The Five Worst SF Books Read in 2025

My second year of binging on science fiction is nearly over, and it's pleasing to report that out of 107 SF novels and collections, I found only a handful of books that were properly annoying. Continuing the anti-festive spirit from last December, here's 2025's clutch of do-not-recommends arranged by the order I read them.

The Passage by Justin Cronin. I see this get praised a lot, and none of it is warranted. A clandestine subsection of the US government are experimenting on death row murderers and serial killers and turning them into super strength zombie/vampire monsters. Sounds like a good idea. And because of the mysterious mind powers they have, they are able to escape and more or less kill everyone. A post-apocalyptic story of survival with, of course, a special "chosen one", endless hundreds of pages are given over to cliches and characters prey to unnecessary/scarcely believable tensions that ends up imperilling them. Then there is the incredulous stupidity of the unleashed zombie/vampire virus killing everyone who lives outside of North America. A pretty dumb genuflection to US exceptionalism. If all this wasn't bad enough, the effort Cronin puts in to provide a science fictional conceit for this bloody-but-boring mess is undone by shoeing magic powers in toward the end. Terrible.

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys. This has such an interesting premise. It is the near future and the world is transitioning away from capitalism to some sort of eco-communism. States remain, but they're largely vestigial and ceremonial hold overs. And capitalism, as in turbo-charged faceless corporation capitalism, is confined to a few (literal) islands of influence. The main bulk of the population ignore their nonsense and live in decentralised communes organised on a geographical basis around watersheds - which makes for a thought-provoking suggestion for post-scarcity social organisation. Sadly, this is the best aspect of the novel. The appearance of cartoonish eco-conscious aliens and their organic ship that constantly shits their effluent into the Atlantic is not the ideal first contact scenario, and it doesn't get much better from there. Also, the characters always seem to be lecturing each other on pronouns, and thrown in are as many non-binary modes of address Emrys could think of. I don't want to dump too much on this book, as Emrys is attempting an empathetic SF here with genuinely different, if right-on aliens - but its earnestness does not make for a compelling story.

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber. Normally, it's his Hugo-winning The Wanderer that gets the brickbats. Alas, the absence of alien cat babes is this novel's only redeeming feature. Set around a temporal war where two factions battle over the course of history, Greta, a time-travel part-psychologist, part-comfort woman offers her ministrations to the troupe of soldiers that file through her end of a pocket universe. The Maintainer, a device that sustains this gap in reality, is stolen and someone threatens to set off an atomic bomb. All in a day's work for Greta! Sorry to say that if I could wind back time, I'd have spent the time reading this (mercifully) short work on another book. It's a complete mess and barely holds together. The problem is you get the sense Leiber is fizzing with ideas and wants to show off his distinction as an erudite writer, but here he lacks focus and falls short of a coherent and compelling novel. The definite tie for the worst novel to have crossed my eyeballs in 2025.

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin. The Three-Body Problem juggernaut lands on this list. I wrote more about it earlier this month, and it gets worse the more I think about it. It's puzzling why Dark Forest makes so many best of lists. The writing is leaden, characters completely interchangeable, and human beings are by turns robotic, faddish, stupid, and hysterical. The aliens, the pulpy-sounding Trisolarians, are probably some of the worst realised in contemporary science fiction. But above all, the ideas if proffers - something which the series is often praised for - are hardly original, having been done many times before elsewhere. His "original" idea of Cosmic Sociology, a speculation about what alien societies might be like, is simply laughable and wouldn't be out of place in a collection of ravings by right-wing evolutionary psychologists. A book written to be thrown at the wall - more than once. Unfortunately, two-thirds in I'm likely to end up finishing the trilogy. So don't be surprised if Liu pops up here again this time next year.

Birthright: The Book of Man by Mike Resnick. Competing hard with Leiber for the worst-book-read-this-year award, Birthright was horribly out of date when it was published in 1982. Resnick's future history tells of the rise, fall, and eventual extinction of "Man". We are "treated" to a sprinkling of vignettes throughout that history to give a sense of how humanity conquered an empire, treated its subjects, underwent democratic revolution, and then slid into oblivion. Why we did so well was because humans were more special and imaginative than the thousands of other species we discover during our galactic rampage. All humans, like all aliens, are cut from the same essentialist cloth, and we're cast as aggressively expansionist and imperialist by nature. It's exactly the same sort of species-level dopiness Liu indulgences. But if anything, this is more badly written. Supposedly a critique of colonialism, it is not nuanced enough to even gesture in that direction. Instead it comes across as a clumsy and boring celebration of dominance, militaria, and the wily application of statecraft. Just a very, very poor book that was 40 years too late.

Rants are over. What were your worst reads of the year, be they science fiction and/non-sf or even non-fiction?

Baudrillard on Exchange

Reading quite a bit of this chap at the moment, so here's a nugget for sharing.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Science Fiction Book Haul #6

With Christmas around the corner, the discerning collector of vintage science fiction paperbacks can expect a few additions. Here are some careworn A-formats I've recently picked up.

Let's begin with something that isn't SF at all - the Sara Douglass Crucible trilogy. All three were going for a song, so it would have been rude not to. Douglass was the pen name of Sara Warneke, a medieval historian who also authored several series/trilogies of genre fantasy novels. She won a couple of awards but never gained the critical reputation and/or sales of a big hitter. The Nameless Day, which I read several months ago, was set in medieval Europe and sees Thomas Neville, an English monk, set out on a mission set by the Archangel Michael to battle the hordes of Satan. It was alright, but did so much violence to the historical record that Douglass must have winced as she wrote it. Also, the Devil portrayed here is very much the modern version dating from Goethe and not the pathetic jester/sufferer of chronic flatulence that was contemporaneous to the 14th century. But an unthreatening fool wouldn't do as an antagonist. How does Neville get on? I'm committed now so will find out eventually.

Providing a foundation for them is a sun-faded copy of John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar. A regular on SF critics 'best of' lists, it's set in the futuristic year of 2010 and is a sprawling narrative focusing on two upwardly-mobile executives. It promises a meditation on overpopulation, artificial intelligences, economic development, genetic engineering, and drugs. It's frequently praised for anticipating our future and for being a cracking good read- certainly up there with Brunner's other semi-canonical works.

Mack Reynolds is an interesting character. Openly left wing at a time in the United States when that would be a career killer, Reynolds's SF spent a lot of time thinking about and thinking through utopias. He was raised in the De Leonist Socialist Labor Party, and for a time he was a full-time cadre for the party. Later on in the 1950s and having established himself as a writer, the SLP sought to purge him for publishing How to Retire Without Money - the type of self-help slop that was as ten-a-penny then as now. For raising illusions in capitalism, Reynolds reluctantly resigned - but he remain dedicated to pushing utopian SF. In Commune 2000AD from 1974, Reynolds imagines a sexually liberated US where everyone has a guaranteed income and government is entirely rational. Yet there is discontent - how can there be serpents in the modern paradise? Not a major piece by any means, but a welcome addition to the growing vintage collection.

The next two come as a pair. When Gravity Fails and A Fire in the Sun are two-thirds of a trilogy. If you're familiar with Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon books, there are some superficial similarities between them. Here, Marid Audran is muscle-for-hire in a world where one can swap out personality cartridges. And it happens that his job is to track down a sadistic killer who can't stop slotting in the personalities of history's worst mass murderers. Undoubtedly, much cyberpunkish grittiness and violence ensues. By all accounts, George Alec Effinger wrote his trilogy while living with severe health problems and an ever-increasing pile of medical debts. Unfortunately, his difficulties meant this was the last substantial piece of work he produced. But as final works go, they have retained a decent reputation unlike most other cyberpunk-style cash-ins.

Project Barrier by Daniel F Galouye has a not-at-all questionable premise. Humanity has the technology to send people to the stars! But the rigours of superluminal travel means only a crew component weighing 120lbs can go. The ingenious solution? Strap in a 12 year old girl and imprint the personalities of three astronauts onto her brain. But what happens when they return from their trip? Does restoring her singular personality mean murder? Actually a collection of related short stories (my UK edition does not indicate this), for some reason Richard Dawkins is a fan. I'll try not to let that put me off. Galouye is probably best known for his Hugo-nominated Dark Universe, but was another writer plagued with ill-health - this time thanks to injuries sustained as a navy pilot during the war. That this was completed and published following his medical retirement is testament to his determination.

Speaking of dodgy-sounding conceits, next up is Fred Hoyle's Ossian's Ride. In the far future of 1970 (Ossian's was published in 1959), the Republic of Ireland sits under a dictatorship and, thanks to its mysterious free port-style "science zone", its monopoly on highly advanced technologies may constitute a threat to dear old Blighty. And so a scientist-cum-secret agent Thomas Sherwood, a man with an impeccably English name, is dispatched to infiltrate Ireland's secret powerhouse and bring home the bacon. I'm not suggesting this is suffused with post-colonial paranoia, but. Fred Hoyle was a distinguished astronomer who made several important contributions to physics and chemistry, as well as originating the theory of panspermia. I.e. Life did not begin on Earth, but migrated from elsewhere and came here via meteors. He was a pillar of the establishment despite being at odds with colleagues over this and his view that the universe did not originate from a big bang - a phrase he apparently coined. Does this mean his science fiction is any good? The Cloud often gets decent write ups, but I suspect that there might be reasons why this exercise in paddy peril is not so feted.

I'm not sure many people have heard of When the Earth Died by Karl Mannheim. I have checked, this is not the German sociologist of knowledge - though his most famous book, Ideology and Utopia, almost has an SF ring to it. This, published in 1950, comes from the pen of an unknown UK author who chose to remain anonymous. How intriguing! The world here is where two power blocs face off against each other and, apparently, everyone dies in nuclear fire. Not sure how science fictional that was in 1950, but my copy was going for a song and it's in very good condition so it was hard to say no to.

From the obscure to the famous, Arthur C Clarke is by light years the biggest name on this list. And here he's represented by an almost mint early 90s edition of 2061: Odyssey Three. I watched 2001 when I was a nipper and, like most other people, was puzzled by what was happening. The novel was much clearer. Later I was quite the fan of 2010: Odyssey Two, but haven't read and don't own the book. So this here occupies a place of abeyance until 2010 falls into the collection. This? It lifts off after Jupiter has ignited and it shines down on us as our second sun. And I know no more than that. The general chatter isn't that favourable regarding the Odyssey series, but I do have a soft spot for Clarke. Growing up in the 80s, I remember Arthur C Clarke's World of Strange Powers, which was full of Fortean silliness. One episode about past lives was trailed as "Here is a man looking for his own grave." Fantastic stuff. Much later I quite liked Rendezvous with Rama - much less its sequels with Gentry Lee, which were terrible. And last year I thought A Fall of Moondust was quite jolly provided you go into it knowing Clarke's weaknesses. I expect 2061 to be broadly similar.

I blow hot and cold with Ian Watson. I thought his Alien Embassy was very good, if not a touch questionable by today's standards. However more recent reads, Chekhov's Journey and God's World did not hit the spot. Watson is an erudite and sophisticated writer, but two out of my three forays into his oeuvre have not paid off. What of The Very Slow Time Machine? This is another short story collection, the titular tale is about an old boy landing from the future in 1985 and slowly ageing backwards. Apparently, this is one of the weakest in the book - but that's because the others are stronger. We'll see if Watson's idiosyncrasies hold up in the short form.

Last is another author I've yet to read: Harry Harrison, and he shows up here with his War with the Robots. Yet another short story collection, this gives us a range of whatever-you-can-do, machines-can-do-better adventures. On the shelves I've got a load of his Stainless Steel Rat and Death World novels. Popularly seen as an overly pulpy writer, this apparently is to do Harrison a disservice as his work is full of subtle satire and irreverent gestures to overweening SF tropes. And the cover for my edition is ridiculously OTT. It's sat there now demanding that I read it.

There endeth the latest book haul. Another one is due early in the new year. Have you picked up anything interesting lately?

Local Council By-Elections: 2025 in Summary

In 2025, 678,122 votes were cast over 350 local authority contests. 197 council seats changed hands, and all percentages are rounded to the nearest decimal place. For comparison you can view last year's results here.

* There were 22 by-elections in Scotland
** There were 20 by-elections in Wales
*** There were 29 contests with Independent clashes
**** See the quarterly round ups for the results from smaller parties

At the beginning of 2025, the Conservatives and Labour were under severe pressure from Reform. By year's end, they barely put up any resistance when Nigel Farage's party field a candidate. This was a very bad year for the Tories, at least where vote share was concerned. 2023 and 2022 still beat them out for seats lost. But this is nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to the catastrophe that has overtaken Labour. No party has ever performed as badly or lost as many candidates to local authority by-elections. Keir Starmer is testing to destruction the idea his party can go without core supporters, and the result is what you see. Plenty of funsies for them to look forward to in May. The more cynical among us might suggest there's a relationship between this and the government's alacrity for cancelling council elections, ostensibly thanks to its reorganisation of local government.

As for Reform, it pains me to say no party has ever made such a killing in council-by-elections. Only the Tories have come close in recent times, and that was in 2021 before Boris Johnson immolated his premiership. The Liberal Democrats have the runners up consolation. It's worth noting in "normal times", being up 18 seats over a year was a fairly decent performance. As for the Green surge, there was a bit of evidence of this feeding through in November's local election numbers but overall they're holding steady.

Is anyone foolish enough to venture local by-election predictions for the year ahead? Last year, I tentatively suggested that the rise of Reform might see declines in independent and small party candidatures. Bearing in mind there were 34 fewer contests in 2025, the indie and Other drops are disproportionately greater. Too early so say whether this is a trend but it's something for the nerds, ahem, to keep an eye on.

Apart from these, a lot depends on what happens in May. If Labour get rid of Starmer and elect someone who takes the party in a different direction, that might improve things. But it's also important not to overhype Reform's by-election advance. I.e. They are reflecting a shift that has already taken place among voters who turn out for council by-elections. It offers the appearance of momentum and growing support, and as 2026 contests register this mass switch in preferences Reform's councillor tally will grow. But its actual support will probably bob around the level it's now at. As for the Greens, will the surge break through in by-election land? Again, all eyes will be on May when the metropolitans are up. The Greens will surely do well here, and are likely to scoop up more where by-elections have been rolled into the local election campaigns. Lastly, Your Party is set to make its debut under its own name. Allied groups of community independents have done well and won seats, but can their localism transfer succesfully to a new party? These will all find answers in the year ahead.

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Quarter Four 2025 By-Elections Results

This quarter 151,522 votes were cast in 80 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 53(!) council seats changed hands. For comparison you can view Quarter Three's results here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Q3	+/- Q4 24	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	82	25,728	17.0%	+0.4	-7.8	314	-12
Labour	70	17,319	11.4%	-5.7	-12.2	247	-16
Lib Dem	73	31.413	20.7%	+3.8	+2.2	430	+10
Reform	80	44,146	29.3%	+2.4	+20.8	461	+25
Green	58	14,355	9.5%	-0.6	+0.8	248	-1
SNP*	6	5,426	3.6%	+2.4	-4.2	904	0
PC**	2	1,615	1.1%	-1.2	+0.4	808	0
Ind***	51	9,566	6.3%	-1.6	+1.9	188	-7
Other****	14	2,740	1.8%	+0.9	-0.2	196	+1

* There were six by-elections in Scotland
** There were two by-elections in Wales
*** There were 12 Independent clashes
**** Others this quarter were Alba (83), Broxtowe Alliance (388), Caterham Residents (131), Equality Party (45), Guildford Residents (565), Heritage Party (97, 27), Lingfield and Crowhurst Residents (457), Our West Lancashire (704), Rejoin EU (81), SDP (4), Sovereignty (45), Tunbridge Wells Alliance (105), TUSC (8)

Yes, that is Labour's worst ever quarterly result. It also coincides with Reform's best ever tally. Adding to Labour's misery is the collapse in their vote average to a touch below the Greens, and their being comprehensively out-organised by three of their four main opponents. Surely, surely it can't get any worse? Oh it most certainly can. The only consolation for Labour supporters is that while the Tory vote is holding up better than their, they too are shedding council seats like they're going out of fashion.  Meanwhile, Reform can look forward to more local government tithes pouring into their coffers.

What a state for British politics to be in at the end of the year.

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Labour's Cost-of-Living Turn

We all like a happy Christmas, but it's unlikely Keir Starmer is in for much festive cheer. Polls are regularly pointing to less than a fifth of the popular vote, his personal ratings have shot out the bottom of Antarctica, and pretenders to the Labour crown are hardly discreet about their aspirations. Ahead of the new year, the Prime Minister, Morgan McSweeney, and others wedded to this disaster have got to be thinking about how to turn this around.

Writing at the end of last week, court chronicler Patrick Maguire had some useful advice to proffer. Labour should do what its right wing normally does, and look Down Under. A victorious election earlier this year, and polling that still puts them ahead of the Coalition is not to be sniffed at. Despite the rude intrusion of expenses scandals, they appear to be doing something right. Maguire reports that Bridget Phillipson has spent some time with the Labor Party, and she was impressed. Their secret? Bear down on the cost of living. Her behind-the-scenes advocacy for lifting the child benefit cap, and advocacy of cash transfers for parents instead of funded child care places are what she's brought to the table. And there's more!

We learn that the cost of living will be the focus of Starmer's big January speech, and the emphasis will be on what Labour has done to put pounds in people's pockets. Which, to be accurate, is what last month's budget is forecast to do. There will be more forthright language as well - Wes Streeting's "frustrations" with wonk-speak have been heard, it appears.

Could this herald a new spring for Labour? There are two problems. The first is that the party are skirting around the problem. Another big boost to the minimum wage and lifting the cap are welcome, and last week's interest rate cut also provides some relief to mortgage holders. But on price rises themselves, wages are still catching up with 2022's inflation spike. The increase in the median wage reported in April did outpace inflation, but for many people the ticking upwards of the food shop, rents, domestic energy bills, and insurance premiums makes it feel that the cost of living is too high. If Labour want to be seen as serious on this issue, they need to get more populist in their rhetoric and table legislation targetting profiteering and landlords. Measures I am sure they will never introduce.

The second is more explicitly political. The government completely lacks credibility. If the cost of living was prioritised at the beginning of Starmer's premiership, Labour would now be in a much better position. Instead we got a penny pinching move against pensioners' winter fuel payments and ministers demonstrated they could be just as entitled - and as sleazy - as the Tories by glutinously grubbing in the freebie trough. It's been downhill ever seen, except they've brought forward more policies and initiatives that have dispersed their support further. Are people in general going to start listening as government talking heads complain about the cost of living, while trumpeting their tinkering around the edges? Will the progressive support base Labour has ceded to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats get won back when other parts of the government are briefing against equalising the minimum wage, and Labour Together want to undo the thrice watered down workers' rights package?

Unfortunately, the May-time massacre in local government is nailed on, and most have already made their mind up about Starmer. But still, his replacement - provided they break with the backsliders on the right - would inherit a set of positions that might cause punters to reassess. A fresh face fronting a recognisably Labourish set of priorities could work. The Prime Minister though, this is all a bit too late for him.

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Local Council By-Elections December 2025

This month saw 30,896 votes cast in 20 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 11 council seats changed hands. For comparison with November's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Nov	+/- Dec 24	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	20	6,013	19.5%	+2.2	-2.6	301	-3
Labour	17	2,913	9.4%	-1.5	-15.0	171	-4
Lib Dem	17	6,367	20.6%	+7.8	+3.9	375	+1
Reform	19	9,570	31.0%	+3.4	+15.3	504	+7
Green	15	2,535	8.2%	-5.0	+1.1	169	0
SNP*	2	1,693	5.5%	+0.4	-0.9	847	-1
PC**	1	956	3.1%	+1.5	+2.8	956	0
Ind***	10	1,413	4.6%	-5.6	-1.0	141	-1
Other****	2	392	1.3%	-0.5	-0.3	196	+1

* There were two by-elections in Scotland
** There was one by-election in Wales
*** There were two Independent clashes
**** Others this month were Broxtowe Alliance (388), SDP (4)

Congratulations to the Labour Party. I thought last month was the pits, but December's results haven't met even my low expectatons. Vote tallies for by-elections indicate nothing apart from the a party's standing among the hardest of hardcore voters. And, demographically speaking, skew toward the elderly and the right. But even so, never before has Labour done as bad as this. Not even during the bleakest moments of the Corbyn years when the party was assailed by the media, and its coalition split by Brexit. Labour's run is worse than it ever was for the Tories got hammered in the wake of Liz Truss, which leaves one question. Can their support drop even further?

Meanwhile, Reform continue to benefit from a political environment Labour and the Tories think are to their advantage. The Conservative vote is proving more resilient, but you might expect that in a set of contests with an over-representation of right wing voters. A shame for them the same cannot be said for their seat retention. And so, as mainstream politics edges further to the right, Nigel Farage's followers are there to profit from it.

The Liberal Democrats managed to turn in a creditable performance, whereas this month the Green surge was but a rumour. And note the large vote for Plaid Cymru. Yes, it was a seat they already held but their share of the poll, when Welsh by-elections come around, have been scooting upwards.

In all, the last round of 2025's by-elections were great for Reform, very encouraging for the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru, and catastrophic for Labour. If Labour doesn't get rid of its leader and change direction, words much to this effect will appear here this time next year.

2 December
Derbyshire, Long Eaton North, Ref hold

4 December
Broxtowe, Stapleford South East, Oth gain from Lab
East Devon, Exmouth Halsdon, LDem hold
Middlesbrough, Nunthorpe, Ref gain from LDem
Torridge, Winkleigh, LDem gain from Con
Watford, Tudor, LDem hold

11 December
Caerphilly, Penyrheol, PC hold
Darlington, Red Hall & Lingfield, Ref gain from Lab
East Devon, Seaton, LDem gain from Con
Highland, Fort William & Ardnamurchan, LDem gain from SNP
Lichfield, Armitage & Handsacre, Con hold
South Kesteven, Aveland, Ref gain from Con
South Kesteven, Belmont, Ref gain from Ind
Stockton-on-Tees, Eaglescliffe West, Con hold
West Lothian, Whitburn & Blackburn, Ref gain from Lab

18 December
Blackpool, Greenlands, Ref gain from Lab
Cornwall, St Columb Minor & Colan, Ref hold
Harborough, Market Harborough Logan, Con gain from LDem
South Ribble, Broad Oak, LDem hold
Suffolk, Pakefield, Ref gain from Con

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