The best new sci-fi in May 2025 with a moving, almost future story from Grace Chan

While there are no big names releasing new science fiction novels in May, there are some real gems anyway-Inclusive a big tip from me, Grace Chan’s near future Every version of you. I will push it in the hands of everyone I know. There are also two fascinating Sci-Fi-Ede Thrillers out this month by Adam Oyebanji and Barnaby Martin, while Catherine Chidgey’s creepy Guilt Book Have fascinated me enough to make it to my next reading — if it’s not removed by Bora Chung’s real story-inspired story of war on a foreign planet, Red swordThat is, …

Seen in Australia of the 21st century Australia follows this novel (published in Australia in 2022, but out now broadly), Tao-Yi follows in a world where most people spend their lives in an immersive virtual reality called Gaia. Every morning she climbs into a pod in her apartment to enter Gaia, where she works and socialists. In the real world, the unreliable heat of the sun means that there are no trees left and hardly any animals: this is a scary vision for the future. When a new technology allows people to permanently upload themselves to Gaia, Tao-Yis Partner Navin, whose real body fails him, wants to do so. Tao-Yi is not that sure. This is my favorite book of the year so far-a brilliant and moving slice sci-fi that I can’t stop thinking about. Be careful, New Scientist Book Club: I think it can be one for us later in the year!

I love a speculative thriller, and this one, about the scars left behind by the Atlantic slave trade, looks cracking. It opens with an impossible death – a man and Hans Hans who seems to have drowned in seawater, but which is 1600 kilometers from the nearest sea. As Detective Ethan Krol investigates, he learns more about the mysterious Abi Eniola who claims to be an ordinary woman from Nigeria, but whose high -tech gadgets and extraordinary physical abiletities suggest there may be something else going on.

We contested the planet, a woman is forced to fight for her prisoners, fight (we are told by the publisher) “Scientific abominations and truly alien terrain to reveal the truth of her identity and her slave companions”. South Korean author Bora Chung drew on true story to write this novel – one of the Korean soldiers who forts on behalf of the Qing dynasty against Russia. It looks like a must-feed for me.

An exciting piece of sci-fi-straw here from president to educate horror writers association John Palisano. It is set on a moon-size cemetery in the room, Eden, where a cosmic unity is back souls from those buried on board. Ava, whose lost love, Roland, is one of these spirits, must fight it before it reaches the earth.

I hope for the nuances of Kazuo Ishiguros Never let me go In this novel, in an alternative version of England in 1979, where Triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William were the last residents of a New Forest home. The home is part of the government’s Sycamore scheme (whatever it is, it sounds awkward), and every day they are monitored by three mothers: Mother Morning, Mother afternoon and Mother Evening. “Their nightmare is repeated in Book of Dreams. Their lessons are taken from the Nowledge Book. And their sins are postponed in the guilt book,” says Chidgey’s publisher. When the government begins to close its Sycamore homes, the children realize that their lives can be very different from being fed. I am so desperate to find out what the mystery is that I have this one on my bedside table that reads to go.

This is beaten as speculative fiction, which as far as I can tell, means that it is not entirely fantasy and it is not quite sci-fi or if it is, then it is at the literary end of both. In any case, it sounds really exciting. We follow Lina and her father when they arrive at the sea, a form-changing building “Made by Time” where “past and future are collided” (which feels time-traveling enough for this round-up). There they meet their neighbors from a Jewish scholar from the 17th century to his radical thoughts to a poet from the Tang Dynasty. But why are Lina and her father there?

I almost always want to fall for a story where a mother has to protect their child in a dangerous future world – and yes, I can read this one too. This particular dangerous world is one where a deadly warming forces people to live at night and where the mysterious Soundfield arrives 20 years earlier and produces a constant hum. Researcher Hannah used to work at Soundfield and tried to solve his mysteries; Now she has to keep her gifted son Isaac safe.

Our Sci-Fi Palitist on New scientistEmily H. Wilson recently considered the concept of “climate fiction” and what should count as a piece of “cli-fi”. This novel should certainly be in that mix: it is set in a future where hard fires rage. When a young mother and her daughter show up at the Iris Hotel in the German spa city, Heim (where guests are now rare), Iris wonders if they pose a threat.

I like the field for this novel: “Boy meets Girl meets AI therapist”, where Adrian decides to try SIKE, a new AI psychotherapy app that tracks his users every single movement and feelings to guide them against “mental bénément”. He falls for Maquie, a venture capitalist looking for the next Big Tech hit, but she refuses to use SIKE.

Jeff lives in worldly life until he sees the “pale woman” and his reality changes. Now he is a mercenary Jezz and is struggling with foreign insects on the front line. This is described by its publisher as The matrix Meets Joe Haldeman’s military sci-fi novel The Forever WarWhich is definitely exciting. Plus I always love a stranger insect.

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