The best new science-fiction books of June 2026 include novels from Adrian Tchaikovsky and M. John Harrison

Writing this as the UK swelters under an unprecedented May heatwave, perhaps it’s small wonder that so many science-fiction authors are currently imagining miserable versions of an overheated future in which their characters are struggling to survive. I’m intrigued by the sound of sci-fi legend M. John Harrison’s upcoming take on a dystopian future, but if post-apocalyptic hellscapes aren’t your thing, I’m also happy to report that there are other options for sci-fi fans this month. I’m already enjoying time-travel adventure The Traveler by Joseph Eckert. Next, I’m going to explore Isabel J. Kim’s sci-fi spin on immigration, Sublimation, as soon as I can get my hands on it. And then for a little light relief, I’m planning on lining up Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Green City Wars.

I am excited about this book: M. John Harrison is a really classy writer, winner of all sorts of awards, and his latest novel sounds right up my street. It’s set in a future years after an obscure “crisis” changed everything, in a world where the seas are full of new creatures. Phillip, who makes a living collecting objects that wash up on the tideline from the Channel, discovers a creature that keeps changing…

I started reading this over a weekend and it turned out to be exactly what I was in the mood for – a rip-roaring time-travel adventure with the love between a father and a son at its heart. It follows the story of Scott Treder, husband and father, who first “slips” on the way to work: one minute he’s in his car, the next he’s rolling down the road, his car gone – and it’s a day later. The slippages start at 7:52 am every morning and keep doubling in length until he’s hurtling through time, losing weeks, years, decades, as his son Lyle grows up before his eyes, and no one knows how to stop it. Lyle, though, is determined to catch the father who is leaving him behind.

This sounds really intriguing from the Nebula award-winning Isabel J. Kim. The conceit is this: when you emigrate, you leave a literal version of yourself behind. You can keep in touch with your original “instance”, in the hope of one day reintegrating; Soyoung Rose Kang, however, left home at 10 and hasn’t spoken to her other “instances” again. Now she’s living in New York, but when her grandfather dies, her Korean instance says she needs to come home for the funeral.

I’ve only just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s previous novel, March’s Children of Strife, and now sci-fi’s most prolific author has another book out. It does look fun, though – set in a solar-powered future, it sees humans living in luxury. It’s a luxury kept in place, however, by unseen “Little Helpers”: artificially enhanced animals who keep the green cities running and have one key rule: “do not bother the humans”. We follow freelance raccoon investigator Skotch, whose latest case is finding a fugitive mouse scientist – while also keeping that cardinal rule.

More post-apocalyptic survival here, but in the form of cosy romance. In this version of the future, Kayla lives in the wasteland of the Canadian Pacific Northwest. When her sister April falls ill, they trek to Salt Spring Island, which still has a hospital, but are unable to access its medical care. A panicking Kayla makes a deal with an aspiring politician, Sid, to save her sister – she’ll marry him to get her treatment. But real feelings start to emerge in this arranged marriage.

This novel sounds wild – but in a good way. Philip K. Dick award-winner Meg Elison imagines a world where some right-wing billionaires have decided to take control of the US by cloning the original Founding Fathers and raising them in secrecy, so they can restore the US to its “original glory” once they are adults. But then “Ben” (Franklin, I assume) discovers a smartphone in the “privy” of their isolated island plantation, and the young men decide to take their lives into their own hands.

The world of the future is (again) ravaged, and in Korea people escape their miserable real lives by using virtual reality headsets. High schooler Soop is bullied by her classmates because she is unable to access VR. She pins her hopes on meeting K-pop star Yichae, who is coming to film a music video at her school.

Schoolteacher Youngah lives her life according to everyone else’s rules but secretly hates it. So, she undertakes a four-week emotion-regulation programme. Once completed, she unleashes her unfiltered self on the world, throwing off the expectations that have always been imposed on her – and she loves it.

In a small feminist community on an isolated mountaintop, Mila is struggling to keep things from falling apart, while nearby an orchid endling is about to die. When the women of the community mysteriously become pregnant, and Mila gives birth to the only boy, their ideals are put to the test.

VALET by J.P. Lacrampe

Helper robot Cy isn’t delighted when he’s tasked with helping his owner’s 35-year-old son Grayson “get out of his funk”. But then Grayson discovers that his CEO sister, Charlotte, is planning to sell the family company to a tech conglomerate, and he decides to plot a corporate takeover. Cue a “mad-cap adventure”, which the publisher says is a “whimsically speculative ode to Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster”.

It’s 1977 in an alternate US, one where the US launched its space program shortly after the second world war. Mitch joined the US Spaceguard because his lost love, Flynn, did; he’s been stuck in a backwater moon base ever since – until he’s dishonourably discharged and returned to the US. Then Flynn comes back, claiming to be the host for an emissary from a utopian alien civilization…

This is the sequel to Hamilton’s EXODUS: The Archimedes Engine, set in a far future where the human population has been reduced to little better than serfs by the Celestials. Can Finn and his allies finally throw off their shackles?

Defrosted by Cristina LePort

This high-concept medical thriller sees cryogenically preserved scientist Peter and his wife Monica wake up two centuries into the future. The world they discover is dystopian, with the devastating “mitocancer” a global threat.