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The best science fiction books out in 2023

CERN-inspired stories, a feminist retelling of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and a new deep future from Annalee Newitz: sci-fi fans have a lot to look forward to in 2023
A young boy walks across dusty arid desert land at sunset. Location: Djenne ( Djenn?? ), Mopti, Mali, Africa
In The Lies of the Ajungo, a boy journeys into the desert to save his mother
Timothy Allen/The Image Bank/Getty Images, NASA

Annalee Newitz (Tor Books)

This deep future from New Scientist columnist Annalee Newitz stars a Lone Ranger type and her partner, a telepathic moose. The mission: to keep interlopers off a planet under construction. Things go awry.

Edited by Rob Appleby and Connie Potter (Comma Press)

Authors worked with particle physicists at the CERN lab near Geneva, Switzerland, on this anthology, in which Stephen Baxter and Margaret Drabble’s thought-provoking stories do more than glorify colliders.

Ian McDonald (Gollancz)

Super-powered people called Arcmages wield electricity in this fantasy sci-fi mix. It has time travel, a love story, the lot.

Sandra Newman (Granta)

Newman was picked by the Orwell estate to write a feminist retelling of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, seen through the eyes of Winston Smith’s lover, Julia Worthing.

Veronica Roth (Tor Books)

A reimagining of Sophocles’s Greek tragedy Antigone is set in a distant future where humans give birth to DNA surrogates. A child born naturally is said to have no soul. The action ends up surprisingly close to the source material.

Martin MacInnes (Atlantic)

Strange patterns in the ocean are among related phenomena from across the world that link up to suggest something beyond human understanding. This is an epic novel about our beginnings and endings.

Moses Ose Utomi (Tordotcom)

This Grimm’s fable by way of West African lore is a must-read, as a boy journeys into the desert to save his mother.

Emily Tesh (Tordotcom)

Fans of military femme sci-fi and of queer space opera, take note. This is a book about how to pry your mind out of a fascist upbringing, and so much more.

Mary Gentle (Gollancz)

A NASA scientist has trained all her life to deal with near-Earth objects, but when one arrives, it isn’t what anyone expected.

Tlotlo Tsamaase (Erewhon)

In a future Botswana, citizens are tracked by implants, creating an autocracy and domestic coercion. Folklore and ghosts are techno-futuristically mixed.

Sally Adee is New Scientist’s sci-fi columnist

Topics: Books / Culture / New Scientist Book Club / Sci fi