Oryx And Crake by Margaret Atwood
Oryx And Crake is set about 50 years in the future, and features some pretty wholehearted science fiction-type names and characters. There’s Snowman, a hermit; Crake, a rogue geneticist; and Oryx, whom Snowman loved in the past. Oh, and it’s all taking place in a world after a waterless flood, seemingly arranged by corporate scientists. But… and it’s a big but!… this isn’t cheesy Dungeons & Dragons territory.
What elevates this is Maragaret Atwood’s exquisite ability to create a credible universe and people it with three-dimensional characters. Hers is the standard by which other science fiction is judged, as whatever she writes – genre aside – is utterly compelling. Darren Aronofsky is adapting the three-book series for HBO, which sounds pretty perfect.
Vintage, £8
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The Jewel by Amy Ewing
Classic teen dystopian romances work so well because they trade so effectively on the ‘but no-one understands me’ lament beloved of all teens. Which doesn’t mean they’re not a deliciously guilty pleasure for the rest of us. Violet Lasting is about to become Lot 197, auctioned as a surrogate, valued only for her ability to provide a healthy heir for ‘The Duchess’. Then she meets the royal companion... fans self
This is classic hangover reading – there are ludicrously fancy ballgowns, people playing the cello very intensely (hello Witches of Eastwick) and a forbidden love in a futuristic kingdom. Basically, it’s Barbara Cartland if she’d ever bothered to get off her chaise lounge and exercise her imagination.
Walker Books, £7.99
*****Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes *****
Lauren Beukes does not seem much interested in deferring to genre. Last year’s The Shining Girls was time travel led – the action starts in 1931 when a potential serial killer discovers a Tardis/Narnia-type house that lets him appear in different eras – to pluck victims from across decades. Understandably, this renders him largely undetectable, until he attempts an attack on fantastically wise-ass Kirby Mazrachi.
Broken Monsters, out last month, is more like a horror novel. Set in a festering, decaying Detroit, it sees a horrific murder with an animal twist investigated by a satisfyingly three-dimensional female detective Gabi Versado. Her teen daughter also features, making this another novel whose treatment of both women and victims is robustly feminist and intensely readable.
Neither novel ever feels like you always dreaded science fiction would. In fact, you end up wishing you could slow time yourself in order to fit in a few extra pages on the commute.
Harper Collins, £7.99
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Annihilation is the first in The Southern Reach trilogy, the last of which – Acceptance - is published next month. Four women are heading to investigate ‘Area X’, once an environmental disaster zone, now a sort of nature-resort-gone-wrong. They’re the twelfth lot to try – others have all variously committed suicide, killed each other, or returned ‘not quite the same’.
It has shades of Lost, nods to Margaret Atwood, and more than a splash of the Alien movies, particularly as it’s made up of properly strong female voices. It’s weird and unsettling – the kind of hypnotic story that ends up nagging at your imagination just as you’d decided you really did hate science fiction after all…
4th Estate, £9.99
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Never Let Me Go by Katzuo Ishiguro
Until Never Let Me Go Ishiguro was best known for The Remains Of The Day, his pre-Downton blockbuster about forbidden love among the servants of a 1930s English country house. This time the setting is a classic English boarding school… except of course it isn’t. The pupils are largely clones, only in existence in order to provide organs for others.
Again, this is a novel that works for the science-fiction-phobic as it’s taking place in a world familiar enough, but creepily distorted. Emotions aren’t to be trusted as they’re manufactured, relationships are unsettling as they come at a price, and any creative impulse is potentially dangerous. Bewitching.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.