The best new sci-fi novels this month featuring Cory Doctorow and Nnedi Okarofor

If you’re coming out of your post-holiday stupor in dire need of fresh horizons and new worlds to explore, I’ve got some great new sci-fi on your bedside table. We’ve got some big names in the mix – Nnedi Okorafor and Cory Doctorow – and a real mix of genres, from literary adventures with Eiren Caffall and Erika Swyler to good old space opera and even some romance.

And if you don’t have time to fit a whole novel into your busy January schedule, why not join ours A selection of the best science fiction stories everchosen for you The New Scientist the workers

tip This new novel from our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson is from the author of the excellent Christmas story, As Be Careful. Abracadabra. Sci-fi author Zelu decides to write a novel about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. But as he writes, the boundaries between the emerging story and reality begin to blur…

Emily also warned us to look at this in 2025 and it really is fantastic. It is set in a world where the glaciers have melted and the protagonists of the story have been left behind in a flooded New York City, living on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. Their task? To preserve exhibits and artefacts. Caffall was inspired to write his story by curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect the collections from war.

Another tip from Emily follows a bioprosthetic surgeon and his personal AI in a city where, over generations, an elite class has developed from the descendants of those who sacrificed the most to create humanity’s last stronghold. The city is run by an artificial intelligence that rewards sacrifice, but when a brutal murder occurs, the AI ​​erases the event from its data.

This eco-thriller has two parallel versions of its world. In one, Robyn’s father has suddenly died and a strange forest fire is threatening the town of Destino, California. In the other, Robyn wakes up to find that her father is still alive and there is no sign of the fire. But he knows that in the first world, his own, it is still expanding rapidly and he needs to find answers…

It’s the latest in Doctorow’s Martin Hench series, about the adventures of a forensic accountant. Here, it’s 1986, and Hench has been hired by a Silicon Valley start-up, Fidelity Computing, to investigate former employees – all brilliant young women – who have launched a competitor. He quickly switches sides after becoming more sympathetic to the group he’s investigating. But do they realize the depth of the evil they are up against?

Aerth Author: Deborah Tomkins

This sci-fi novel follows Magnus, who decides to leave his planet, Aerth, as it heads into an ice age and a strange virus infects the population. He becomes an astronaut and travels to the newly discovered planet Urth, but it’s hot and crowded, and there seems to be no way home again.

Space Oddity Author: Catherine M. Valente

This is the sequel to the one named by Hugo Space Opera It sees the return of the Metagalactic Grand Prix, a mix of gladiator tournament, beauty pageant, extravagant concerts and continuation of past wars. Decibel Jones and Absolute Zero finished 10th in the last competition and are preparing for a new one: the fate of Earth will once again be threatened.

That sounds great: set on a far-future, climate-altered Earth, the novel follows three interconnected stories. There is a young boy and his sisters who wake up to find themselves alone in an abandoned fishing village and set off across the desert to find their people. There is also their mother, who has been captured by the exterminators and, separately, a young scholar at the center of power who must decide who to help.

I’ve yet to read it, so I can’t be sure how much sci-fi is in it, but it’s billed as “a horror story and a meditation on end-of-the-world love,” so I’m hoping it’ll be shady. Because post-apocalyptic sounds great. It’s set in an “unknown place and time” where two older sisters live a secluded life in a walled garden, until an unnamed boy is discovered hiding in their retreat and the outside world begins to intrude.

In this installment of filmmaker Josh Mendoza’s space opera, a detective is charged with murder. As he tries to clear his name, he finds himself hunted by “a cabal of interdimensional invaders.”

A slice of sci-fi romance to end January? I don’t mind if I do. It follows romance writer Jenni, who returns to her childhood beach house where she spent summers, and where her best friend Timmy disappeared. Today, 30 years later, a boy emerges from the sea. His name is Timmy, he says; he’s out to save the world. And there are terrors in the deep…