The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror

The Guardian

11-07-2025

Here and Beyond by Hal LaCroix (Bloomsbury, £16.99)The only realistic way human beings could colonise planets beyond our solar system is if they spent their lives travelling and committed their children and grandchildren to the same fate, so their descendants might have a chance to reach another habitable world. Writers who have taken this fictional challenge, including Robert A Heinlein and Brian Aldiss, have assumed civilisational breakdowns would result, with the survivors coming to believe their ship is the only world there ever was. The author of this brilliant, character-driven debut novel has taken a more optimistic view. On Earthworld, success was measured in terms of expansion and exploitation, but on Shipworld, survival depends on preservation, recycling and austerity. During 360 years of travel to planet HD-40307g, the descendants of the original 600 pioneers never lose sight of the distant goal, along the way meeting unexpected challenges, setbacks and tragedies, but also innovations, insights and moments of joy. It's an imaginative journey that's absorbing, thoughtful and deeply humane.
One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford (Tor, £22)In a post-zombie pandemic London, Kesta is a scientist working on a project dedicated to finding a vaccine against the virus that turned so many into bloodthirsty monsters. She is especially driven because her husband, Tim, was one of the last people to be infected. But unknown to anyone else, Tim is still alive: tied to a bed in Kesta's flat, drugged into docility while she tries everything she can think of to cure him. There's enough real science behind the theories of how the disease works to make for a fresh and convincing take on the zombie theme, but this debut novel is especially strong as a gripping, sometimes darkly funny depiction of the grotesque lengths to which love might drive someone in refusing to accept an inevitable end.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz (Vintage, £16.99)Originally published in French in 1995, this short, mysterious novel has recently gained a wide and ardent readership, leading to this new edition. Forty women are kept in a cage underground, where the light and temperature never vary, and time is hard to measure. A changing team of three male guards enforce the rules – no talking to the guards, no physical contact between the prisoners – and provide the bare essentials of food, water and clothing. The nameless narrator is the youngest, called 'Child' by the others, and has no memories of life before the cage; the older women remember families, lovers, work and home life but not how or why they were imprisoned. When they finally have the chance to escape, they emerge into a strange, barren landscape. Are they on Earth, after a nuclear holocaust, or transported to another world? They wander, gather supplies and build new homes. Readers expecting answers may be disappointed. There are a few suggestive clues, but the narrator's experiences and reflections are more than enough to make this a strangely haunting and memorable tale.
The Reaper by Jackson P Brown (Del Rey, £16.99)Amy is a young Londoner whose empathic powers, inherited through her Jamaican grandmother, enable her not only to feel the emotions of others, but to recognise the auras of beings who come out at night: vampires, werewolves, wraiths, witches and mages. She encounters the 'Grim Reaper' – Gerald, a handsome young man with skeletal, death-dealing hands who works as an assassin for hire. Amy is so tempted by the chance to learn more about the Downers (so-called because their world is 'downstairs' from London) that she agrees to team up with Gerald and use her powers to track down his victims. The logic behind this unlikely empath-assassin partnership is shaky, and while contemporary London is vividly evoked, the Downer world is made up of too many hand-me-downs from other urban fantasies. Yet Gerald and Amy are interestingly complex characters, and with the slow growth of their tentative relationship this is an engaging and promising debut.