I was eagerly awaiting the English translation of Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, The city and its uncertain wallssince it was published in Japan early last year. It’s out in time for Christmas and sounds delightfully dreamy and speculative. November also offers us what sounds like a delicious treat: an intergalactic cooking contest, in Interstellar MegaChef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan. But this month is most notable for the wealth of tales on offer, whether the long-awaited final sci-fi anthology captained by the late Harlan Ellison (“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Ellison remains one of the most haunting stories I’ve ever read), or Eliza Clark’s debut collection. Lots of delights to dip in and out of, for all of us who feel too agitated to sit down with a full novel.

I’m very excited about this one. Our previous science fiction columnist, Sally Adee, pointed it out as something to watch in 2024: it’s an expansion of a story Murakami published in 1980 and returned to during the pandemic. It follows a man whose girlfriend has disappeared and sets out to find the imaginary walled city where his true self lives, but he has no memory of his life in the other world. “At a time when society is undergoing shocking changes, remaining locked inside the wall or moving to the other side of the wall has become a more important proposition than ever,” Murakami said. saying.

I missed this one last month, but I’ll include it in our November roundup because I’m sure many of you will be interested in hearing about it. The legendary Ellison published two seminal science fiction anthologies, Dangerous visions and Again, dangerous visions. In 1973, he announced a third volume, The last dangerous visions. It was never published, but now, six years after his death, it is finally published, with 32 never-before-published stories, essays, and poems by authors including Max Brooks, Dan Simmons, Adrian Tchaikovsky, James SA Corey, and Cory Doctorow.

This is the second in a trilogy set in deep space and it sounds so tempting that I think I’ll have to start at the beginning. In it, the crew of the Artemis investigates why Earth’s first deep space colony has fallen silent and discovers what has become of the remaining colonists. Horror and adventure: that’s what I like.

This is more of a thriller than sci-fi, but it features a pretty sci-fi medical treatment and is pretty funny, if a little silly (I’ve read it). It follows troubled presenter Hollie, who exposes the dangers of extreme therapies in her Netflix series. bad medicine. She seeks out wellness guru Ariel Rose, who says her “ice rebirth” treatment can cure pain. Will Hollie survive her trip to Ariel’s luxurious mountain retreat?

Set in a city populated by intelligent robots called Hums, it follows the story of May, who goes away for a weekend to the botanical garden in the heart of the city. But it turns out that the green refuge is not the idyll she expected, and when her children are threatened, she is forced to trust Hum. “This elegant novel further cements Phillips’s position as one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction,” said He New York Times.

This is described as a “genre-bending” collection of short stories, ranging from a teenage UFO enthusiast who meets a famous painter when a mysterious orb appears in his desert town, to married ghost hunters whose relationship begins. to fail when one of them stops being able to see spirits. “Full of menace and delight,” says excellent writer and editor Kelly Link.

This is billed as a slice of postmodern horror about day jobs and monsters, and follows Noah, who takes a job for a newspaper and unknowingly signs his life away, and Malachia, the only human left in the City of Silence.

Described as the extension meets game of Thrones‘ Night’s Watch, at least a surefire way to draw me in, is the conclusion to Dewes’s Divide series and sees his heroes set out to save the universe from a horrific genetic fix that’s about to be unleashed on the outer colonies.

This Korean bestseller, a sequel, is set in a world where a “dream industry” exists and sees Penny working for her Civil Complaint Center, where people file complaints about their dreams.

This sounds like a lot of fun. Saras Kaveri has been invited to compete on the most watched cooking show in the galaxy: she is the first competitor from Earth, which is considered to have very primitive inhabitants who still cook with fire. When he accidentally meets Serenity Ko, they begin working on a new technology that could change the future of food forever.

The second in Broaddus’ Astra Black trilogy follows the story of the Muungan Empire, a coalition of city-states stretching from Earth to beyond Titan, and the threats it faces.

This first-ever collection of speculative body horror stories ranges from the story of a scientist working with fragile alien flora to a teenager longing for perfect skin. We are promised that it will be disturbing and that its editor will “mix” it with dark humor.

Researcher Kembral is enjoying some time away from her newborn at the New Year’s Eve ball when a mysterious clock begins sending the ballroom through layers of reality every time it rings. Can he save the world before it’s too late?

Another anthology that sounds interesting, this time with promising proposals from authors like Nicholas Sansbury Smith, whose story takes place in the radioactive wasteland that is now the Earth, and Brian Francis Slattery, who tells the story of a couple whose relationship becomes strained after of the arrival of an exotic species.

it’s new trip to the stars adventure, based on the television series Star Trek: Strange New Worldssees Una Chin-Riley and Christopher Pike working together on the USS Enterprise, years after they first became friends. When a terrorist attack occurs, it is discovered that Una has a history with the suspect…