As part of our ongoing preview of upcoming fall titles, we’ve sorted below a collection of the most interesting fantasy and science fiction books on the horizon, publishing in the U.S. between the end of August and December. As you will see, this collection is specific to the good old SF&F acronym. We had so many good horror books to consider that we split that off into a
separate preview collection, and we sorted dystopian/paranormal romance into the
romantasy shelves.
And we’re
still bursting at the seams. Seriously. It’s going to be a busy reading season. Several high-profile authors are releasing new titles this autumn, including
Chloe Benjamin,
James Islington,
Gregory Maguire,
Brandon Sanderson,
Adrian Tchaikovsky, and
V.E. Schwab.
In addition, autumn brings a wave of boundary-expanding books that might be best termed as literary sci-fi (we’ll be interested to see where bookstores shelve them). In September, for instance,
Emily St. John Mandel (
Station Eleven) returns with
Exit Party, an unnerving mind bender set in what’s left of the United States circa 2031. Pulitzer Prize winner
Hernan Diaz (
Trust) has similar anxieties in mind with his future-tense epic,
Ply.
On top of all that, this fall also brings a great assortment of debuts and other titles doing interesting things with the traditions of SF&F. For instance,
Kennedy Cole’s
There Used to Be People Here, which looks like the best
X-Files episode you never saw. Or
Scott Hawkins’ dark fantasy
Blacktail, written from the POV of…a wolf!
Finally, we’ve split off a bonus section at the bottom to highlight a few books where that line between sci-fi, fantasy, and other genres was so blurry that we decided “broadly speculative” was the best designation. You’ll find new work from
Naomi Alderman and
China Miéville here, plus short fiction collections from
Megan Giddings and
Ken Liu.
Click on the book cover images for more information about each title, and use the
Want to Read button to add books to your virtual bookshelf.
