Best New Sci-Fi Books, Dystopian Fiction & Graphic Novels
Prepare for liftoff into the deep unknown and distant future with this guide to the best new sci-fi books coming out this fall. As a Galactic Guru, you know that there’s no better time to ponder the cosmos and dystopian worlds as the weather grows cooler.
Our editors have personally reviewed librarian recommendations, presales numbers and critical reviews to bring you the best of the best new releases. Whether you enjoy speculative fiction, space operas or dystopian thrillers, we have the perfect read for you. Transport your reading list to another dimension with these top-rated new sci-fi books. We are the titles that our book lovers recommend.
Best New Sci-Fi Books October 2026
A Wall Is Also a Road
by Annalee Newitz
Bestselling author Annalee Newitz invites us to explore a large and not-so-lonely universe in this science fiction adventure about what happens when the alien becomes familiar-and beloved.
Gardenpath is a graduate student. They also happen to be an amoeba-a slime mold, to be exact-from an ancient civilization that dwells in the space between the stars. And when they turn their many eyes to researching a remote spot on one spiral arm of the galaxy, they stumble upon a discovery that will change everything they thought they knew: a mysterious planet teeming with unexpected life, language, and culture.
One of these alien animals is a creature named Murtis, who lives in a city she calls Pompeii and works in a brothel known as "the lupanar." Unfazed when her strange visitor says she's from the stars, Murtis takes Gardenpath into her care, introducing her to the seaside tourist town full of immigrants and shopkeepers who are just trying to get by.
Before they met Murtis, Gardenpath expected to finish their research, present their discovery, and return home to become an acclaimed scientist. But as they look into their new friend's bizarre sensor bulbs from within the suit that allows them to survive and blend in on her surprising planet, they are beginning to wonder if there's more to life than academic achievement.
They're not sure what it is, but they're going to use science to find out.
A thought-provoking and heartwarming novel about science, the meaning of life, and love, perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Ryka Aoki, and Martha Wells.
As You Wake, Break the Shell
by Becky Chambers
Explore a universe of stubborn survival and found family, of persistent danger and quiet wonder in the first installment of a heartfelt new duology from Hugo Award-winning author Becky Chambers.
Life on the resource-poor planet of Fortune is challenging, but for its inhabitants, it's home. For two of them, Signy and Cora, this home might no longer be enough.
Signy is a brilliant but reclusive botanist who bio-prints medicine from her small plant shop, often bending the rules to help those the system leaves behind. Her life is filled with the green of her store, the warmth of her one elderly friend, and the quiet determination to help others without putting herself in danger.
Cora is a rorqual pilot, one of the few with the unique ability to navigate the massive, living ships that connect the scattered settlements of their solar system. Her bond with her rorqual, Colibri, is profound--a connection that is both her greatest gift and a threat to her career.
It is that threat--the "mindbleed," a dangerous side effect of her piloting--that brings her to Signy's shop, and her appearance puts Signy in the danger she so fears. But it's soon apparent it's not just about losing her license--this delicate balance between risk and trust has the potential to change everything for them.
Told in an alternating timeline of their initial coming together and a not-so-distant future where they have found domestic bliss, this is a story harrowing and haunting, heartfelt and hopeful. Through a love story centered around survival, we are given a glimpse into the very best of what Becky Chambers does in her writing: explore what it means to be human, and what it means to come together.
Broken Rival
by Tessa Bailey
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey comes a gripping, heated romance about a girl trapped in a new reality, forced to make a choice between two brothers--one who is the high school golden boy, the other sworn to hunt down her kind--time travelers. This is Tessa Bailey as you've never seen her before.
Magnolia Brown loves Friday night football games, volunteering and dominating at high school swim meets. Just your average everyday 18-year-old. Except for one thing:
She's from 50 years in the future.
Magnolia's parents, two brilliant scientists, are the inventors of time travel, but due to widespread destruction and rampant abuse of the technology from a corrupt few, time travel is outlawed and punishable by death. When Magnolia's parents are seized and executed for illegally traveling to the past, they leave Magnolia stranded in 2026 without a way to get home.
Now Magnolia has nowhere to turn but a complicated Kansas family with two sons--Fallon, her high school sweetheart with secrets of his own, and Ramsey, the brooding militia commander who hunts and kills criminals like her. Magnolia knows Ramsey resents and hates her, but how can he be her true enemy when he looks at her with such hunger, despite his callousness, and guards her with his very life? Which brother can she trust and is the real danger coming from inside the house?
Dark Reading Matter: The Last Thursday Next Novel
by Jasper Fforde
Will literary Special Ops agent Thursday Next find her happy ending? The outrageous, heartfelt conclusion to the New York Times bestselling series, which began with The Eyre Affair, will have you, Dear Reader, laughing out loud.
Ex-Literary Special Ops agent Thursday Next is embarking on her eighth and final fictional adventure, and she is well aware of the fact. The problem is, others are aware of it, too. Old foes and new are plotting a terrible revenge: to disrupt the narrative and make the last Thursday Next novel, Dark Reading Matter, not just unreadable but unpublishable. Thursday can't let that happen, and needs to use all her guile and narrative trickery to unmask the antagonists.
It won't be easy. The Martians have broken out of their H. G. Wells novel and threaten both the real world and the BookWorld. Agents from a higher reality want unfettered access to the Dark Reading Matter, the realm where deleted books and unrealized literary ideas end up. A Gateway to Hell has opened up at Wantage's Shakesmania, the nation's second-worst Shakespeare theme park, and the cozy world of Enid Blyton has been hijacked by ultra-right-wing nationalists. With Reality Field Distortion experiments going haywire, a partially redacted donkey, a BookWorld on the brink of losing its imaginative energy to Big Tech and a murderous stamp collector with philaticide on their mind, Thursday has to navigate a tightrope of borderline unusable narrative devices to bring the series to a satisfying conclusion.
It's a tall order, but Thursday has several secret weapons: her own adaptability; her husband, Landen; a host of stalwart friends and ultimately the most loyal compatriots she can call upon--her readers.
Earthrise: Inside Artemis II, the Groundbreaking Human Mission Into Deep Space (Original)
by John Larsen - Jeremy Hansen - Chris Hadfield
The dramatic, high-stakes account of Artemis II, the first human journey into deep space in fifty years, told from the perspective of astronaut Jeremy Hansen
The historic Artemis II mission was celebrated around the world and broke the record for the farthest distance humans have ever travelled from Earth. Jeremy Hansen and his crew mates viewed parts of the moon never before seen by human eyes, journeyed a total of 700,237 miles, took the next step in space travel--and won the hearts of everyone back home on Earth in the process. Now, Earthrise gives readers a passenger-seat view into the daring deep-space journey and the long years of intense training, grit, and perseverance Hansen needed to prepare for lift-off and fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut.
A riveting and intimate account of the iconic achievement of Artemis II, Earthrise--written by author John Larsen and based on extensive interviews he conducted with Hansen--is a testament to what can be achieved with unity, teamwork, and a bold belief in humanity's ability to reach for the stars.
Life Out of Order (Standard Edition) (Original)
by Audrey Niffenegger
"GRACEFUL, COMPLICATED, SATISFYING." – BONNIE GARMUS, AUTHOR OF LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
The multi-million copy bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife returns with an exhilarating speculative story set in a dystopian future where virtual reality and real life converge.
Alba DeTamble has never lived a life in order. Born with the same rare Chrono-Displacement Disorder as her father Henry, she slips unpredictably through decades, haunted by the secrets of a future she can witness but cannot change. As Alba strives to maintain a normal life with Zach, her safe, supportive anchor, she forms a tight-knit community of artists and activists who fight to take care of each other in an increasingly unstable world.
At once intimate and expansive, Life Out of Order plunges readers into a world of Niffenegger's dazzling imagination: from the riot-torn streets of a dystopian Chicago, to a digital museum for forgotten memories and lost artifacts. Curating this ever-expanding museum is Isadora, Alba's mysterious stepsister and an unsettling presence in their family - whose fate may be intertwined with Alba's in more dangerous ways than she knows.
Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, the story moves through a boundless, unfolding universe of virtual reality, skimming the wildest reaches of technology and our natural world. The result is a testament to the power of art and community to sustain us in these fractured times--and an epic tale that's set to define an entirely new genre in a way only Niffenegger can.
Serling: A Journey Into the Twilight Zone with TV's First Visionary
by Alan Sepinwall
New York Times bestselling author and esteemed TV critic Alan Sepinwall delivers the definitive biography of Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone. Serling's pioneering work not only included entertaining millions and shaping television standards, but also being an outspoken advocate on a range of social justice issues.
"What I write is a part of me," Rod Serling once said. Serling put himself into everything he wrote. You could hear his distinct voice coming through whether a script was set on another planet or a familiar suburban street. Many of the hundreds of original radio and television scripts that he penned were in some way inspired by moments from his own life: his idyllic childhood, his time in combat in the Pacific, the period in his early career where he earned a reputation as TV's "angry young man," and even his experiences as the famed writer, producer, and narrator of The Twilight Zone.
So it seems fitting that the definitive biography of a man who poured so much of himself into his material should use his fictional alter egos to help tell his riveting true story. Renowned TV critic and bestselling author Alan Sepinwall employs Rod's own writing to paint a portrait of this singular creative force, using episodes of The Twilight Zone and Rod's other work to set the scene and illustrate how thin the line was between the man and his art.
Serling died believing he had left not legacy, and that his work would quickly be forgotten. Yet celebrated fans like Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, JJ Abrams, Ben Stiller, Rian Johnson, Vince Gilligan, Rob Mac, and many more discuss with Sepinwall how Serling inspired what they do. A revealing portrait of a complicated, principled man, Serling pays due homage to one of the greatest activist writers ever known.
Soulhider
by Dan Aykroyd
The legendary Dan Aykroyd makes his literary debut with this mind-bending, page-turning speculative adventure about a regular guy caught up in a battle between warring aliens, told with equal doses of humor, suspense, and cosmic intrigue.
Doug Beeston is an ordinary insurance adjustor in his mid-thirties, living an unremarkable life with his wife and kids in central New York State. Until one day, out of the clear blue sky, Doug is tapped by alien lifeforms to take on an extraordinary mission. The assignment? Hide the human souls they've harvested for mysterious reasons of their own in various locations across Earth--using his prowess as a risk assessor to assure their precious commodities will not go missing.
Doug embraces his responsibility with pride, believing he's playing a crucial role in something far bigger than himself and enjoying the lucrative side of his new vocation. But as he soon discovers, he's not just a courier--he's a pawn. Multiple alien species are locked in a silent interdimensional rivalry, using Doug as an unwitting middleman in their cosmic chess game. The more he understands his role, the more Doug realizes that the fate of Earth itself may hang in the balance.
Channeling Dan Aykroyd's signature hilarious wit and deep fascination with the supernatural, Soulhider is a high-stakes, hilarious ride that only he could write, exploring the unseen forces shaping our world--both terrestrial and otherwise.
The God Notes: How Sound Creates the World
by Lynne McTaggart
From the author who proved our intentions shape our reality, an awe-inspiring scientific detective story revealing the mysteries of sound--impacting everything within and around us, from our cells and brains to other living things, our relationships and even the cosmos.
Specific sounds create major effects on the human mind and body, and there are both "good" sounds (or "God notes") capable of instantly transporting human beings into an altered state, or healing all manner of illness, and "bad notes" (such as from seismic rumblings, container ships, solar flares or wind turbines), causing distress or illness.
The God Notes takes readers through a mind-expanding and paradigm-busting scientific detective story of the universe as one intergalactic sonic superorganism, revealing that
- Rhythm, vibration and sound are responsible for many molecular functions in the body, from chemical reactions and nervous system messengering to the activity of proteins and collective brain activity.
- Plants can "hear"; certain sounds help them grow and also ward off predators.
- The sun, the planets, pulsars and even black holes emit rhythmic sounds now thought to contribute to the growth of entire galaxies and to have a profound effect on life on earth.
- A hidden "musical score," based on the work of the British mathematical code-buster Alan Turing, underpins every part of our vibrating universe, a vast physical patterning across all natural phenomena.
The God Notes is first book to explain just how the sounds around us and the sounds we make affect our lives, and the tools it offers can bring peace, balance, and harmony into our lives.
Truth to Power: A Luke Cage Marvel Crime Novel
by S. A. Cosby
Luke Cage plays detective and super hero when he uncovers a conspiracy turning vulnerable Americans into unwitting pawns of a madman.
New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby (King of Ashes) writes an original crime novel starring Harlem's unbreakable hero for the Marvel Crime thriller series for adult readers.
With advanced cybernetics showing up in the possession of low-level criminals, Luke Cage is hired to investigate a factory manufacturing medical devices in rural Virginia. Leaving Jessica Jones during a delicate moment in their relationship, he makes plans to travel south but is devastated to learn that a cousin who scoped out the plant for him has been found dead. The police report states it was an accident. But Luke has long known that official words are just that: words.
Fueled by guilt and vengeance, Luke arrives in Virginia and promises his aunt he'll get to the bottom of things. But danger lurks in every living room, barroom, and country road of Majestic, and the local sheriff's barely concealed prejudices are ready to boil to the surface. Even ordinary people seem to have no qualms about testing their might against the hero from New York City.
As Luke uncovers a conspiracy reaching to the county line and beyond, an persistent evil begins to take hold of the town, leaving Luke to hope that his unbreakable skin will protect him long enough to protect others and bring an end to the hate threatening to engulf the nation.
Truth to Power continues the Marvel Crime series that began with Lisa Jewell's Breaking the Dark and Alex Segura's Enemy of My Enemy. Bringing fans into a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe, Marvel Crime novels build on one another but can be enjoyed as stand-alone reads and will thrill even those new to the Marvel Universe.
Victorious
by V. E. Schwab
The triumphant conclusion to the Villains series from V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.
Eli Ever. Victor Vale.
Two men, first best friends, then mortal enemies, each destined to be the other's shadow.
One left standing--but the game isn't over yet
Against all the years-and the odds--a group of allies and arch rivals meet on a chess board set by an opponent they couldn't have predicted... to see who will be victorious.
The Villains Series
- Vicious
- Vengeful
- Victorious
Sci-Fi New Release Books September 2026
Buzzard
by Inez Ray
An urgent and electrifying must-read with shades of Octavia Butler and Mad Max: Fury Road.
Library journal calls it “a modern cousin of The Handmaid's Tale.”
In 2086, corporations are monitoring fertility. Abortion is illegal. And the last woman alive who can perform the procedure is in hiding.
Seven years ago, midwife Mae Bastet was arrested for infanticide in the fractious Arizona Territory for providing health care to women in need. She was torn from her sons and sent to Buzzard--an experimental private prison deep in the Sonoran Desert, run by the paramilitary corporation Obsityan.
Desperate to reunite her family, Mae tries to keep her head down, swallow her prison-issued hormone supplements, and do her job as a glorified school nurse to Obsityan's army of teenage drone pilots. But when mysterious, improbable pregnancies begin cropping up in her charges, she uncovers a web of secrets that has the power to destroy Obsityan. Mae must choose: stay complicit in Obsityan's crimes or hold fast to her midwife principles and risk never seeing her sons again.
Buzzard is a ferocious dystopian debut that traces the possible trajectory of our current political and technological reality--and the power of our deepest human bonds.
Exit Party
by Emily St John Mandel
The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman--a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State--searches for answers.
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party.
The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party's host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon.
An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
Helium
by Dave Kenney
Will wonders never cease? Joan has a gravity problem-and she's desperate to keep it hidden. Haunted by a loss too heavy to bear, she drifts to Palomar Gardens, a tiny Southern California commune where hope hovers and teases. Here she encounters George, a charismatic mystic whose lofty visions will soon captivate the world.
Drawn into George's orbit, Joan finds her footing. But the line between wonder and deception is thin, and her hold on reality slips. Improbable machines appear in the sky, only to vanish without explanation. Beautiful lies masquerade as truth. Her secret unmoors with consequences she cannot foresee.
Helium is a story of faith, folly, and the fragile human longing to touch the stars-of searching for a place in the cosmos where the possible and the impossible carry equal weight.
"A story about flying saucers, burgeoning cult leaders, and a heartbroken woman with a fantastical gift, Helium is a mesmerizing historical novel." -Clarion Reviews, 5/5 stars
"Enthralling literary fiction [...] the kind of book you devour." - Independent Book Review
"Engaging [...] a skillfully written, multi-dimensional tale." - BlueInk Review
"Strange, sorrowful, and luminous." - Literary Titan, 5/5 stars
Incarnate
by Alma Katsu
From beloved horror maven Alma Katsu comes a terrifying reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray for the internet age.
"Electric ... A deliciously addictive techno-horror that you can't look away from." -- Kylie Lee Baker, author of Japanese Gothic
Beauty doesn't fade. It feeds.
Dorothy Wagner has spent her whole life wanting nothing more than to be seen. But after failing to make her mark as an influencer, she takes a job working for a brilliant coder whose company is focused on cutting-edge deepfake technology. And there, in secret, is where she creates her salvation.
Isabella. An impossibly gorgeous girl who takes social media by storm. Dorothy's artistry is brilliant, and Isabella seems so real that she garners millions of followers. But everybody knows overnight success doesn't just happen. And when someone gets a little too close to the truth, a violent confrontation sends Dorothy on the run, forcing her to confront what she's willing to sacrifice to keep her secrets.
A modern reimagining of a classic tale, Alma Katsu's Incarnate is an illuminating, haunting tale of algorithmic worship and beauty that can kill.
Ply
by Hernan Diaz
"Ply is majestic. A cracked mirror world, a lot like ours; peopled by survivors, a lot like us; sentences so fine they break the skin; a plot that swerves through loss, love, trust, betrayal, art, science, society and control." -- David Mitchell
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust turns to the future with a novel that examines the place of technology in the American imagination
Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation. The state has been dismantled, and humans are reinventing social bonds and learning new ways to coexist with nature.
Following a childhood defined by loss, survival, and found family, the orphan grows up to become a "pincher," someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market. It's a high-risk life, one that brings her into a rich art and music scene where she powers underground concerts. It also leads her to a colossal scientific invention that could change the very fabric of reality.
After rewriting America's past with his two previous novels, Hernan Diaz defies expectations with his third and gives us a breathtaking glimpse into the future. A major achievement from a major contemporary writer, Ply questions the place of technology in the American experiment with a plot that grabs both heart and mind.
Combining Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller, Ply poignantly charts the tenuous boundaries of selfhood and the distance that inevitably stands between us and those we love.
Scion
by James Islington
John Wick meets Ghost in the Shell in this fast-paced cyberpunk thriller by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Will of the Many and The Strength of the Few.
My job, when you think about it, isn't so different from a lot of people's.
The more old-fashioned crowd do still get hung up on the "killing people" part of it, I guess, but that's a them problem: it's been perfectly legal to take out lifers for ages. Besides, once ultrawealthy morons realized they had a way to live forever--limited resources be damned--there was only ever going to be one genuinely practical deterrent.
So, sure, I have to deal with a ton of boring planning. Inconvenient hours. Some pretty awkward face-to-face interactions. And like most of us, I'm really only clocking in to try to crawl out from beneath my debts. But someone's got to do it.
Luckily, my genetic compatibilities make me really, really good at doing it.
Still. This next job ... I don't know. It's something I haven't had to deal with in years. Kind of the opposite of my regular duties. Strange, that it got thrown my way.
I'm sure it'll all go totally fine though.
The Strangers
by Naomi Alderman
From the bestselling author of The Power comes a part memoir, part speculative novel, following a writer wrestling with grief even as a new species is discovered, forcing humans to reconsider what it means to share our planet.
They came from nowhere, and now they are everywhere.
A few months after her mother dies, the novelist Naomi Alderman sets up a wildlife camera in the back garden of her parents' home. It captures the first image of a strange new animal. Low to the ground, about the size of a badger, flat face, long, trunk-like nose. Suddenly these "mimmoths" are as common as foxes or dogs. And no one knows where they've come from.
As Alderman negotiates the territory of grief--a place with its own logic and rhythms--the mimmoths spread. From the UK east and west, to the United States, to Russia, to India. They seem harmless, but oddly intelligent. They cannot be captured, they will not take food from humans, they have their own purposes.
Alderman cannot shake the feeling that she has a particular connection to the creatures. Or is she just succumbing to 'mimmoth psychosis'? As the impact of the mimmoths increases, she is pulled into the cross currents of conspiracy theories and global power struggles. Have her deeply personal forms of mourning lent recent events a surreal air, or is our reality changing drastically and irrevocably?
From the award-winning author of the international bestseller, The Power, The Strangers is a thrillingly original and devastatingly moving novel that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be human. It's like nothing you'll have read before.
Under Story
by Chloe Benjamin
The New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists returns with an intimate yet epic love story--and a sweeping odyssey of scientific discovery. Under Story invites us to consider the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love, cementing Chloe Benjamin's place among our best, and most lasting, storytellers.
"We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday."
At the edge of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she's ever known. For 10 hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career and a family.
But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can't escape her past. When a strange light appears across the ice--and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo--her former husband, Eli, won't be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive.
And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them--to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?
A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet, Under Story grapples with the great questions of our time: human hubris, the precarity of the natural world, and the mysterious webs of consciousness that bind us. A modern epic of science and soul, of bravery and redemption, it offers a vision of the future that demands we reckon with what we owe to one another, and to the earth itself.
Related Books Recommendations
If you enjoy fantasy, romantasy and epic world building, don't miss our Dragon Slayer Reading Guide. For more great sci-fi, speculative fiction and dystopian novels to add to your TBR, check out our Galactic Guru Book Recommendations for Summer 2026.