The very best new sci-fi books of September 2025 by authors including Cixin Liu and John Scalzi

There are some sci-fi hefty hitters with new novels out this month, from Cixin Liu and Stephen Baxter to John Scalzi. I’m keen to have a look at Ian McEwan’s venture to a flooded variation of 2119– a drowned-world trope also taken up by Yume Kitasei in the intriguing-sounding Saltcrop The late Mason Coile’s tale of calamity in a brand-new Martian nest, Expatriations , is additionally appealing me, as is even more time travelling noir from the superb Nicholas Binge.

We’re taking a more traditional course in the New Researcher Book Club this month, taking a look at Ursula K. Le Guin’s much-admired 1974 unique The Dispossessed Come read together with us and see how it compares to the best of today’s science fiction. Yet back to September 2025 …

The literary author turns to sci-fi– and not for the first time (that read 2010’s Solar ). In his new book, we move from 2014, when a great rhyme reads aloud and then shed, never ever to be heard again, to 2119, when the UK’s low-lying areas have actually been immersed. Scholar Tom Metcalfe looks back at the archives of the early 21 ^st century, admiring the possibilities life offered back then. After that he discovers a clue that could result in the “great lost poem”…

Here’s a treat for fans of The Three-Body Issue — the gathered narratives of Cixin Liu, which discuss first call, maker knowledge and cosmological scary. There are 32 in overall, and we’re assured everything from planetary systems being devoured to earths being turned into spacecrafs.

The Fireplace is the “holy birthplace” of millions of planets, and humankind arrived there thousands of years back, spreading itself throughout these globes. When an unknown opponent sees the richness of the Fireplace and wishes to take it for themselves, Commander Ulla Breen need to come up with a strategy to join its disparate components and resist. Will she additionally find out why mankind came right here in the first place?

In a near-future version of Earth, seaside cities have actually been swamped by seas filled with mutant fish. We adhere to sailor Skipper, the youngest of three siblings, that earns a living by skimming plastic from the ocean and marketing it. When she receives a cryptic plea for help from her oldest sister Nora, who is searching for a remedy for the globe’s failing crops, she and her various other sibling Carmen set out throughout the sea– and a passing away world– to locate her. Kitasei is the writer of The Deep Skies and The Stardust Grail , and this seems great.

In this time taking a trip police procedural, investigative Julia Torgrimsen (good name!) is brought out of retired life to examine the murder of a billionaire she dealt with while covert. Yet she locates two bodies– both of which are billionaire Bruno Donaldson … We liked Binge’s last sci-fi thriller Dissolution right here at New Researcher , so I’m expecting this one.

This is the 7th novel in Scalzi’s Old Man s Battle collection. There has actually been peace in interstellar space for a decade, now the most sophisticated alien varieties humankind has actually ever before satisfied is on the verge of battle– and Planet is being dragged into the problem. Gretchen Trujillo, a mid-level politician, is given a secret goal that might change the future for people and aliens alike.

Exiles by Mason Coile

I’m really taken by the cover and premise of this new story from the writer of William (which I took pleasure in), that sadly died earlier this year. It’s set in 2030, when a human crew gets here to prepare the first nest on Mars, just to locate the brand-new base half-destroyed. The three robotics sent ahead four years earlier to set it up demand to be interrogated– however one of them is missing out on …

At a remote study terminal in the desert, Kinsey and her group discover a strange specimen in the sand. When Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it within, it soon ends up being clear that things is trying to find a brand-new host.

This seems to me like it treads the line in between horror, sci-fi and dream– which’s a line I like to see beaten. Establish against a backdrop of eco-anxiety, it adheres to archaeobotanist Nell as she excavates two bog bodies found in a Somerset fen, while her body begins to show up “her own wildness”.

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