Science fiction news, articles and features | New Scientist

The 4 best science-fiction shows of 2026 so far

Bethan Ackerley — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:00:00 +0000

The first six months of 2026 have seen bright threads in sci- fi series including Fallout and Paradise. But for pure gold, advises TV columnist Bethan Ackerley, try Star City

The 4 must-watch science-fiction films of the year so far

Bethan Ackerley — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:00:52 +0000

The first six months of 2026 have produced four stand-out sci-fi movies – and they all have one thing in common, says Bethan Ackerley

The best new science-fiction novels published in July 2026

Alison Flood — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:00:48 +0000

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.

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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Read an extract from Slow Gods by Claire North

Claire North — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:30:47 +0000

Slow Gods by Claire North is the New Scientist Book Club’s read for July

This is the story of the supernova event known as Lhonoja. By the end of it, several planets will have burned, a couple of civilisations will have fallen, and I will have spoken to an entity some consider a god, and whose theological status will remain in question throughout. Before then, I must explain how I came to be, and for that, I must take you back several centuries, to Glastya Row. Glastya Row started as a landing strip on the planet Tu-mdo. Most urban establishments on most colonised worlds begin this way. Tu-mdo had been a prime terraforming candidate – comfortable gravity, good magnetic shield, not too hot, not too cold, not tidally locked and already possessed of a moon which, once water was thawed out in sufficient volume, would serve to stir the great big mixing bowl of Tu-mdo’s freshly churning oceans. The first colonists didn’t even need to spend five centuries in arcologies waiting for atmospheric conditions to settle, but were out and breathing without aid within a couple of pioneering generations. Two millennia later, Glastya Row had been transformed from pioneer’s outpost to merely another borough of some few million in the great city of Heom, a middling hub of profit and endeavour within the interplanetary-spanning United Social Venture. They say you can tell a lot about a Venture based on how its employees name their children. In Antekeda, the Venture that ran my city, these were the most common middle names given to children at birth: Chairman – 15 per cent Entrepreneur – 10 per cent Director – 9 per cent Abundant – 5 per cent Diligent – 4 per cent In Theymann, a Venture specialising in deep space habitation, the distribution skewed towards Pioneers and Engineers, while in Halsect there was an almost sentimental emphasis on children called “Aspiring”. My parents had all the ambition you might expect of residents of Glastya Row, combined with a grim realism. Thus when I was born, my name was registered as Mawukana “Respected” na-Vdnaze. I might never achieve dazzling heights or have great Shine, but dammit, my neighbours would at least know that I was respectable. It would be fair to say that things went downhill from there.

Deep-space sci-fi novel is delightful, profound and not to be missed

A planet is about to be destroyed by the collapse of a binary star system in Slow Gods, Claire North’s first venture into classic science fiction. Read it! says Emily H. Wilson

I am told that I cried an unhallowed amount when I was born, though no one seems able to clarify what “unhallowed” means. I imagine my scream rose a little in volume as they implanted my Chint in the top of my plump left bicep, already embedded with the debts I had accrued to the Venture that ran the hospital that sheltered me – 400 Glint for a standard birth, plus another 1,873 Glint for basic costs such as bedding, vaccinations, postnatal checkups, vitamin shots, etc. . . . Thus, before I was placed upon my mother’s breast, I was marked with the overriding feature of life on Glastya Row – the debt I owed. As befits two individuals who named their child “Respected”, my parents were not irresponsible. They had carefully saved for this moment, and were between them able to bring my initial debt down to a mere 700 Glint, and keep on top of the 1.5 per cent child-rate interest payments my existence accrued. Moreover, to welcome me into the world, Antekeda gifted me with fifty shares, my ownership marking me as a citizen of the Venture. By the time I turned fifteen and sat my assignment exams, those shares were worth nearly 600 Glint – though my educational and civic debts were well in excess of 92,000. This system, we were taught, was about fairness. We were pioneers and our world was a place of scarcity, hardship and struggle. Everything the Venture gave us – the air we breathed, the roads we walked down, the schools we learned in – had been sweated for, bled for, and our debts were a marker of the needful labour we would give back in return. All are born equal, and by their labours shall they rise. This philosophy was the underlying constitution of the United Social Venture. Both it and the more anthropologically engaging qualities of social and economic status that arose from it were known as Shine. We were not a high-Shine family. My parents ran a small restaurant that served cold-broth dumplings to hot middle Managers too tired and busy to cook. They did their best to improve their Shine, constantly cooing over difficult, well-dressed customers and putting themselves forward to run catering events in Shiny houses or at Shiny events, but nothing could really wipe the smell of Glastya Row off their grease-stained aprons and soap-scoured fingers. Every six months, an Antekeda representative would come by and offer them another course or long-distance learning diploma in business growth and radical enterprise, and sometimes my mother, always the more energetic of the two, would sign up and do her coursework and pay her fees, and talk at the table about how this was it. This was the change we needed to get out, move up. It never came to anything. During my “cute” years, which I was told were seven to eleven years old, I worked as a waiter in the shop in the hope someone would give me that most wondrous of miracles, a “tip” for my services. By the time I was twelve, you could see the shape of the adult I was going to be. My father’s thick, straight black hair was overgrown around my mother’s sunset-through-smog face. I was always a little short, with green-grey eyes that narrowed to almost impossible lines when I squinted in confusion (as I did a lot) and pale lips that didn’t smile enough, or smiled wrong, or just didn’t quite get the smiling business right, whenever I tried to move them. “Smile with your eyes,” my mother commanded, during one of her we-shall-advance phases. So I stood in front of the mirror in the grubby upstairs bathroom and squeezed my eyelids tight and waggled my eyebrows and tried to inventory every tiny muscle about my growing grubby dishcloth of a face, until I could at least achieve something that didn’t seem to upset people too badly. Despite, or perhaps owing to, these efforts, I was relegated to the back of the kitchen so that my mother could stay out front, charming and occasionally bamboozling the customers. By the time I was fourteen and my schooling was getting unfeasibly expensive, it was already apparent that I would not have a Shiny life. Most of my classmates were starting to drop out into the menial labour that was the heart of every Venture, and those who remained were preparing for adulthood with an endless dance of alliances, enmities, petty acts of cruelty and theft, out-daring each other in who could game the system. Bullies thrived – so long as they were not caught. Being caught was far worse a sin than being a thief, a liar or simply cruel. Many economists, observing the Shine, have marvelled at the low levels of educational obtainment common across its population. The circular economies of most other worlds, powered by the sunlight or atomic reactors and fed by agricultural systems whose architects can sit in their pantries dispatching drones to the harvest, consider education not merely of primary importance to the success of their systems, but as frankly the most interesting thing the population can do with their expansive time. However, education breeds curiosity. And curiosity is one of the very first qualities that the leaders of the Shine seek to eliminate from the population. This is an extract from by Claire North (Orbit), the New Scientist Book Club’s pick for July. Sign up for the Book Club here, and join the discussion on Discord . When you make a purchase via the links on this page, we receive a commission.

Why I started my sci-fi novel with a world-ending supernova

Claire North — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:30:05 +0000

A supernova threatens a civilisation in Claire North’s Slow Gods

Shutterstock/Martin Capek

When I decided to write a space opera, I wanted to start with a supernova. There is no force in the universe like it, either in scale or destructive power – but though it is irrefutably dramatic, it’s also something you can see coming. As a writer, I find this fascinating. What does it mean to look into the heavens and know the exact date when a star will die and with it, your world? What choices do you make, and what price would you pay to save yourself – or your civilisation?

This is the story of Slow Gods.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you are one of these astronomers, watching the stars that will soon destroy your world. For millennia, you’ve known the supernova is coming, and for millennia your people have ignored it. It’s a difficult sell: “Let’s fundamentally transform our entire society to save the lives of billions of people… in about 500 years’ time.” Everyone agrees in a “rhubarb-rhubarb” sort of way that fine, yes, this is a good idea. For someone else. Later.

Well shucks. Suddenly millennia became centuries, became decades. Time is running out. Perhaps you are looking at your newborn grandchild when you realise: you know how, and when, this babe will die. Perhaps they suffocate as the oceans boil, burn alive as the atmosphere ignites or simply die from radiation sickness, skin and organs slowly liquefying. All the incremental changes you made down the years – a distant colony here, a bit of a space elevator there? Not enough. It’s time for your entire civilisation to re-tool around the grim but inescapable premise of saving what you can in the time that remains.

Deep-space sci-fi novel is delightful, profound and not to be missed

A planet is about to be destroyed by the collapse of a binary star system in Slow Gods, Claire North’s first venture into classic science fiction. Read it! says Emily H. Wilson

Some hasty maths ensues. You’ve got a century to rescue a population of 5 billion before your planet burns. You build space elevators and vast motherships to carry people across the stars, and at the height of the project can evacuate almost 50 million people a year. (You are going to ignore the perpetual danger of the things lurking in the monstrous dark, infesting the crew with madness, playing tricks with biology or simply gobbling a ship whole. Such creatures defy computation, after all.)

In 100 years you can maybe, in a pinch, get everyone off-planet – but of course it’s never that simple. Children are still being born, the population renewing itself faster than you can evacuate. Perhaps you try to limit population growth? But no – a childless century is as sure a death for your civilisation as fire itself. Life must continue, even if you know that for every child saved, another will die when the planet burns.

Perhaps you are selective about who’s evacuated, and in what order. Do you prioritise the educated, the most fertile, the famous? And by implication, are you going to leave the disabled, the vulnerable, the marginalised behind? This is a genocide by omission, civilisational eugenics – is that who you are?

Fine – a lottery system. At least people can agree it’s fairer, even if no one wants to accept their own powerlessness. You hope and hope that your number will be called, but as the years tick by, that hope begins to slip away. Your people expect you to die quietly, all because of a simple bit of bad luck. Do you?

Even if you escape, where do you go? Some worlds straight up reject your people, leaving millions stranded in the endless dark. Others are more willing to accept you, but only a few hundred thousand at a time, shoved into the most desolate corners of an unwelcoming planet that your biology simply isn’t adapted to. Your people are being scattered into tiny enclaves across the stars, cut off from each other, forgetting their own customs, languages, ideas. You have saved lives, certainly – but you haven’t saved your civilisation. Historians leap into action, bickering over what songs and stories are most quintessentially you. You watch as your society is put into a museum, history sold to the highest bidder, and know that whatever is displayed is only a fraction of who you are.

Or maybe you don’t. This is after all just one story in the galaxy of Slow Gods.

Maybe instead you downplayed the crisis and said “someone else will sort it out”, as if anyone can out-bluff a supernova, and now you’ve got less than a decade before your seas boil, and there are billions of people with nothing to do except die. The richest and most powerful have saved themselves, but they still need income, and for that they need people. Desperate, terrified people who will do anything to survive.

You eye up your gunships. You eye up other worlds – vulnerable worlds, outside the blast radius. And you maybe make a choice to save your own children, even if that means someone else’s child will die, because what parent will do less? Choosing between guaranteed annihilation or violence without end, perhaps you choose a war that will burn the galaxy, having decided that this is no choice at all.

Claire North’s (Orbit) is the July read for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up here, and come and discuss the book on our Discord channel .

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The best sci-fi novel in 2026 so far – plus 6 other great reads

Emily H. Wilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:00:00 +0000

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

The one film to watch before seeing Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day

Bethan Ackerley — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:30:56 +0000

With Steven Spielberg’s new extraterrestrial film Disclosure Day just out, it’s the ideal time to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind – perhaps the perfect UFO film, says film columnist Bethan Ackerley

Sci-fi horror film Backrooms is a triumph for its 20-year-old director

Davide Abbatescianni — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 18:00:00 +0000

With its origins in a creepy image posted on 4chan, Backrooms is an unusually potent big-screen experiment in fear and perception, says Davide Abbatescianni

The best new science-fiction books of June 2026

Alison Flood — Sat, 30 May 2026 09:00:57 +0000

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.

‘The book is in the future, but everything is seeded from our present’

Alison Flood — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:00:16 +0000

Helen Phillips, winner of the Climate Fiction prize for her novel Hum, on if stories can make a difference, her anxieties and writing about the climate

Science fiction news, articles and features | New Scientist

The 4 best science-fiction shows of 2026 so far

The 4 must-watch science-fiction films of the year so far

The best new science-fiction novels published in July 2026

by Ruth Newton

by Paul Tremblay

by Deb Olin Unferth

by Riley August

by Sheila Armstrong

Sign up to Book Club

by Nadia Afifi

by Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall

by Gregory Bastianelli

by Claire McGowan

by Rebecca Thorne

by David Arlo

by Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles

by Meg Smitherman

by Calvin James

Read an extract from Slow Gods by Claire North

Sign up to Book Club

Why I started my sci-fi novel with a world-ending supernova

Sign up to Book Club

The best sci-fi novel in 2026 so far – plus 6 other great reads

The one film to watch before seeing Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day

Sci-fi horror film Backrooms is a triumph for its 20-year-old director

The best new science-fiction books of June 2026

by M. John Harrison

by Joseph Eckert

by Isabel J. Kim

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

by Emily Paxman

by Meg Elison

by Amil, translated by Joheun Lee

by Cheong Ye, translated by Slin Jung

by Keely Jobe

by J.P. Lacrampe

by Nathan Tavares

by Peter F. Hamilton

by Cristina LePort

‘The book is in the future, but everything is seeded from our present’