteen containers carrying bananas and other fruit tipped off the Baltic Kipper cargo ship into the Solent strait between the Isle of Wight and British mainland. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
The best sci-fi novel in 2026 so far – plus 6 other great reads

Sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson rounds up her favourite reads of the year to date – and highlights one particular book as her top pick

by Paul Tremblay

I’m super excited about this one. I’ve loved Paul Tremblay ever since I read the absolutely terrifying Shirley Jackson-inflected A Head Full of Ghosts. This time Tremblay has written a piece of AI horror, set in a near future where former professional gamer Julia is offered a temporary job escorting a man in a vegetative state from California to the East Coast. Why is the man in this state? Because he has an AI mind implanted in his head – and he is trapped in a strange and morphing hellscape he can’t escape. Loved the great riff on Philip K. Dick in the title.

Author Paul Tremblay has a sci-fi horror novel out this month
Erik Pendzich / Alamy

by Deb Olin Unferth

Set at “the end of the world as we know it”, as its publisher writes, this follows two women who fall in love – one of them raised in a research pod deep in the ocean, and the other who works in a luxury resort as a bartender (but who may also be a robot). Together, they try to “salvage some trace of planet Earth” as it slowly disappears.

by Riley August

Ellis feels something is missing from his seemingly perfect life, so he sets out for the hedonistic world of Planet Happy. Nara is the attendant tasked with ensuring that Ellis will indeed find happiness on his trip, but activists disrupt the visit, and they set out on an adventure together.

by Sheila Armstrong

I have this on my bedside table ready to read when I get a minute – it’s the book I’m most looking forward to in July. It follows a dog’s uncovering of a strange antler in a restored bog, which leads to the discovery that the peat is an ancient dying ground of the Great Irish Elk. These aren’t the first things to be found in the bog. Archaeologists have already discovered prehistoric settlements and the mutilated body of a woman, 2,000 years old. And the deep time of the bog seems to have a sinister influence over the lives of those who have been touched by it.

A mysterious ancient antler is found in The Red Mouth
JMrocek/Getty Images

by Nadia Afifi

Azad is a fugitive, hunted by the Vitruvian Authorities after he exposed his home planet’s dark secrets. If he really wants to spark rebellion, Azad needs the help of a space pirate with her own agenda – and they must revisit the past.

by Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall

The first new Red Dwarf novel in 30 years is a prequel, written by co-creator Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall, creator of the sitcom 2point4Children. It sees the mining ship Red Dwarf orbiting Saturn’s moon Titan, with the crew – including Lister and Rimmer – all planning their latest shore leave. (Lister, interestingly, is planning to find a cat to smuggle back on board…). But everyone’s plans go awry when a cryptic message from the future arrives.

by Gregory Bastianelli

A blend of science fiction and horror, this follows a doctor, Monica Cucinotta, working in an Italian hospital on the frontlines of a deadly virus which causes thorns to erupt on the bodies of its victims. When she is infected , she has to leave the hospital and travel across a devastated world to get back to her loved ones.

The best new science fiction books of May 2026

New science fiction from big names including Ann Leckie, Alan Moore and Martha Wells are just some of the exciting crop of titles out this month

by Claire McGowan

This sounds terrifying – and pleasingly Handmaid’s Tale-ish. It’s set in a version of Great Britain ruled by the Hope Party, where a series of new laws have made a swathe of changes, including a rewilding of the countryside, and a prioritisation of children’s rights. But fertility is constantly monitored, and abortion and contraception are banned. Kate is is too scared to say anything against these new norms, but is forced to take action when her daughter becomes pregnant.

by Rebecca Thorne

I like the look of this piece of cosy science fiction, in which Torian acquires an ancient and abandoned starship covered in moss. But when Torian sets out on board, keen to get away from her overbearing ex-captain (and ex) Amelia, she discovers that the moss is in fact Moss, the ship’s organic computer, and it has a mind of its own.

by David Arlo

This sounds rather silly but also fun. It follows game developer Hal, who has been working for years on “the most anticipated video game of all time”, in which players enter a fully immersive virtual reality where they can live their fantasies. Hal needs to do a final test off the record to see if he can genuinely achieve total immersion, so tries it out on his family – only to discover they can’t escape from the game. So, he goes in to save them and bring them back to reality.

by Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles

Kracht has previously been shortlisted for the International Booker prize; now, his publisher is comparing his latest to Ursula K. Le Guin and Jorge Luis Borges. It tells the story of a designer, Paul, who is walking through the corridors of a server farm in Norway – until he vanishes in a blackout. Meanwhile, in another time and place, a man wakes up in a forest, and a young girl helps him to an icy settlement. This sounds really intriguing.

The best new science-fiction books of June 2026

There is plenty of intriguing sci-fi on offer this month, whether it’s solar-powered cities from Adrian Tchaikovsky or a strange future from M. John Harrison

by Meg Smitherman

A gothic sci-fi novella in which interplanetary transporter Midonia is given the job of flying Sister Irena to a planet where the people worship a deity known as Anguish. But when their ship is grounded by a solar flare, Midonia is stuck on the planet, where a strange voice starts invading her mind at night.

by Calvin James

We’re promised both romance and sci-fi in this tale about junior supply officer Levar, who is called upon to serve as a diplomat in peace talks because he once dated an Imperial baroness. Then he discovers that a former lover, Astrid, is actually the Demon Emperor, and their feelings for each other are still very much present.

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]]> 2532492 Our verdict on The Selfish Gene: An unpopular piece of popular science /article/2531275-our-verdict-on-the-selfish-gene-an-unpopular-piece-of-popular-science/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:00:09 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2531275
The New Scientist Book Club read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins in June
ճNew Scientist Book Club has been reading a popular-science classic in June: Richard Dawkins’s , which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. I hadn’t previously read this one – it had always intimidated me (an English graduate). But my colleague Rowan Hooper, a behavioural ecologist as well as our podcast editor, reread it to see how it holds up today and concluded it pretty much did. He had a few issues with the biology and said it “feels its age” – Dawkins himself admits to “sexist pronouns” in a 1989 preface – but Rowan found that “the core message remains relevant not just because genes being selfish is a brilliant meme (a term Dawkins coins at the end of the book), but because it is such a powerful way to understand how evolution operates: the metaphor makes us think as if genes behave selfishly”.
Read an extract from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Dive into the opening of The Selfish Gene's first chapter 'Why are people?', the New Scientist Book Club’s read for June to mark 50 years since the popular science classic was first published
It was time to gird my loins and embark on a book I’ve always been a bit embarrassed for omitting. I have to admit to being a little exhausted at first: there was preface after preface in my edition, in which Dawkins was arguing with all sorts of people about how the book had been received. This was somewhat confusing, given I hadn’t – yet –  read it. I should have skipped straight to the first chapter. Once I got into it, though, I found myself (mostly) carried along swimmingly by Dawkins’s writing. He certainly has a knack for a good metaphor – I particularly liked the idea of our bodies as “survival machines” for genes. Without having studied any biology after the age of 16, I got my head around his central point: that natural selection works because genes, or copies of them (replicators, as he calls them), are out to survive, building the optimal bodies (or survival machines) in order to do so. I did find his tone a little irascible and hectoring at times. It was like he was having conversations with various colleagues/rivals about his points, rather than the general reader. For example, talking about how “one gene may be regarded as a unit that survives through a large number of successive individual bodies”, he writes that “it is an argument that some of my most respected colleagues obstinately refuse to agree with, so you must forgive me if I seem to labour it!”. We’re also firmly told about the correct pronunciation of “algae” (a hard “g”, people). There’s a lot of that sort of thing, but I finished feeling pleased to have got my head (mostly) around his argument. Book club members were less impressed – this is, I think, the book that has received the most negative comments of any we’ve read, with a handful of members deciding not to join us in reading it at all, as they disagreed with some of Dawkins’s personal views. (I share the perspective of member pwhipp, who wrote on our channel: “I don’t think we should reject serious scientific writing simply because the author is combative, controversial, or personally irritating. If we did that consistently, the shelves would become very thin indeed.”) Pwhipp, by the way, called The Selfish Gene “an important and very well-written book, whatever one thinks of Dawkins’ public persona or his outspoken atheism”.
Pwhipp was in the minority, however. Alan P was one re-reader who felt “underwhelmed” by The Selfish Gene. “The text is (as he admits himself but doesn’t change) sexist throughout. It’s not just the assumption of male pronouns for general statements, but there are some comments in the end notes and the text of the book itself that even for the eighties are questionable,” he wrote. “The tone is argumentative – sometimes I’m not clear that it isn’t argument for its own sake – but it’s definitely jarring. The endless footnotes contradicting the text are really difficult to follow. If the science has changed then the text of the book needs to change as well. So it may be that it was a masterly summary of the known science in its day – but now it’s a bad tempered, difficult to follow, mess.” Alan did enjoy the new chapter “Nice guys finish first”, added to later editions: “I was always of the opinion that genes don’t make ethics so it’s nice to have the idea that even if genetic determinism was a thing, that cooperation is a successful strategy in the wild.”
The Selfish Gene at 50: Why Dawkins’s evolution classic still holds up

When Richard Dawkins’s first blockbuster book was published half a century ago, few genes had ever been sequenced or studied in detail. Yet the book’s gene-centred view of evolution still has much to teach us in today’s genetic age
Dee55, meanwhile, first read The Selfish Gene back in the early 80s and found it “an absolute revelation” at the time. Going back to it was “interesting”, but, as a humanities graduate, Dee55 found “specific challenges in following some of the arguments”. “I enjoyed the Chapter 5 stuff on the ESS (evolutionary stable strategy) as a fun ride, but I think I need to reread it before continuing. I am very aware that I am just not in a position to assess RD’s ideas in the context of other evolutionary biology thinking,” Dee55 wrote. Rowan took a deeper dive into the book in a longer piece for New Scientist, speaking to biologists about its message and what still stands today. Taking into account developments in the field that have happened over the past 50 years, Rowan wrote that “all the evolutionary biologists I spoke to for this piece struggled to find major problems with The Selfish Gene”. There was one exception: the idea of the meme, which, despite its memetic proliferation today, “doesn’t hold up”, he was told. Overall, then, a thorny choice: this particular piece of popular science was notedly unpopular for the New Scientist Book Club. When you make a purchase via the links on this page, we receive a commission.]]> 2531275 The best new science-fiction books of June 2026 /article/2528164-the-best-new-science-fiction-books-of-june-2026/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:57 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2528164
A father mysteriously slips through time in Joseph Eckert’s The Traveler
Mikhail Rudenko / Alamy

Writing this as the UK swelters under an unprecedented May heatwave, perhaps it’s small wonder that so many science-fiction authors are currently imagining miserable versions of an overheated future in which their characters are struggling to survive. I’m intrigued by the sound of sci-fi legend M. John Harrison’s upcoming take on a dystopian future, but if post-apocalyptic hellscapes aren’t your thing, I’m also happy to report that there are other options for sci-fi fans this month. I’m already enjoying time-travel adventure The Traveler by Joseph Eckert. Next, I’m going to explore Isabel J. Kim’s sci-fi spin on immigration, Sublimation, as soon as I can get my hands on it. And then for a little light relief, I’m planning on lining up Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Green City Wars.

by M. John Harrison

I am excited about this book: M. John Harrison is a really classy writer, winner of all sorts of awards, and his latest novel sounds right up my street. It’s set in a future years after an obscure “crisis” changed everything, in a world where the seas are full of new creatures. Phillip, who makes a living collecting objects that wash up on the tideline from the Channel, discovers a creature that keeps changing…

The best new science fiction books of May 2026

New science fiction from big names including Ann Leckie, Alan Moore and Martha Wells are just some of the exciting crop of titles out this month

by Joseph Eckert

I started reading this over a weekend and it turned out to be exactly what I was in the mood for – a rip-roaring time-travel adventure with the love between a father and a son at its heart. It follows the story of Scott Treder, husband and father, who first “slips” on the way to work: one minute he’s in his car, the next he’s rolling down the road, his car gone – and it’s a day later. The slippages start at 7:52 am every morning and keep doubling in length until he’s hurtling through time, losing weeks, years, decades, as his son Lyle grows up before his eyes, and no one knows how to stop it. Lyle, though, is determined to catch the father who is leaving him behind.

by Isabel J. Kim

This sounds really intriguing from the Nebula award-winning Isabel J. Kim. The conceit is this: when you emigrate, you leave a literal version of yourself behind. You can keep in touch with your original “instance”, in the hope of one day reintegrating; Soyoung Rose Kang, however, left home at 10 and hasn’t spoken to her other “instances” again. Now she’s living in New York, but when her grandfather dies, her Korean instance says she needs to come home for the funeral.

Adrian Tchaikovsky: ‘I try and do interesting aliens’

As the science fiction author publishes the latest novel in his Children of Time series, Children of Strife, he talks to Alison Flood about mantis shrimp, the pleasures of sci-fi and why empathy is so important in his writing

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I’ve only just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s previous novel, March’s Children of Strife, and now sci-fi’s most prolific author has another book out. It does look fun, though – set in a solar-powered future, it sees humans living in luxury. It’s a luxury kept in place, however, by unseen “Little Helpers”: artificially enhanced animals who keep the green cities running and have one key rule: “do not bother the humans”. We follow freelance raccoon investigator Skotch, whose latest case is finding a fugitive mouse scientist – while also keeping that cardinal rule.

by Emily Paxman

More post-apocalyptic survival here, but in the form of cosy romance. In this version of the future, Kayla lives in the wasteland of the Canadian Pacific Northwest. When her sister April falls ill, they trek to Salt Spring Island, which still has a hospital, but are unable to access its medical care. A panicking Kayla makes a deal with an aspiring politician, Sid, to save her sister – she’ll marry him to get her treatment. But real feelings start to emerge in this arranged marriage.

Salt Spring Island – an apocalyptic setting for Emily Paxman
rgbstudio / Alamy

by Meg Elison

This novel sounds wild – but in a good way. Philip K. Dick award-winner Meg Elison imagines a world where some right-wing billionaires have decided to take control of the US by cloning the original Founding Fathers and raising them in secrecy, so they can restore the US to its “original glory” once they are adults. But then “Ben” (Franklin, I assume) discovers a smartphone in the “privy” of their isolated island plantation, and the young men decide to take their lives into their own hands.

by Amil, translated by Joheun Lee

The world of the future is (again) ravaged, and in Korea people escape their miserable real lives by using virtual reality headsets. High schooler Soop is bullied by her classmates because she is unable to access VR. She pins her hopes on meeting K-pop star Yichae, who is coming to film a music video at her school.

Read more

The 12 best science fiction books of 2025

by Cheong Ye, translated by Slin Jung

Schoolteacher Youngah lives her life according to everyone else’s rules but secretly hates it. So, she undertakes a four-week emotion-regulation programme. Once completed, she unleashes her unfiltered self on the world, throwing off the expectations that have always been imposed on her – and she loves it.

by Keely Jobe

In a small feminist community on an isolated mountaintop, Mila is struggling to keep things from falling apart, while nearby an orchid endling is about to die. When the women of the community mysteriously become pregnant, and Mila gives birth to the only boy, their ideals are put to the test.

by J.P. Lacrampe

Helper robot Cy isn’t delighted when he’s tasked with helping his owner’s 35-year-old son Grayson “get out of his funk”. But then Grayson discovers that his CEO sister, Charlotte, is planning to sell the family company to a tech conglomerate, and he decides to plot a corporate takeover. Cue a “mad-cap adventure”, which the publisher says is a “whimsically speculative ode to Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster”.

Mitch is stuck in a backwater moon base in The Disco At the End of the World
Peepo/Getty Images

by Nathan Tavares

It’s 1977 in an alternate US, one where the US launched its space program shortly after the second world war. Mitch joined the US Spaceguard because his lost love, Flynn, did; he’s been stuck in a backwater moon base ever since – until he’s dishonourably discharged and returned to the US. Then Flynn comes back, claiming to be the host for an emissary from a utopian alien civilization…

by Peter F. Hamilton

This is the sequel to Hamilton’s EXODUS: The Archimedes Engine, set in a far future where the human population has been reduced to little better than serfs by the Celestials. Can Finn and his allies finally throw off their shackles?

by Cristina LePort

This high-concept medical thriller sees cryogenically preserved scientist Peter and his wife Monica wake up two centuries into the future. The world they discover is dystopian, with the devastating “mitocancer” a global threat.

]]> 2528164 ‘The book is in the future, but everything is seeded from our present’ /article/2528120-the-book-is-in-the-future-but-everything-is-seeded-from-our-present/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:16 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2528120 2528120 Our verdict on Luminous by Silvia Park: a fascinating take on robots /article/2527824-our-verdict-on-luminous-by-silvia-park-a-fascinating-take-on-robots/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Wed, 27 May 2026 17:00:03 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2527824 Luminous book jacket and author Silvia Park
The New Scientist Book Club read Silvia Park’s Luminous in May
The New Scientist Book Club had quite a change of science-fictional pace in May, moving from the wilds of space in our April read, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, to a much closer-to-home future in Silvia Park’s Luminous. Like another of our reads this year, Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot, this imagines a world where robots are integrated into society – and explores how we might deal with this on many different levels: emotionally, spiritually, practically, sexually. Set in a reunified Korea, it’s a compelling blend of three storylines: a police procedural, in which detective Jun is out to discover what might have become of a robot girl who has gone missing; a ragtag bunch of kids on an adventure, in which Ruijie and her schoolmates find an abandoned robot boy in a scrapyard; and a tale of a dysfunctional family. Jun and his younger sister Morgan grew up with a third sibling, a robot who disappeared when they were young, fracturing their family. They’re still estranged today.
silvia park
Author Silvia Park: ‘No one is your enemy, not even death’

Silvia Park, author of the May read for the New Scientist Book Club, 'Luminous' on emotional artificial intelligence, our inevitable love for robots and coping with grief.
I found Luminous refreshing and thought-provoking. The various strands combine to create a sensitive exploration of what it means to love somebody and what it means to lose somebody. Park, who wrote us a great essay about how the novel started out as a children’s book but became something much darker, is a confident and elegant writer, and I can’t wait to read what they write next (they told me in our video chat – which covered everything from robot consciousness to Peter Pan – that it’s about man-eating mermaids, so that’s a definite yes from me!). Our book club members found different things to enjoy about Luminous. For TheGosia, it was Park’s writing about disability. “I’m loving it! Really good characters and I’m immediately gripped. What jumped out at me so far was bionic modification of humans portrayed in a positive way,” TheGosia wrote on our . “Super interesting as given the opportunity I would happily abandon most of my very broken meat suit for a more functional, bionic one. But often it’s written through the lens of what you’d lose.” Exoi was also a fan. “I find it densely packed with so many thought-provoking ideas and stances on robotics and what it means to be a valued entity on our planet. There seem to be more ideas and themes in this book than some authors use in a lifetime, making it intelligent and nuanced. I’m loving it so far.” So was Karen Warren. “Of course this is only one version of the future, but I could see the seeds of this scenario in our current society. And it got me thinking about how humans have always anthropomorphised inanimate objects (we give names to our cars, and children play games with teddy bears) – it shows how desperate we are for connection,” she wrote. “I found this quote from the author: ‘How do we define what is real? So many of us spend most of our hours either asleep – unconscious or dreaming – or locked in a world that exists on a tiny screen. How can we say, then, that we live in reality’, which I think sums up much of the book.”
Read an extract from Luminous by Silvia Park

In this extract from Luminous, the May read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet a mysterious robot discovered in a salvage yard in Seoul, in a future reunified Korea
Alan_P was less taken with this latest read. “Just finished Luminous – and possibly I didn’t pay enough attention, but when enough people have read it so it’s not a spoiler, someone is going to have to explain to me what was going on,” he pleaded on . “It’s beautifully realised, but as I mentioned I’ve got no idea what the ending was all about. And why were the kids so keen to hand around that damaged robot? … Why did years of therapy not help either brother or sister with their father issues?” Matthew was also a little lukewarm. “I found it slow going and really only finished it because I was two thirds of the way through waiting for something happen. Things happen sure, but they seem to be disconnected events rather than plot. Any plot twists and turns are signalled well beforehand.” Interestingly, Matthew did find the robot identities in Luminous “better realised than in Annie Bot, where Annie was too human” – but said that Iain M. Banks’s Culture universe has “the best robots”. Well, you can’t compete with a Mind. Having read Banks’s 1988 novel The Player of Games with the book club back in December, I’m certainly finding it fascinating to compare his ideas with our current anxiety about artificial intelligence and how it is being reflected in our fiction, from Annie Bot to Luminous.]]> 2527824 The best new science fiction books of May 2026 /article/2524887-the-best-new-science-fiction-books-of-may-2026/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:43 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2524887
Alexander Skarsgård in Murderbot, adapted from Martha Wells’s novels
Steve Wilkie / Apple TV+

Some months, I end up scraping the bottom of the barrel to find enough interesting science fiction to tell you about. This May that wasn’t a problem – there’s tons to look forward to, whether you’re after time-travelling romance from Matt Haig (yes please), extinction events in London from Temi Oh (I’ve already read this and it’s a lot of fun), the latest Murderbot novel (hurrah) or a generation-ship story that comes garlanded with praise. There are also new titles from big names Ann Leckie and Alan Moore. If that’s not enough, then you can join the New Scientist Book Club here, and our lively Discord channel , where we’re discussing all things sci-fi and popular science.

by Martha Wells

I got into the Murderbot books a few years back, when we read the first in the series, All Systems Red, with the New Scientist Book Club. I’m a proper fan now, including of the new television series starring Alexander Skarsgård as the eponymous cyborg security unit, so I’m delighted the eighth in the series is out this month, in which Murderbot volunteers to run a rescue mission only to discover it means spending time with some human children…

LEEDS, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 3: Portrait of British fantasy and science fiction author Adrian Tchaikovsky, photographed at the Central Library in Leeds on February 3, 2017. (Photo by Joby Sessions/SFX Magazine/Future via Getty Images)
The best new science fiction books of 2026

On the horizon for this year are Ann Leckie's latest, Neil Jordan's debut and more from Adrian Tchaikovsky. Exciting times, says our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson

by Mahmud El Sayed

There’s nothing better than a good generation-ship story and this one, by the winner of the 2023 Future Worlds Prize, sounds really exciting. Dubbed “Arabfuturism” by its publisher Gollancz, it takes place on the city ship Safina, which is 200 years into its trip from Earth to a new habitable world. The crew keep the ship going while protecting their “ancestors” from Earth in cryostasis, but, as is often the case on these ships, they’re starting to ask questions about why they should be working for people from a world they don’t remember. Then the blackouts start, and a reckoning is on the horizon. Sci-fi author and New Scientist columnist Annalee Newitz called it “utterly original, full of thrilling plot twists, deeply wise and politically nuanced”. It’s top of my list this May.

Read more

The best new science-fiction books of April 2026

by Portia Elan

Across 600 years and five lives, this story opens in 1983 as Becks is left a half-finished computer game by her late programmer uncle. The game will outlast her by centuries, and shape the lives of a scientist, an astronaut and a pirate captain, connecting them across time and space. It’s hotly tipped by The Ministry of Time author Kaliane Bradley (another New Scientist Book Club author), who called it “a work of joyous and serious invention”.

by Alan Moore

This is the sequel to the mighty Alan Moore’s time-travelling epic The Great When. It continues the story of Dennis Knuckleyard as he tries to forget about the shadow version of London he discovered – fortunately for us readers, without much success.

The great Alan Moore has a new novel out this month
Kazam Media/Shutterstock

by Matt Haig

This time-travel story is a follow-up to Haig’s bestselling The Midnight Library, telling the story of Wilbur, who threw away the promise of a future with the love of his life, Maggie, years earlier. Then a train arrives when he is on the brink of death – a train that can take him back in time to relive his most important moments.

Radiant Star by Ann Leckie is out in May
Will Ireland/SFX Magazine/Future via Getty Images

by Ann Leckie

This is a standalone science fiction novel set in Leck’s Imperial Radch universe, and it comes recommended by our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson, a big Leckie fan. Taking place on a planet that has lost its star and where the population is forced to live underground, it follows the fallout when the rulers of Radch space decide to annex this world. Check out Emily’s review for more.

by Temi Oh

I enjoyed this story of an extinction-level event from Temi Oh, author of Do You Dream of Terra-Two? It’s told through the eyes of the Mintons, an ordinary London family, each of them troubled in different ways. For example, father Marcus has lost his job and become a prepper, convinced (correctly, as it turns out) that doomsday is on the horizon, while daughter Briar is hunting for a missing classmate when she is drawn into the world of a UFO cult. There are the dramatic scenes you’d expect from the cataclysm that hits Earth (no spoilers here), and the Mintons’ attempts to find each other again in a devastated London are evocatively recounted by Oh.

Read more

The best new science fiction books of February 2026

Absence by Andrew Dana Hudson

This intriguing-sounding debut novel is set in a world beset by an epidemic of human vanishing, in which people keep disappearing into thin air. This is known as Spontaneous Human Absence, and it has (unsurprisingly) sent the world’s population into paroxysms of hopelessness. Harvey Ellis, who works for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, is given an unexpected assignment: to investigate the claims of a woman long thought to be Absent, who says she has been to the other side and back.

by Nicholas Binge

This piece of tech-themed horror sounds pleasingly disturbing. It tells of Joe Rice, who takes a new job as an admin assistant at the Ponos corporation. But things seem deeply wrong at the vast Canary Wharf office, where his work is monitored by an AI wellness chatbot that tracks his every move and demands total honesty.

Ray Nayler’s new novel features some surprisingly intelligent corvids
Jannik Wissemann/Alamy

by Ray Nayler

The award-winning sci-fi ܳٳǰ’s speculative novel is set in 1941, as four teenagers are driven into the primeval Lithuanian forest in winter. They are aided by a flock of intelligent crows, who have a secret of their own and are no ordinary corvids.

by Neal Asher

This is the second in Asher’s Time’s Shadow trilogy, following Dark Diamond. This slice of military space opera sees the return of the malevolent AI Straeger, out to plunge the galaxy into war.

by Fonda Lee

Legendary samurai Isako is offered one final mission, which will see her travelling to a merciless planet where the elite can extend life or end it, and where death is always just around the corner.

]]> 2524887 Our verdict on Red Mars: Mostly great, with a few quibbles /article/2524419-our-verdict-on-red-mars-mostly-great-with-a-few-quibbles/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:00:46 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2524419
What did the New Scientist Book Club think of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars?
I set the New Scientist Book Club something of a challenge in April: make your way through the 600-plus pages of Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson’s doorstopper of a novel, in just 30 days, and then tell us what you thought of it on our lively new channel (and do please show your working). I’ll admit to some self-interest here: I think of Red Mars as one of my all-time favourite books, but I haven’t read it for years. So, when reviewer George Bass wrote me a great piece about how this story of the first 100 astronauts and scientists to live on Mars opens in 2026, I jumped at a reason to revisit it with our community of 25,000 avid readers. I wasn’t disappointed. Robinson brings the vast landscapes and alien beauty of Mars to life with great skill, and I enjoyed the way the story moves between viewpoints. Sometimes we hear from Ann, who is desperate to ensure that this ancient world isn’t interfered with by humans (she’s a “Red”). Sometimes we look in on Sax, who is out to terraform Mars as quickly as he can (he’s a “Green”). I particularly enjoyed the perspective of the practical and no-nonsense engineer Nadia, but I did find myself a little irritated with the drawn-out love triangle of John, Frank and Maya, all of whom very much suffer from Main Character Syndrome.
Kim Stanley Robinson and Red Mars book
Author Kim Stanley Robinson revisits his vision of life on Mars

As our book club revisits Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on imagining a 2026 Mars mission — and how today’s colonisation plans and climate realities measure up.
Some book club members were also rereading Red Mars, others were coming to it for the first time and yet another group had had it on their shelves for a while and were delighted to have a prompt to finally get round to reading it. First-time reader DavidC was instantly gripped: “Even on the very first page there was something about the phrase ‘But all of that happened in mineral unconsciousness’ I found really captivating,” he wrote on Discord. “It tells me I’m in good hands for the next 600 pages.” TheGosia wasn’t convinced by the dramatic opening, however, in which a key character is murdered. “I’m not loving the concept of spoiling the end with the first chapter? I think I would have preferred not to know where all this is going. Unless it’s not the end but the middle? Still, not convinced so far…” she wrote. Members, including me, were quick to reassure her, and she kept going. I actually asked Robinson about his decision to start the book this way, when I chatted with him in our video interview. “It’s a flash forward, which I think was a good trick,” he told me. “We see Frank arrange the murder of John. We don’t know why. He’s obviously wound-up, intense, angry. We still don’t know why, but we know that John’s died. And then we go back to the beginning of the story. Building a town [on Mars] is not inherently dramatic. But if in that building of the town, you know that someone’s going to end up so angry at the end of it that they are going to arrange the murder of one of their best friends, you therefore see every little incident of building the town as having a fraught significance that you know about, but nobody else knows about.” Robinson reread the novel himself relatively recently, and found he was still pleased with how it turned out. “I had forgotten enough that it was a little fresh, and it seemed to me it held up pretty well,” he said – acknowledging that there are “hilarious gaps in my knowledge of the year 2026 and after”. He delved further into this in an essay for the book club in which he also lambasted current “fatuous” plans to colonise Mars, something he very much also got into in our interview. “These people aren’t thinking it through, the ones who say, like [Elon] Musk, ‘Oh, well we need to colonise Mars in order save Earth.’ That’s crap.”
As for our team of readers, there was something of a mixed response, with many, like me, admiring Robinson’s nature writing about Mars: the planet is probably the book’s main character, I’d say. But quite a few readers didn’t warm so much to Robinson’s cast of characters.
Read an extract from Kim Stanley Robinson’s sci-fi classic Red Mars

This is the opening of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, the New Scientist Book Club read for April, as humans come to the planet to settle it
“I think it was amazing in a lot of ways: the nature descriptions, the general scope, how well researched it was; I loved the scenes of vast destruction. It also has interesting ideas about running society. But ultimately I couldn’t really connect with any of the characters and a lot of the events didn’t follow any logic for me,” said TheGosia. Ani Greenwood made it to the end, but then had to dive straight into a relationship drama as a palate cleanser. “I needed a relationships infusion after Red Mars, where the characters, though in themselves diverse, did not feel that complex to me and where the dynamic of the book was more idea oriented,” she wrote. “The writing was so good, I really mourned my inability at the moment to give his story my heart. I would love to have lingered more over the nature descriptions.” There were also some great discussions about how quickly things break down on Mars – would the planners on Earth not have chosen their 100 astronauts more wisely, to have included fewer revolutionaries? “I started in expecting/hoping for competence porn—a story focused on a team of scientists and engineers overcoming life-threatening challenges in an unforgiving, harsh environment—and instead got a soap opera mix of human politics, greed, callousness, and lack of foresight. The lack of foresight in particular was what bothered me most,” said Barbara Howe. “I did like the descriptions of the Martian landscape and some sections—most of Part 7, for example—were pretty compelling reading, but the love triangle was annoying, and the only characters I really found interesting were Nadia, Arkady [a Russian engineer, revolutionary and anarchist], and—somewhat surprisingly, and late in the book—Ann.” Overall, I’d say members enjoyed reading (or rereading) and dissecting this classic of science fiction; they certainly had plenty to say about it! As for me, I was pleased to discover Red Mars remains one of my all-time favourites. Sign up here to join the New Scientist Book Club, and join the discussion on .]]> 2524419 Startling images show how fake news isn’t just a 21st century issue /article/2522672-startling-images-show-how-fake-news-isnt-just-a-21st-century-issue/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:00:13 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2522672
The largest ear of corn grown, W.H. Martin (photografer), The North American Post Card Co. (publisher), 1908. Purchase 2018
“The largest ear of corn grown”, photographed by W.H. Martin and published by The North American Post Card Co. in 1908
Rijksmuseum

Rijksmuseum

Remember that image of the late Pope Francis from 2023, looking hip in a huge, white puffer jacket? The photo went viral before it emerged that it had been generated by AI tool Midjourney. Fake images and videos flood the internet these days, but a new exhibition explores how people have been manipulating photographs almost since the medium was invented.

Take this startling image of a huge ear of corn (above). It was taken – or perhaps created is a better word – by W. H. Martin in 1908 as part of a series of postcards depicting outlandishly sized produce or livestock. Martin his scene, cutting and pasting the shots together before re-photographing the new image.

His piece is part of the exhibition , on until 25 May at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Below is a photomontage postcard dating to before 1908, a vision of a future New York where cars can fly. The colours were later in the printing process and the outlines slightly retouched, giving it the air of a drawing, although it is a photo.

Opnamedatum: 2025-12-11 Car flying over Mulberry Bend Park, New York, Theodor Eismann (publisher), before 1908. Purchase 2025
“Car flying over Mulberry Bend Park, New York”, published by Theodor Eismann before 1908
Rijksmuseum

According to the Rijksmuseum, photographers started cutting up and pasting images together as early as 1860. The exhibition traces the development of image manipulation from then up until the second world war.

Below is a disturbing image of a wheelbarrow containing a huge head, dated to between 1900 and 1910.

Photomontage of a man pushing a wheelbarrow containing a head, anonymous, c.1900???c.1910.
Photomontage by an unknown creator, made between 1900 and 1910
Rijksmuseum

And finally, the era’s delight in gargantuan farm produce rears its head again in a 1908 postcard in which geese dwarfing their human owners are herded to market.

Taking our Geese to market, Martin Post Card Company, 1908. Purchase 2019
Taking our Geese to market”, published by Martin Post Card Company in 1908
Rijksmuseum

]]> 2522672 The best new science-fiction books of April 2026 /article/2521638-the-best-new-science-fiction-books-of-april-2026/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:00:21 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2521638
Thriller Mars One by Charlotte Robinson is out this month
Getty Images/iStockphoto
I am currently reading the by Kim Stanley Robinson with the New Scientist Book Club (it’s our April read). It’s fantastic, so any other trips to the Red Planet are very welcome from my perspective, and I’m looking forward to Charlotte Robinson’s thriller Mars One. Elsewhere in this month’s science fiction, there’s horror in space from S. A. Barnes, some resurrected Neanderthals from Douglas Preston and his daughter Aletheia Preston, and ghosts in AI-generated videos from Max Lury. Something for all tastes, I’d say.

by Charlotte Robinson

This near-future space-thriller follows a one-way mission to Mars, as well as the disappearance of a programmer in Hong Kong, who leaves nothing behind but a cryptic warning. As the Argo spaceship heads towards Mars, the crew realise they are being sabotaged. How are the two storylines linked? Mars One’s publisher is comparing this to two of my favourite books: Andy Weir’s The Martian and Terry Hayes’s spy thriller I Am Pilgrim. I’m hoping it lives up to the hype, as a combination of those two novels would be a truly excellent read.
LEEDS, UNITED KINGDOM - FEBRUARY 3: Portrait of British fantasy and science fiction author Adrian Tchaikovsky, photographed at the Central Library in Leeds on February 3, 2017. (Photo by Joby Sessions/SFX Magazine/Future via Getty Images)
The best new science fiction books of 2026

On the horizon for this year are Ann Leckie's latest, Neil Jordan's debut and more from Adrian Tchaikovsky. Exciting times, says our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson

by S. A. Barnes

Claire and her beacon-repair crew pick up a strange distress signal and decide to investigate. They discover a luxury space-liner that vanished on its first tour of the solar system, 20 years ago – and they also discover that something isn’t right on board the Aurora, with whispers in the dark and words scrawled in blood on the walls. Horror in space? That’s my cup of tea.

by Samantha Mills

This speculative short-story collection moves from sci-fi to fantasy to literary fiction, including tales of first contact, a time-travelling fisherwoman, and a new consciousness out to see the wonders of the universe. It also features Mills’s story Rabbit Test, which won the Nebula, Locus and Sturgeon awards.
A new title in George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series is out in April
Album / Alamy Stock Photo

edited by George R. R. Martin

This is a collection of stories set in the Game of Thrones ܳٳǰ’s Wild Cards universe, in which the world has been ravaged by an alien virus with random effects: you die, you receive superpowers or you become strangely mutated. With writers including Cherie Priest and Walter Jon Williams, these particular tales follow Croyd Crenson as he finds himself split into six different incarnations.

by Douglas Preston and Aletheia Preston

It was very silly, but I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed Preston’s previous novel Extinction, a Jurassic Park-ish thriller in which various long-extinct creatures were brought back to life to frolic in a wildlife park. In this sequel, written with his daughter, there’s even more going on: an alien artefact that “UFO researchers believe will change the world”, a fanatical secret society, and some resurrected Neanderthals from the last book who aren’t too keen on Homo sapiens… I expect I’ll read it.
An artist’s imagining of Neanderthals – resurrected versions of which feature in the sci-fi novel Paradox, out this month
Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

by James S. A. Corey

This is the second in the Captive’s War series from the author of The Expanse. It’s a space opera, in which humanity is fighting for its survival against the monstrous Carryx empire. We follow the story of human captive Dafyd Alkhor, and of the Swarm, an agent of the Carryx’s enemy that is out to bring down the empire.

by Albertine Clarke

I’m intrigued by the sound of this novel, in which a sci-fi conceit is used to tell a tale of loneliness. The solitary Ada lives in London. When she meets Atticus, she feels a connection between them – but her estrangement from the rest of the world begins to widen, and eventually her attachment to both the world and to her body totally fails, and Ada finds herself in a new artificial environment, The Facility. Has it really been created and designed just for her?

by Sophie Mackintosh

I really loved Mackintosh’s previous novel The Water Cure, a sinister fable set on an island surrounded by water that might or might not have been poisonous. It verged on sci-fi, even if it didn’t quite arrive there, and it sounds to me like Permanence might do a similar thing. This new story follows Clara and Francis, who have been having a secret affair, carried out in hotel rooms – until they awake in a bedroom they don’t recognise. They discover they are in a city populated only by their fellow adulterers, where they can live openly as a couple – but contact with the real world is impossible.
Milde must choose between public execution or journeying into a black hole, in the novel Event Horizon
Buradaki / Alamy Stock Photo

by Balsam Karam, translated by Saskia Vogel

Published by literary independent press Fitzcarraldo, which has a few Nobel prizewinners up its sleeve, this is the story of 17-year-old Milde, who revolts against the injustices of a government that banishes mothers and daughters from society. After she is imprisoned and tortured, she is given the choice of a public execution, or joining an experimental mission that will send her into space, and into a black hole known as the Mass.

by Allen Stroud

This is a standalone story set in the universe of Stroud’s The Fractal series, opening in 2121 AD, three years after the first Mars conflict. As the colony struggles to recover, vigilante turned revolutionary Magnus Sirocco is given a cause, Peter Iskander is leading a religious mission and Commodore Ellisa Shann is drawn into a deadly duel when a ship is stolen.
The best new science fiction books of March 2026

The latest in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series is out this month, along with a speculative retelling of Moby-Dick and a forgotten classic from 1936

by Max Lury

I’m intrigued by the sound of this novel, in which Harlow, looking for her lost friend Annie, discovers fragments of the dead in AI-generated videos, while Kieran, also on Annie’s trail, finds a community looking for ghosts that have gone missing. Its publisher promises that it will explore what new forms haunting might take, as new technologies emerge. It might not be straightforward sci-fi, but it does sound interesting.

by Dmitry Glukhovsky

This is the final novel in the Metro trilogy, which inspired the Metro computer games. It takes place 20 years after world war three wiped out most of humanity, with the only survivors those who made it into Moscow’s subway system. Artyom is relentlessly trying to lead his people back out into the light and is searching for signs of life on the surface.

by Sylvain Neuvel

This first-contact story sees five people in the small city of Marquette, Michigan, discover that their minds are merging, as “something larger and stranger than they could ever have imagined” begins.]]> 2521638 Our verdict on Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt: An inspiring call to action /article/2520640-our-verdict-on-art-cure-by-daisy-fancourt-an-inspiring-call-to-action/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=currents&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:00:46 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=2520640 2520640