The best new science fiction books of 2024


New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

2024 has been a great year for sci-fi, from time travel stories to those set in space

Matt Mawson/Millennium Images, UK

It has been a good year for science fiction, with a novel set on the International Space Station winning the 2024 Booker prize. Orbital is a beautiful, sublimely written, hopeful book that takes place over 16 orbits of Earth.

One might argue that it isn’t science fiction. After all, the ISS is a real place and the book is simply a novelisation of ordinary life upon it. Author Samantha Harvey describes it as “space pastoral”. But then what…

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