The Ten Best SF Books Read in 2024

We've seen the run down of the worst, but how about spreading a bit of positivity by affirming the best science fiction I've read this year? There were some worthies that didn't quite make the cut, which includes the late Christopher Priest's Fugue for a Darkening Island, Herve Le Tellier's The Anomaly, Jack Vance's Dying Earth sequence and, perhaps most controversially where SF opinion is concerned, Dan Simmons's Hyperion. Who has managed the feat of keeping that off a ten of the best list? Here's what did, more or less in reading order.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. World ending plagues have been done to death, so there's nothing new here that's going to knock your socks off. What will is the exceptional writing. The novel follows a group of actors as they shunt around the Great Lakes 20 years after Georgia Flu has ripped through the world and laid waste to civilisation. The flitting between the bleak future, the weeks of the outbreak, and the time well before is expertly done. Dealing with the menacse and dangers of the post-apocalypse are covered, but we're nowhere near The Road's brutalism. There are concerns about preserving collective memory when everything has gone, which complements the switching back and forth of narrative focus. This is not a pacey piece, but it's a relaxing read without lapsing into the pitfalls of cosy catastrophe. Easily one of the best SF novels of the 21st century and one deserving of the praise.

Planetfall by Emma Newman. An example of a hidden gem, Newman's tale of a colonist on another world undergoing a mental health crisis is an exceptional achievement. Having already waxed lyrical about it, I'm not sure what more can be said. Newman is able to perfectly balance believable character, a credible SF setting, building tension, and the looming mystery of the alien structure overhanging the colony. And as it comes to a head Newman provides a satisfying ending that does not cheapen everything that comes before, which is a real test of an SF writer's ability and imagination. Ambitious but understated in its pretensions, it's a crime that this book isn't everywhere. Another contender for best SF novel this century.

Submission by Michel Houellebecq. What if France was taken over by an Islamist government? It sounds like a bad fantasy Marine Le Pen might peddle to her acolytes, but if one can lay aside the dubious premise Houellebecq has crafted a real work of art here. This is a nihilistic novel full of self-pitying entitlement, misogyny, jaded pessimism, and wry humour. It repeats the extreme right's favourite trope of well-meaning liberalism paving the way to those who would cut our throats, but the style, the perfect pacing, the deft touch Houellebecq brings to his dystopic meanderings elevates this well above the trashy diatribes typical of the far right. This doesn't beat you over the head or sets about demonising Muslims, it's much more subtle than that.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. A bit of good old-fashioned space opera why not? This is how thrills 'n' spills should be done. This our universe where there is no faster than light travel and so it takes a long time to get from A to B. Following the fortunes of the Gentian shatterlings - a house of multiple clones of a single source as they travel around the galaxy - they have to come to terms with trauma, crisis, and that someone powerful is out to kill them. There are conspiracies within conspiracies, exceptional far future world building, weird posthumans, emergent machine intelligences, dark secrets, and an action-packed chase across the galaxy and beyond. A real page turner and, perhaps, Reynolds's best novel so far.

Malevil by Robert Merle. And we're back in the post-apocalypse. While pottering about in the cellar of a tourist trap castle, fiery catastrophe rains down on rural France and the land is burned to a cinder. With just the proprietor and a few of his employees left, they have to go about rebuilding civilisation. Not a terribly original departure point, but like Station Eleven it's the literary quality that makes Malevil stand out. Because it was the early 1970s, the gender politics are a bit, well, early 1970s and it suffers from the familar SF curse of badly drawn (young) female characters. But if you can put up with that, the challenge of living in a blasted landscape, the brutality and moral dilemmas, and the attempts at getting by without bringing back the old crap is beautifully rendered. Another seldom polished gem.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon. The rawest and most political of the novels on this list, this is the tale of a queer African-American woman on the run from a religious cult that is simultaneously a covert US government medical experiment. While living in the woods, she gives birth to twins but slowly begins metamorphosing into a mutant of incredible speed and strength. This is a thinly veiled meditation on racial politics, exploitation, and coloniality, the affinities that exist between all oppressed peoples, and the irredeemable nature of white America. But like some of the others on this list, Solomon strikes the balance, in this case between the politics, the narrative pace of the hunt/being hunted, fully realised, traumatised human beings. A masterclass on using SF tropes to forcefully confront the reader with injustice without appearing preachy or earnest.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. More hard SF and another one from the review backlist, this is very popular for good reason. Tchaikovsky marries together the hard and the soft sciences in his projection of a fast-evolving sentient spider civilisation. But this isn't just an exercise in world building, he's able to weave a compelling story into arachnid sociology and sum up the desperate straits of the last human colony ship from Earth. All power toward a climactic and, it seems, a cataclysmic ending. Forget the nonsense of The Three-Body Problem it's Children that is emblematic of contemporary hard SF. Tchaikovsky's work is stylistically, imaginatively, and dramatically its superior in every way.

Pavane by Keith Roberts. Not just one of the best SF novels ever, but one of the greatest works of 20th century English letters. Yet one that is often overlooked in SF and literary circles alike. The writing is beautiful, with words chosen with such care that they're the nearest to brush strokes that prose can get. A fix up of interlinked shorts set in an alternate England centuries after the Spanish Armada reimposed Catholicism, it is a true pleasure, a book that brings the West Country landscape and the harsh everyday life of this underdeveloped society to life. Another one that got the review treatment, this is the sort of literary SF most mainstream authors wish they could write. One that should be on everyone's TBR.

Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken MacLeod. Finally got round to his latest trilogy and what can you say? It's classic Ken. The familiar themes from his other works are there. Dockside action, mysterious alien environments, non-sentient characters, Scotland!, elaborate conspiracies, a dose of realistic but flawed socialist societies, and the characteristic good humour without ever risking cringing moments. If you ever wondered how submarines might fare in space, the answers lie herein. Again, what marks out Ken's work is the complete package. Good writing, an absorbing plot, a believable future, and the sorts of action that would keep the thrills 'n' spills crowd satisfied. Some say space opera is a regressive form in SF, but Beyond demonstrates this is not necessarily the case.

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes. It made the Booker long list, don't you know? Mysterious life forms dredged up from a seemingly impossible trench on the ocean floor, this has something to do with a mysterious message from the stars. This not entirely original backdrop is the canvas for an exploration of love and loss toward an abusive parent, the conflict of vitally important work and attenuating family obligations, and how absence and distance can bring estranged siblings together. The prose of In Ascension just flows before the eyes. Never overwrought, the family drama is always in the foreground, whether the action is under the waves or tens of billions of miles from Earth. Another landmark of 21st century Sf.

What have been your best reads of the year, SF or otherwise?

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