Science Fiction

Space Oddity

Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente’s hilarious “Eurovision in space” novel, was one of the harbingers of the hopepunk ethos in SFF, and now another round of the Metagalactic Grand Prix (the high-stakes singing contest that has replaced warfare between alien worlds) is about to begin. Humanity eked out a win in Space Opera, which means they’re the race to beat in Space Oddity.

Cuckoo

By Gretchen Felker-Martin

Gender-based dystopias have proved to be, ahem, very controversial in recent years, not to mention downright disappointing. But then there is Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt, shining like a blood-covered beacon. The odyssey of two trans women trying to survive in a world where a plague has turned anyone with high levels of testosterone into heinous monsters, Manhunt zeroed in on the people and problems lesser dystopias ignore. Her sophomore novel, Cuckoo, will demand a similarly tricky balance of genre thrills and sensitive character work. Set at a conversion camp, Cuckoo follows a group of former campers who reunite to face down the evil entity that they survived as teenagers.

Service Model

By Adrian Tchaikovsky

One of the finest purveyors of hard sci-fi writing today, Adrian Tchaikovsky writes on enormous, galaxy-spanning canvases, but with a sense of detail that extends down to the tiniest cog. With his uncanny ability to make heady concepts feel achingly human, there is perhaps no one better suited to write about a robot uprising and make readers root against their own species.

Ghost Station

By S.A. Barnes

With its thoughtfully crafted characters, top-notch pacing and ever-present sense of dread, Ghost Station is another sci-fi horror hit from S.A. Barnes.

Exordia

By Seth Dickinson

The author of the acclaimed Masquerade fantasy series, which follows a woman who infiltrates a powerful empire in order to destroy it from the inside, Seth Dickinson is so devoted to intricate world building that some have labeled his work “hard fantasy” (a la hard science fiction, a subgenre replete with details of futuristic technology). So it’s hardly surprising that Dickinson will be making the leap to sci-fi this year with Exordia, an absolutely wild tale of first contact.