The best new sci-fi this month from Michel Houellebecq to Booker-longlisted Richard Powers

There is a smorgasbord of new science fiction on offer in September, whether you are after high-end literary writing from the likes of Booker-longlisted Rachel Kushner and Richard Powers or universe-spanning romps from Yume Kitasei and Riley August. We have new work from the grandmaster Peter F. Hamilton, a glimpse of a near-future France from Michel Houellebecq and an intriguing vision of how we might deal with future plagues from Hannu Rajaniemi. My plan is to start with Kushner’s Creation Lake, move on to Kitasei’s The Stardust Grail and then dive into Powers’s Playground.

This is definitely on my reading list: in fact, I am hoping we might choose it for a future New Scientist Book Club read. Longlisted for the Booker already, it has been described by our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson as “a thriller, a spy caper, a comedy and also a poetic take on human history all the way back to the time our species, Homo sapiens, shared Earth with the Neanderthals”, and as “sensationally enjoyable”. It follows the adventures of a US spy-for-hire, Sadie Smith, as she tries to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists in France – I can’t wait.

Another Booker-longlisted novel here, and one from the astonishingly good Powers (Bewilderment is just excellent). He sets his latest on the island of Makatea in French Polynesia, where a disparate cast of characters gather as humanity plans to send floating, autonomous cities out into the sea. “The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep and alive,” says Percival Everett of this novel. I’m very much looking forward to it.

Maya Hoshimoto is an art thief turned anthropology student, but she is lured back to her old ways when she is asked to find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. As she sets off through the universe investigating, she discovers she isn’t the only one looking for it. Described as an “anti-colonial space heist”, this sounds excellent.

The acclaimed (and sometimes controversial) French novelist sets his latest outing in 2027, as France undergoes a series of cyberattacks during a presidential campaign. We follow the story of Paul Raison, an advisor to France’s finance minister, whose father has had a stroke and is in limbo in a medical centre. This has already been a bestseller in France.

Science fiction authors don’t get much more legendary than Peter F. Hamilton, and this latest sounds intriguing – it’s a novel set in the universe of new sci-fi role-playing game Exodus. Thousands of years after humanity fled a dying Earth in ark ships, the settlers of Centauri have evolved into advanced beings. Finn is one of them, but wants a different future and takes the chance to become a Traveler, exploring the far reaches of space. I’m not a gamer, but I always love an ark-ship story, and I trust Hamilton to pull this one off.

Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi

In the latest outing from this excellent sci-fi author, pandemics have brought civilisation to a standstill. The only way to survive is wearing an “Aspis chip”, which immunises you against any new viruses as they infect you. Not everyone wants it though, with the alternative being an underground community of biohackers, known as Darkome, who modify their bodies. Our protagonist Inara is from a Darkome village, but she needs an Aspis to keep her cancer in check, and this goes against everything the community stands for… This sounds great and scarily timely.

The universe is full of dead civilisations, and Scout is an archivist who scours dead worlds for anything interesting that might have been left behind. Now they have found a message from an alien who saw their world end thousands of years ago. I love the quote provided for this novel by writer Nadia El-Fassi: “Come for the space archaeologists and adorably violent Pumpkin the cat, but stay for a science fiction novel that will repair your soul.”

This sounds pleasingly creepy, just in time for autumn in the northern hemisphere. It’s set in a restored wilderness project in Ireland where five children, three teachers and one ranger are on a sleepover. But strange things have been happening here, from livestock mutilations to the discovery of unidentifiable tracks – and as the kids trek to the site, they spot animals that haven’t yet been introduced, from wolves and wolverines to things long believed to be extinct.

Time travel shenanigans abound in this latest from the author of the Time Police and The Chronicles of St Mary’s series. This time round, Taylor is telling the origin story of bounty hunters Lady Amelia Smallhope and Pennyroyal: “No bad guy they can’t handle. No expense account too flexible. No adventure too outrageous.”

This is a reissue of a collection of short stories written by Francis Stevens, the pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, an author who wrote most of her work between 1904 and 1919 and has been described as the “woman who invented dark fantasy”. These stories include one set in an alternate-future version of Philadelphia, now a totalitarian nation-state where citizens are numbered, not named. Just my sort of thing, and I love rediscovering old sci-fi classics.

This is the fifth in Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, set in a Tokyo café where customers can travel back in time – provided they come back to the present before their coffee gets cold. This time, those visiting the past include a father who couldn’t allow his daughter to get married and a boy who wants to show his divorced parents his smile.