The year 2025 promises a stellar line-up of science fiction literature, tackling everything from environmental collapse to the very nature of consciousness. This curated selection highlights five exceptional novels that are set to define the genre, offering readers a journey from a world spinning out of control to encounters with memory-eating aliens.
High-Concept Satire and Planetary Peril
Alex Foster's Circular Motion (Grove) presents a brilliantly satirical take on the climate catastrophe. The novel introduces a revolutionary travel technology: super-fast pods launched into low orbit from spring-loaded podiums, enabling journeys across the globe in mere minutes. However, this innovation comes with a devastating physical consequence. Adhering to the law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the Earth itself begins to spin faster.
Days shorten from seconds to eventually hours, throwing the planet into chaos. Circadian rhythms collapse, oceans bulge at the equator, and Foster's richly drawn characters navigate their personal dramas against a backdrop of global disintegration. The novel is a masterclass in gonzo conceit, with clever plotting and biting wit driving the narrative to its inevitable, thrilling conclusion.
Eco-Masterpieces and Cyberpunk Futures
EJ Swift delivers what is being hailed as an eco-masterpiece with When There Are Wolves Again (Arcadia). This near-future narrative charts a path from collapse to recovery, beginning with the rewilding of Chornobyl and the return of wolves to Europe. Spanning decades to 2070, Swift's story is tragic, alarming, poetic, and ultimately hopeful. The author skillfully avoids simplistic doom-mongering or easy techno-optimism, instead presenting a nuanced vision that connects planetary destiny with intimate human experience. The novel argues that redemption is possible, but it demands honesty, commitment, and true stewardship.
In Luminous by Silvia Park (Magpie), a unified Korea forms the backdrop for a profound exploration of humanity. The story begins as a young adult adventure, following schoolgirl Ruijie, who augments her body with robotic limbs due to a degenerative disease. Her life intersects with Yoyo, a robot boy forever trapped at age twelve, and Yoyo's now-adult human sibling, Detective Cho Jun—a cyborg rebuilt after an injury. Park's debut elegantly evolves into a sophisticated piece of cyberpunk, posing essential questions about identity, consciousness, and what it truly means to be human in a world of blurred boundaries.
Epic Translations and Unnerving Horrors
Finally published in English after 18 years, Jacek Dukaj's Ice (Head of Zeus), translated by Ursula Phillips, is a monumental work of alternative history. This 1,200-page giant reimagines the 20th century after the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia—an asteroid impact a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb—becomes an alien incursion. A strange, mutating ice spreads across a Russian empire that never experienced a Communist revolution.
The story follows Benedykt Gierosławski, a gambling addict and mathematical genius, travelling on the Orient Express into Siberia to find his father, who may communicate with the ice. The novel is capacious, baroquely detailed, and packed with metaphysical exposition and thrilling set pieces, creating a brilliantly chilling atmosphere.
qntm (the pseudonym of British writer Sam Hughes) delivers a genuinely unnerving novel in There Is No Antimemetics Division (Del Rey). The story expands on the concept of "unknown unknowns"—entities that feed on human memory and information, making their very existence impossible to recall. A secret division struggles to combat these memetic, perhaps alien, life forms. Filled with spooky creatures and escalating dread, the novel builds to a startling ending that compellingly blurs the line between fiction and a terrifying potential reality.
