Science fiction to read: 2025 discoveries, 2026 editions and a list for 2027

The book you want next may be the one that moves quickly, or the one that leaves you looking differently at your own life. The most interesting science fiction often does both. An invention becomes a relationship. A system becomes a room someone cannot leave. A future city becomes a place where people still have to find work, love and a reason to get out of bed.

This reading guide follows a particular thread: minds, bodies, desire and power. It brings together recent releases and older books worth discovering, and explains which kind of reader each premise may suit. It is published on Esteban Lopez's author website, with his own novel introduced separately below.

Three 2025 discoveries

The Dream Hotel — Laila Lalami. A woman's dreams become evidence in a system that predicts wrongdoing. The premise places mental privacy beside the everyday machinery of institutional control. Consider it if you want a near-future dystopia whose threat reaches into an ordinary life. Its US first editions appeared in March 2025; the US paperback followed in June 2026. Publisher details.

Luminous — Silvia Park. In a future reunified Korea, a family of two human siblings and one robot sibling is drawn together through an investigation. The reading interest is intimate: what becomes of kinship when a body can be manufactured, repaired or replaced? Consider it for questions of personhood carried through family relationships. The US hardcover appeared in March 2025, with a paperback in March 2026. Publisher details.

Hammajang Luck — Makana Yamamoto. An ex-prisoner is offered another heist by the person who betrayed them. The space-station setting gives the familiar problem of trust a different scale, with inequality and belonging behind the action. Consider it if your next science-fiction read needs a caper as well as a social world. The author's site records the January 2025 US launch; regional publication dates differ. Author's book information.

What to read in 2026

A current reading list does not have to discard last year's novels. The 2026 paperback editions of The Dream Hotel and Luminous make both useful starting points for readers finding them now. They are new editions of 2025 novels, rather than newly written 2026 stories. Luminous paperback details.

For a different kind of reading evening, Recursion by Blake Crouch builds its thriller around memory, scientific discovery and a threatened reality. It was first published in 2019 and is identified by its publisher as a New York Times bestseller. Choose its premise when you want the scientific question to drive an escalating mystery. Publisher details.

For the human cost of intellectual ambition, The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut follows scientific and mathematical lives towards the development of computing and artificial intelligence. First published in 2023, it belongs in a different category from a conventional future-set thriller, but offers a strong bridge for readers drawn to discovery, obsession and consequence. Publisher details.

Planning your 2027 reading list

Begin with the experience you want: a mystery that accelerates, an invented city you can inhabit, a relationship changed by technology, or a scientific idea that unsettles your understanding of yourself. The books above are available starting points for that list; they are not being presented as 2027 releases.

For book clubs, a more revealing question than “Did you like it?” may be: which assumption did the story make you reconsider? The privacy of a dream, the status of a manufactured body, the reliability of memory, or the belief that progress is necessarily kind?

A new British-set future to explore

The Girl Who Knew My Mind is Esteban Lopez's own novel. Its second edition brings the investigation into London and Glasgow in 2046, where altered perception and shared consciousness meet unequal futures. Kathy Adey's search for an explanation becomes an experience she must live through: scientific uncertainty enters her senses, her relationships and her understanding of other people.

This is a reading option for someone seeking a consciousness thriller with emotional and sensual stakes, architecture, dark humour and an interest in how institutions assign value to a mind.

Read The Girl Who Knew My Mind on Kindle — Amazon UK · Buy the paperback — Amazon UK