
All the Water in the World by Eilen Cafall is set in a future flooded New York City.
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If you’ve recovered from your post-holiday daze and are in desperate need of fresh horizons and new worlds to explore, I’ve got some great new science fiction on your bedside table. Celebrities like Nnedi Okorafor and Cory Doctorow are also in attendance, and genres range from literary adventures by Eilen Kafor and Erica Swiler to good old-fashioned space opera and even romance.
Don’t have time to fit an entire novel into your busy January schedule? new scientist staff.
This new novel, hailed as a noteworthy novel by science fiction columnist Emily H. Wilson, comes from the author of great Christmas short stories. Abracadabra. The story follows Zell, a science fiction writer, who decides to write a novel about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. But as I write, the line between the story I’m creating and reality begins to blur…
Emily also warned us to be careful about this in 2025, which I think is great, for sure. Set in a world where glaciers have melted, the story’s protagonists are stranded in flooded New York City, living on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. What is their mission? To preserve exhibits and artifacts. Kafor was inspired to write this story by curators in Iraq and Leningrad who were working to protect collections from war.
Another tidbit from Emily is that she and the bioprosthetic surgeon in a city where an elite class has evolved over generations from the descendants of those who sacrificed the most to build humanity’s last bastion. It follows a dedicated AI. The city is run by an artificial intelligence that rewards sacrifice, but when a brutal murder occurs, the AI erases the incident from the data.
This eco-thriller contains two parallel versions of its world. In one of them, Robin’s father suddenly dies and a freak forest fire threatens the California town of Destino. In the other building, Robin wakes up to find that his father is still alive and there are no signs of fire. But she knows that in the first world, her own world, the virus is still spreading rapidly and she needs to find answers…

Forest fires threaten California towns in The Time of the Fire by Emma Kavanagh
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This is the latest in Doctorow’s Martin Hench series about the adventures of a forensic accountant. The year is 1986, and Hench is hired by Silicon Valley startup Fidelity Computing to investigate former employees (all bright young women) who have started a competing company. He quickly flips over after becoming more sympathetic to the group he is investigating. But do they understand the depth of the evil they are up against?
Earls Written by Deborah Tomkins
This science fiction novella tells the story of Magnus, who decides to leave the planet Earth, which is entering an ice age and a strange virus is infecting its people. He becomes an astronaut and travels to the newly discovered planet Urus, but it is hot and crowded, and there seems to be no way home again.
space oddity Written by Catherine M. Valente
Sequel to this Hugo Award nominated film space opera The Metagalactic Grand Prix is back, combining gladiator tournaments, beauty pageants, extravagant concerts, and continuations of past wars. Decibel Jones and Absolute Zero finished 10th in the last contest and are gearing up for the new contest. The fate of the Earth is about to be threatened once again.
This is wonderful. Set on a climate-changing Earth in the distant future, this novel follows three intertwined stories. When the boy and his sisters wake up, they find themselves alone in an abandoned fishing village and set out across the wilderness to find their people. There’s also their mother, captured by the attackers, and a young scholar in the center of power who must decide who to support.
I haven’t read the book yet, so I can’t vouch for how much science fiction it contains, but it’s advertised as a “horror story and end-of-the-world musings on love,” so I’m sure that’s the end of the world. I hope it gives some tint to the apocalyptic stuff because it sounds great. The film is set in an “unknown place and time,” where two elderly sisters live a secluded life in a walled garden, until a nameless boy hides in their hideout. discovered and the outside world begins to invade.
A former detective is framed for murder in this space opera from director Josh Mendoza. As he tries to clear his name, he finds himself being pursued by a “cabal of interdimensional invaders.”
How about some sci-fi romance to round out January? No problem. This is the story of Jenny, a romance writer, who returns to the seaside home where she spent her childhood summers and where her best friend Timmy disappeared. Today, 30 years later, a boy emerges from the sea. His name is Timmy, he says. He’s out to save the world. And fear lurks deep within…
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