MANY of us head off for the holidays, what better time to immerse ourselves in stories that range further afield, out into the final frontier of space or elsewhere into the multiverse of imaginative possibilities?
The thing about science fiction today is its enormous variety: of subjects, of voices, of possibilities. If classic space opera is your thing, you will know Adrian Tchaikovsky, the ruling king of UK sci-fi: volume two of his galaxy-spanning Final Architecture series is , the sequel to Shards of Earth.
, Adam Oyebanji鈥檚 first novel, is a richly imagined story about a generation starship: as the craft鈥檚 long voyage comes to an end, the strictly hierarchical society aboard must prepare for great changes.
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Alastair Reynolds鈥檚 is tricky to summarise without spoiling its series of expertly delivered twists. In it, a 19th-century expedition to the Norwegian fjords in search of a mysterious 鈥渆difice鈥� leads to a number of revelations that stretch from Earth all the way to Jupiter鈥檚 moon Europa. A wonderfully readable puzzle box of a novel.
Of course, there is more to sci-fi than spaceship stories. Sea of Tranquility is the latest from Emily St John Mandel, author of Station Eleven, which has recently been adapted for TV. It is a series of nested stories that are linked via time travel and simulation, reflecting eloquently on lockdown life and the relationship of fiction to reality.
Samit Basu鈥檚 Delhi-set cyberpunk epic is crammed with ideas, bursting with energy and as multifarious, overheated and brutal as the future it describes.
The climate crisis is, of course, on all our minds. In Susannah Wise鈥檚 tense thriller , a couple must protect their child as the world around them breaks down. Jessie Greengrass鈥檚 depicts a scientist and her husband as they stockpile supplies in their home in Suffolk, UK, for a coming catastrophe. Greengrass writes beautifully about the ordinary within the extraordinary: family life, friendship, nature, all under the threat of disaster.
There seems no end to singer Janelle Mon谩e鈥檚 talents. Her new short story collection revisits her Afrofuturistic pop masterpiece album, Dirty Computer, exploring possibilities of queerness, race, plurality and memory as resistance.
J. O. Morgan鈥檚 traces how the invention of a teleportation device changes society, as it is eagerly accepted by some and forced on others. Morgan is better known as a poet and here, in his first novel, he carries the precision of his style into prose.
The short stories in Ben Pester鈥檚 refract the mundane world of work and home life through a gorgeously bizarre, unsettling, drily comic and surrealistic lens. And by Tochi Onyebuchi is an ambitious future dystopia, tackling its themes of climate collapse, white flight 鈥� not from inner cities to the suburbs, but actually into plush habitats in space 鈥� and struggle, all handled with tremendous literary panache.
These are novels to transport you into new worlds and possibilities: boldly go, this holiday.
