The best science fiction books of November 2025 include one by Claire North and a 10th anniversary edition of an Adrian Tchaikovsky classic

We’ll need to get our skates on if we’re to keep up with all the new science fiction published in November. New Scientist sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson is adamant that we must read Claire North’s Slow Gods, and I’m inclined to take her at her word (you can read her review in next week’s issue). I’m also up for terrifying myself with Rebecca Thorne’s tale about a zombie-esque virus spreading on a submarine (claustrophobic!). And I am  creeped out by the idea at the heart of Grace Walker’s The Merge. Everything feels frightening this month – perhaps the sci-fi world is still in Halloween mode. But I’m also looking forward to something different, a literary tale about the extinct Steller’s sea cow, Beasts of the Sea. It sounds poignant, moving and beautiful, and without any supernatural scares.

Emily H. Wilson is wild for this sci-fi novel: I’ve not heard our sci-fi columnist recommend a book so wholeheartedly in all the time she’s written for us. It follows Mawukana na-Vdnaze, a deep-space pilot who died and was reborn – and it tells of a supernova event “that burned planets and felled civilizations”. Emily says: “READ THIS BOOK. If you love sci-fi, this is for you” in her upcoming column. So, I will, as she’s always bang on the money.

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen, translated by David Hackston

This isn’t really sci-fi, but it is fiction about science, and as a huge fan of the sea cow, ever since I first learned about them in Willard Price’s Adventure books as a child, I’ll be reading it. It starts in 1741, when naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller joins an expedition to scout out a sea route from Asia to America, and comes across the animal that will be named for him: Steller’s sea cow. Then in 1859, the governor of Alaska sends his men to find a skeleton of the huge marine mammal said to have vanished a century earlier, and in 1952, a restorer sets to work refurbishing the antique skeleton.

This might sound like it strays into the realm of fantasy, but its publishers are comparing it to Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, so I am hoping there’s enough time travel there to satisfy sci-fi fans. Moving between postwar and cold-war US, it is set in “the time space”, a library filled with books containing the memories of those who have died. Lisavet is trapped there aged 11, in 1938, and grows up only able to learn about the world by sifting through the memories of the dead. Then she realises that government agents are coming to the time space to destroy memories that don’t fit in with their preferred version of history…

We covered this novel in 2022 when it was self-published, and our sci-fi columnist of the time, Sally Adee, really enjoyed it. It’s now been snapped up by a big publisher, and I might finally read it because it sounds like a lot of fun, and fittingly scary around the spooky season. Entities called antimemes are feeding on the most cherished memories of the book’s characters – and stealing those memories away without their knowledge. This enemy is invading – but no one even knows they are at war.

Ice by Jacek Dukaj, translated by Ursula Phillips

A deadly winter descends on Russia following the impact of the Tunguska asteroid in 1908. As the land freezes, people head for the cities to try to survive, the extreme cold starts to transmute the elements into strange new forms and a new type of physics develops.

Amelia’s mum Laurie has Alzheimer’s. As her symptoms worsen, Amelia decides to sign them up for the world’s first experimental merging process for people with Alzheimer’s. Laurie’s mind is transferred into Amelia’s body, and their consciousnesses become one. They move to a luxurious rehabilitation centre known as The Village, along with other participants… but things aren’t what they seem. Honestly, just the idea of the treatment is enough to terrify me.

Zombies and submarines and terror at sea – oh my. Nix and Kessandra are investigating a massacre in the underwater city of Fall, but as they descend, Kessendra reveals that the massacre was caused by a sickness that turns people into mindless killers. And the disease is on board…

There’s an interdimensional war going on in this novel, and it is “one of the most brutal the multiverse had ever seen” (that’s pretty brutal then). We’re following Bess, a teacher turned renegade turned hero who has a very smart gun named Wakeful Slim. The story is set in the previously imagined world of the Pandominion, but it is a standalone sci-fi adventure from the author of The Girl With All the Gifts (a really good zombie novel if you’ve not read it).

This epic sci-fi novel is the seventh in the Sun Eater series, and sees Hadrian Marlowe on the run, hiding beyond the borders of human space from the Extrasolarians and from the Sollan Empire he betrayed.

Of course, this brilliant novel isn’t new – but this 10th anniversary edition of the story of humanity trying to survive on a terraformed planet includes an exclusive short story by Tchaikovsky. So, fun for fans, and a good reminder of a great novel for those who have yet to read it.

This is the first English language print edition of what the publisher says has been an “online cult sensation”. It explores the “potentials and pitfalls of human evolution”, from the author’s imagining of how genetic manipulation will shape life to how the colonisation of Mars will affect us, and also includes Kosemen’s illustrations. Adrian Tchaikovsky, no less, calls it “an astonishing merging of scientific acumen and imagination”. Intriguing.

This high-concept thriller sounds fun. AI runs the world, but it has just stopped working – just after telling everyone about the worst things their loved ones have ever done.

Mindworks by Neal Shusterman

There is a gorgeously surreal cover for this collection of Shusterman’s short stories, which include visits to a world where the sun is blocked out by bats and one where the life force of a glacier can bring back the dead.