Sally Adee

From a dystopian future with Naomi Alderman to climate fiction with Christopher Priest, this is New Scientist’s guide to the best science fiction of the year

This science fiction novel shows that its author, Naomi Alderman, is well up to the tough job of satirising end-stage capitalism – and swerving an obvious ending, says Sally Adee

Sandra Newman’s sequel to the classic dystopian novel, told from the perspective of the woman at the original’s heart, is doubleplusgood – not least because it reminds us how relevant George Orwell’s dark vision of the future still is, says Sally Adee

The protagonist of John Scalzi’s excellent new sci-fi novel is trying to find his way out of existential misery. So is the hero of Lavie Tidhar’s The Circumference of the World. But at their hearts, both books are setting out to explore what on earth we are doing here, finds Sally Adee

Lauren Beukes’s new science fiction novel, the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, demonstrates the one crucial flaw in the entire multiverse fantasy: human nature

Stunning sci-fi novel by Vajra Chandrasekera uses magical realism to weave a multi-layered, dreamlike story where the nature of memory and how it can be abused is its deepest theme

Suppose the megarich can rejuvenate – but it makes them grow to titanic proportions? Nick Harkaway’s novel draws on Greek myth and noir in a fabulous thought experiment that reflects our own fixation with “making it big”, says Sally Adee

People who reported feeling the most disgusted or frightened after watching a series of videos had a more acidic stomach pH compared with other study participants. It is unclear if these emotions cause the acidity or if an acidic pH makes people feel emotions more intensely

Your cells crackle with electric signals that guide embryonic development and heal wounds. If we can learn to tweak this “bioelectric code”, we might be able to prevent cancer and even grow new limbs

Veronica Roth’s dystopian take on Sophocles’s 2500-year-old tragedy reminds us that human nature is timeless, finds Sally Adee

Annalee Newitz’s new novel examines the dark side of “uplifting” animals to a state of self-awareness – and asks whose intelligence is being used as the template, finds Sally Adee

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

Uncertainty and crisis are key to this year’s best sci-fi offerings, from Janelle Monáe’s The Memory Librarian to Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea

What is consciousness, and why do we simultaneously seek it out and dread it in other entities? Ray Nayler’s staggering novel has grand ambitions and even provides a few answers, finds Sally Adee

Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage and Christopher Priest’s Expect Me Tomorrow use fantasy to address real issues. Will this perspective energise people to do something about the future, asks Sally Adee

What would the world be like if men suddenly disappeared? That is the premise of Sandra Newman’s new sci-fi novel that asks how easily we can change history, says Sally Adee

Oliver Langmead’s science fiction novel Glitterati starts out as a comedy stuffed with buffoonery and self-inflicted miseries you can chortle at, but it ends somewhere much darker, finds Sally Adee

A new micro-genre of science fiction explores how mind control is at the very heart of our networked existence

In The Cartographers, Peng Shepherd’s latest work of magical realist speculative fiction, the characters have a habit of asking “what makes a map?”. The answer, it becomes clear, is its purpose, finds Sally Adee

In Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, Mickey gets a shot at immortality by uploading his consciousness, but at what cost, asks Sally Adee