The big new science fiction and fantasy books coming out in 2023

There are some years that have been better than others in science fiction, fantasy and horror. N.K. is the most recent blockbuster year. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Wizard of the Wildeeps, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy, Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance, Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti, Scott Hawkins’ Mount Char Library, and Naomi Novik’s RerootedThere are many other options.

Although I am optimistic about 2023, it is going to be an exciting year. We’re getting new books from legends like Fonda Lee, Kelly Link, Annalee Newitz, Malka Older, Shannon Chakraborty, and Leigh Bardugo, new translations of Mariana Enriquez and Yuri Herrera, and debuts from exciting new voices like Moses Ose Utomi, Jinwoo Chong, and Jade Song.

There are many excellent books in 2023, so I kept this preview limited to January to June. This is because the second half of the year remains uncertain at the moment. The first 2023 half-year will bring you the top science fiction and fantasy books.

Cover image for Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent, which features a rabbit between the words of the title and the author’s name

Jan. 10

Ninth House — Leigh Bardugo’s debut adult fantasy novel about secret societies delving into the occult at Yale University — was one of the best books of 2019. This year, she’s back with a sequel called Hell Bet where sophomore Galaxy “Alex” Stern searches for a way to rescue her mentor, Darlington, from hell. Fans of Bardugo’s young-adult Grishaverse (adapted by Netflix into Shadow and Bone) often say each of her books is better than the last, and that’s certainly the case with Hell Bet a fantastic adventure that deepens the series’ lore before ending with yet another devastating cliffhanger.

Cover image for Josh Riedel’s Please Report Your Bug Here, which features the Golden Gate Bridge leading into the water, with neon pink and green around it.

Jan. 17

Riedel’s debut novel is a smart and timely thriller about Ethan Block, an entry-level developer in San Francisco who discovers a glitch in a popular dating app that physically transports him to other worlds. Or maybe… it’s not a glitch after all? If that isn’t tantalizing enough, here’s the kicker: The author was the very first employee at Instagram.

Cover image for Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers, which features a futuristic cityscape with lush greenery.

Jan. 31

Wired. Gizmodo Alumnus returns to Gizmodo with their third science fiction book Terraformers set on an exoplanet in the distant future when nearly all conscious beings are considered “people,” from animals to artificial intelligences. Written in three novellas set thousands of years apart, it’s an epic geo-engineering thought experiment on the scale of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, and a refreshingly hopeful vision of humanity’s fate among the stars.

Cover image for Mariana Enriquez’s Our Share of Night, featuring a red hand with long yellow fingernails.

Our share of the nightMariana Enriquez translated by Megan McDowell

Feb. 7

The genius Argentinian writer of Smoking in bed: The dangers is back with a gothic fever dream of a horror novel about a father and son who travel to the ancestral home of their late wife and mother — only to find an ancient secret society called the Order is obsessed with making the son one of their own.

Cover image for Stephen Graham Jones’s Don’t Fear the Reaper, which shows a hook tearing the book cover apart.

Feb. 7

In Stephen Graham Jones’ last novel, My Heart is a ChainsawJade Daniels, a teenager of Indigenous descent, used her love for horror films to escape a Proofrock, Idaho slasher. In this second book of a planned Indian Lake trilogy, Jade meets her match when another serial killer — Dark Mill South, a hook-handed murderer who escapes his prison transfer during a snowstorm — “knows all the same movies we do.”

The cover of Matt Ruff’s The Destroyer of Worlds, with a mushroom cloud against a pink backdrop behind a swamp.

Feb. 21

HBO’s version of Lovecraft Country didn’t get a second season, but fans of the book are getting a direct sequel from Matt Ruff. In the summer of 1957, the characters from the first novel are spread across the country on different quests: Atticus and his father Montrose retrace their enslaved ancestor’s journey through North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp, and Atticus’ uncle George Berry makes a deal with the ghost of a white sorcerer in Chicago. Meanwhile, Hippolyta, Horace, and Letitia make a research trip to Nevada for the family’s Safe Negro’s Travel Guide. In the end, both their stories collide to create a stunning finale.

Cover image for Colin Winnette’s Users, a minimalist design with bright vibrant colors.

CustomersColin Winnette

Feb. 21

Colin Winnette’s last novel was one of my favorite gothic horror books of the 2010s. This time, he’s satirizing Silicon Valley with a clever sci-fi thriller reminiscent of Apple TV’s Severance. When a VR developer named Miles creates a new app called The Ghost Lover — which simulates your real life, but haunted by the ghost of one of your ex-lovers — he sets off a chain of events that ruins his life.

Cover image for Shannon Chakraborty’s The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, with a globe and waves.

February 28, 2008

Shannon Chakraborty is best known for her Daevabad trilogy beginning with 2017’s The City of Brass. The action-packed series opener is a historical romance set in 16th century England. It’s a mix of both. Ocean’s ElevenAnd Pirates of the Caribbean, is about a former sea captain who returns for one last mission to rescue a friend’s granddaughter from a sorcerer, with tons of lore and surprises along the way.

Cover image for Jacqueline Holland’s The God of Endings, a side portrait of a woman with what looks like a smaller book cover (with a keyhole) over her face.

March 7,

Ana, a young girl from New York in 1830s is at the brink of dying due to tuberculosis. Her grandfather gives her immortality. In 1984, she goes by the name Collette LeSange — and if that doesn’t tell you what kind of immortal she is, I won’t spoil it for you here. Chapters alternate between her mysterious past and her present running a fine arts preschool out of her grandfather’s upstate mansion, until figures from her past start to catch up with her.

Cover image for The Mimicking of Known Successes, featuring two silhouetted figures in front of looming Jupiter and a sci-fi cityscape.

March 7,

If you’ve ever wanted a Sherlock Holmes mystery set on the planet Jupiter, Malka Older’s new book is, well, exactly that. Her Centenal Cycle series was not defined by cyberpunk geopolitics.Informationmocracy and Null StatesAnd State TectonicsThis novel (#1) is a short romantic story that’s cozy, sweet, and sapphic. A detective and her classics scholar ex are investigating a murder at Jovian University.

The cover image of Owen King’s The Curator, featuring a cat silhouette filled in with both the galaxy and a red door.

March 7,

Stephen King’s younger son, Owen, returns after The Sleeping BeautyWith a third novel, set in Dickensian’s Fairest where cats are considered divine beings and violent revolution underway. It’s a complex, engaging, surprising historical fantasy that I applaud King for keeping under 500 pages, as it could have easily run twice as long in the hands of a less focused writer.

Cover image for Erin Slaughter’s A Manual for How to Love Us, with a person’s face hidden among flowers, leaves, and a wolf.

March 14

Erin Slaughter’s debut short story collection is a speculative Cracker Jack box, with emotionally resonant and creepy tales set throughout the American South like Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters. It’s full of mystery boxes, twists, reversals, and grieving women searching for ways to survive.

Cover for Jinwoo Chong’s Flux, with liquid metal against a yellow background.

FluxJinwoo Chhong

23 March

I didn’t think I’d ever read another novel like Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This is how you lose the Time War, but Jinwoo Chong’s debut novel is a similarly brilliant time-travel puzzle box. It’s about three characters — the 8-year-old Bo, 28-year-old Brandon, and 48-year-old Blue — whose lives intersect in surprising ways thanks to a corporation that seems to be using time travel to hide its dark side.

Cover image of Nathan Ballingrud’s The Strange, depicting a diner on Mars.

23 March

Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters is one of the best speculative short story collections ever published, and now he’s back with a novel that sounds like a working-class Western set on the planet Mars. Set in the frontier town of New Galveston, 14-year-old Anabelle Crisp’s life changes when “the Silence” cuts off all trade and communications between Earth and its Martian colonies and a violent gang attacks her father’s diner, setting her on a course for revenge.

Cover image for Moses Ose Utomi’s The Lies of the Ajungo, featuring a figure walking upside down on mounds of sand as a castle lurks in front.

23 March

Moses Ose Utomi’s debut novella is the first of three planned books in the Forever Desert series. It begins in the City of Lies. This is where the young men are sent by their tongues to receive water from the Ajungo Empire. Tutu is one of these boys and he sets out on dangerous expedition into the desert to find another source of water for his mother. Along the way, he uncovers many shocking truths.

Cover image for Yuri Herrera’s Ten Planets, featuring a figure wearing a space suit.

Ten PlanetsYuri Herrera was translated by Lisa Dillman

23 March

The science fiction stories that comprise Herrera’s slim new collection are philosophical thought experiments in the vein of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics. In “Whole Entero,” a glob of bacteria in someone’s intestines gains consciousness. In “The Last Ones,” a man walks across the Atlantic Ocean on top of floating garbage. And in “The Conspirators,” two different groups of human colonists — from two different eras — arrive at a distant exoplanet at the same time.

Cover image for Kelly Link’s White Cat, Black Dog, with a black puppy sitting in the middle of what looks like an open coconut.

March 28

Kelly Link, a speculative writer of short stories of great quality, is renowned for this collection. In “Skinder’s Veil,” a man agrees to watch his friend’s house, only to discover it’s some sort of portal between worlds. In “The White Road,” a nomadic group of actors stumbles upon a hastily abandoned town alongside a mysterious white road. And in “The White Cat’s Divorce,” three brothers attempt to win their eccentric father’s estate.

Cover image for Jade Song’s Chlorine, featuring a large fin in the ocean waves.

March 28

Song’s haunting, one-of-a-kind debut is about a first-generation Chinese American teenager named Ren Yu — a competitive swimmer who loves the water so much, she dreams about being a mermaid. And then she stops dreaming and starts… making it happen, “no matter how much blood she has to spill.”

Cover image for Allegra Hyde’s The Last Catastrophe, featuring silver flowers against a neon pink and blue background.

March 28

Allegra Hyde wrote one of 2022’s best novels, Eleutheria,And her second story collection. Last CatastropheThis book has more positive visions than many of the other books, even though there is the threat of climate change. In these 15 stories “spanning the length of our very solar system,” a woman fated for an arranged marriage befriends the artificial intelligence holding her captive on a spacecraft, a small-town girl grows a unicorn horn, and a caravan of RVs rambles across North America like the Traveling Symphony in Station Eleven.

The cover of Michelle Min Sterling’s Camp Zero, featuring a woman’s face as snow falls around her.

Camp ZeroMichelle Min Sterling

April 4,

Rose, a female spy sent by America to monitor Camp Zero in Canada as climate change heats up the world and causes more refugees every day. To start their society, White Alice and a small group of women soldiers have taken control of a Cold War-era research station. Camp Zero is full of surprising revelations and a welcome sense of optimism about humanity’s future.

Cover image for Fonda Lee’s Untethered Sky, with a young woman standing as a large bird soars overhead.

April 11

Untethered sky is Fonda Lee’s first book since concluding the Green Bone Saga last year with Jade Legacy, and it’s an epic fantasy about a woman who learns to ride a giant mythical bird called a “roc” to hunt down the manticore that killed her family.

Cover image for Nicholas Binge’s Ascension, featuring a very angular snowy peak.

April 25,

Binge’s new novel has an irresistible premise: What if a massive mountain appeared in the middle of the Pacific Ocean overnight? A scientist of “mysterious phenomena” named Harold Tunmore leads a team to investigate, but they find that the higher they climb, the weirder things get — even the passage of time.

Cover image for Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars, featuring a scythe chopping through the words with a bright yellow background.

May 2,

Author of short stories collection Friday Black returns with his first novel, set in a future where the most popular sports league in America isn’t the NFL or NBA, but something called CAPE — Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a gladiatorial combat tournament where prisoners compete for their freedom. Thurwar, fan-favorite Thurwar, is just a few matches away with a pardon. However the private prison industry has its own agenda.

May 9

C.E. McGill’s debut novel is an ambitious FrankensteinMany unexpected twists await you in this sequel. In 1853, years after Victor Frankenstein went missing, his great-niece Mary and her husband, Henry, are paleontologists who want to re-create Frankenstein’s experiment to create new life — but this time, instead of a human, they’re bringing a plesiosaur back to life.

Cover image for Temi Oh’s More Perfect, a kaleidoscopic image with buttons for play, pause, stop, rewind, and fast forward in the middle.

April 30

The science fiction story of Eurydice & Orpheus takes place in near future London, where implants allow people to experience social media through augmented reality. However, the British government makes use of public safety to make the technology evil.

Cover image for Martha Wells’s Witch King, featuring a young woman moving quickly while wearing a cloak.

April 30

This full-length fantasy novel, written by the Murderbot Diaries author, features a demon called Kai. Kai wakes up from his mortal body after it was killed. He travels the world searching for his lost allies — including a witch, an Immortal Marshall, and a Lesser Blessed — to find out who killed them all and why.

Cover image for Rita Chang-Eppig’s Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea, with facial features set against a crashing wave.

June 6

Chang-Eppig is able to bring to life a legend Chinese pirate queen in historical fantasy adventures, along with myths about the ocean goddess Mazou. Shek Yeung, her husband being murdered, fights for control over his fleet as the Chinese Emperor sends an army to eliminate all pirates in South China Sea.

Cover image for J.R. Dawson’s The First Bright Thing, featuring an hourglass with a red circus tent at the bottom.

June 13

Fans of Erin Morgenstern’s Night CircusYou will love this first novel, set at the Circus of the Fantasticals. It features a ringmaster who can travel through the time of the performers and supernatural abilities. There is even a war brewing.

Cover image for Julia Fine’s Maddalena and the Dark, featuring a woman playing the violin against a floral wallpaper backdrop.

June 13

This gorgeous and moving Italian historical fantasy is set in 18th-century Venice, when two violinists in Antonio Vivaldi’s all-female convent orchestra — Luisa and Maddalena — bond over their desire to be the best. But Maddalena has been meeting a mysterious stranger in a seemingly magical gondola at night, and making wishes at an abandoned sea shrine that will change the course of both girls’ lives.

Cover image for S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws, with a painted image of a person on horseback with a spear.

June 20

S.L. Huang’s new novella is a queer epic fantasy about Lin Chong, a weapons expert who trains the Emperor’s army until an incident forces her into exile. She is on the run when she meets the Bandits in Liangshan who may be strong enough to aid her in destroying the empire.

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