![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sei263477766.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In Mason Coile\u2019s Exiles, a human crew arrive on Mars<\/p>\n
Shutterstock\/Gorodenkoff\u200b<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There are some sci-fi heavy hitters with new novels out this month, from Cixin Liu and Stephen Baxter to John Scalzi. I\u2019m keen to check out Ian McEwan\u2019s venture to a flooded version of 2119 \u2013 a drowned-world trope also taken up by Yume Kitasei in the intriguing-sounding Saltcrop. The late Mason Coile\u2019s tale of disaster in a new Martian colony, Exiles, is also tempting me, as is more time travelling noir from the excellent Nicholas Binge.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re taking a more classic route in the New Scientist Book Club this month, checking out Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s much-admired 1974 novel The Dispossessed. Come read along with us<\/a> and see how it compares to the best of today\u2019s science fiction. But back to September 2025\u2026<\/p>\n The literary writer turns to science fiction \u2013 and not for the first time (who read 2010\u2019s Solar?). In his new novel, we move from 2014, when a great poem is read aloud and then lost, never to be heard again, to 2119, when the UK\u2019s low-lying areas have been submerged. Scholar Tom Metcalfe looks back at the archives of the early 21st century, marvelling at the possibilities life offered back then. Then he finds a clue that might lead to the \u201cgreat lost poem\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a treat for fans of The Three-Body Problem \u2013 the collected short stories of Cixin Liu, which touch on first contact, machine intelligences and cosmological horror. There are 32 in total, and we\u2019re promised everything from solar systems being devoured to planets being turned into spaceships.<\/p>\n The 2024 adaptation of 3 Body Problem<\/p>\n ED MILLER\/NETFLIX<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Hearth is the \u201ccelestial birthplace\u201d of millions of planets, and humanity arrived there thousands of years ago, spreading itself across these worlds. When an unknown enemy sees the richness of the Hearth and wants to take it for themselves, Commander Ulla Breen must come up with a plan to unite its disparate elements and fight back. Will she also learn why humanity came here in the first place?<\/p>\n In a near-future version of Earth, coastal cities have been flooded by seas filled with mutant fish. We follow sailor Skipper, the youngest of three sisters, who makes a living by skimming plastic from the ocean and reselling it. When she receives a cryptic plea for help from her eldest sister Nora, who is looking for a cure for the world\u2019s failing crops, she and her other sister Carmen set out across the sea \u2013 and a dying world \u2013 to find her. Kitasei is the author of The Deep Sky and The Stardust Grail, and this sounds great.<\/p>\n In this time travelling police procedural, detective Julia Torgrimsen (good name!) is brought out of retirement to investigate the murder of a billionaire she worked with while undercover. But she finds two bodies \u2013 both of which are billionaire Bruno Donaldson\u2026 We loved<\/a> Binge\u2019s last sci-fi thriller Dissolution here at New Scientist, so I\u2019m looking forward to this one.<\/p>\n This is the seventh novel in Scalzi\u2019s Old Man\u2019s War series. There has been peace in interstellar space for a decade, but now the most advanced alien species humanity has ever met is on the verge of war \u2013 and Earth is being dragged into the conflict. Gretchen Trujillo, a mid-level bureaucrat, is given a secret mission that could change the future for humans and aliens alike.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sei263478223.jpg\")
<\/p>\n