A roundup of the best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror releases features compelling new works from acclaimed authors. Among the highlights are Isabel J Kim's debut novel Sublimation, Andrés Barba's ghost story Last Day of a Prior Life, and Paul Tremblay's unsettling Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep. Each book offers a unique take on genre conventions, blending speculative elements with profound human themes.
Sublimation by Isabel J Kim
This debut novel from award-winning Korean-American short fiction writer Isabel J Kim reimagines the immigrant experience through a fantastical lens. In Kim's world, anyone crossing a border with no intention of returning creates an 'instance': a duplicate self who continues life at home. Reintegration into one body is possible, but after years of separate experiences, protagonist Soyoung questions whether it might be the psychological equivalent of murder. This idea shocks her friend Yujin, who speaks daily with his instance in New York, waiting for dual citizenship to allow them a privileged life between two countries. The story is told in the second person, a destabilising choice that gradually immerses the reader in a world of doppelgangers. As in our reality, travel is hedged around with bureaucratic systems designed to codify identity and control immigration. The result is a brilliantly realised, imaginative and compelling work of literary speculative fiction.
Last Day of a Prior Life by Andrés Barba
Translated by Lisa Dillman, the latest novel by Spanish author Andrés Barba offers a gentler, more unusual approach to the ghost story. An estate agent encounters a child in an empty house she is trying to sell, and realises she has met a ghost. The experience causes her to reflect on her closest relationships and to act in ways she never has before. Knowing it could be dangerous, she returns to the house, determined to help the child from another time who is trapped there. This short, subtle, eerie tale hides depths beneath a surface simplicity.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
Horror writer Paul Tremblay's latest novel explores the darker side of science fiction, imagining a brain implant that allows the dead to walk. Julia is hired to use a games control console to operate a man in a vegetative state, making his unresponsive body stand, walk, turn around and sit down. Her job is to conduct him from California to the east coast, supposedly so his final wishes will be honoured and he can legally die by his own choice. There is nothing dignified about their jerky progress through airports and planes, as they try to avoid attention to the man she calls Bernie, pretending he is her stroke-disabled father walking under his own power. The creepy, dark humour in Julia's narrative is undercut by horror in chapters from the perspective of a man trapped in a body he cannot control, unable to remember his own name, but increasingly determined to escape and find answers. Things grow progressively more dangerous, building to a mind-bending shocker of an ending.
The Carrier by Ruth Newton
In this debut novel, a Carrier—always female—is someone paid to process another's pain, relieving the customer from negative emotions such as jealousy, grief or anxiety. The mechanics do not stand up to close inspection, but as an allegory for commercialised lives and the expectations of women's emotional labour, it is right on the nose. This cleverly plotted thriller shines a light on how fortunes are made by inventing new addictions, and how easily unfair treatment may be hidden or simply accepted. A thought-provoking read.
Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd
Set in present-day London, tech entrepreneur Inigo Frank launches his latest venture: commercial time travel. Only the super-rich can afford it, and the huge amount of energy required to keep a gateway to the past open for even a few minutes is hardly eco-friendly. Moreover, the past is not fixed. If visitors do something that could change the course of history, even in the smallest way, no one knows how it might affect the present. Visits to the 1940s are restricted to a few hours within walking distance of the London site. When the third tour returns minus one tourist and with another badly injured, characters have the unsettling feeling that certain details in their own lives do not match their memories. A clever, exciting time-travel thriller filled with unexpected twists.
