26 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward To In 2026

We are so lucky to have such an incredible year ahead of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative works from a mix of established and debut authors. In an unsurprising bit of kismet, a lot of these books are about the yearning to better know ourselves (and others) through archaeological expeditions, language mind-melds, video game creation and playthroughs, heart-spirit poems laced with love and hate, or one person crossing a border and branching into two selves. There’s immortality entwined with property acquisition and cadaver dating apps and more than one magical or intergalactic heist! Get ready to (re)meet pirate queens, magical medical students, the Lady of the Lake, the Little Mermaid, and the Founding Fathers through these insightful, incisive, inquisitive, imaginative works.

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Shen Tao, The Poet Empress (Bramble)
January 20

Every detail from this interview with Shen Tao has me psyched for her debut: It was her ninth unpublished novel, which she wrote partially out of frustration; it centers on the heart-spirit poem, a verse that kills its target only if written with love; and it subverts romantasy expectations. Oh, the plot? Strap in: rice farmer Wei Yin tricks her way into being chosen as one of the emperor’s concubines, in order to get revenge for the famine that killed her siblings. Once embedded, she must teach herself to read in order to write the heart-spirit poem to wield against Azalea House’s heir—but learning of his traumatic past doesn’t mean she’ll forgive him for it.

Sarah G. Pierce, For Human Use (Run For It)
February 10

I met my husband on OkCupid in the 2014 heyday but have heard that since then, the dating apps have devolved into swiping fatigue and bots. Sarah G. Pierce’s speculative horror debut takes it to a darker and yet unsurprising place: Liv, an app that matches the lovelorn with cadavers. Amplifying the satire is the fact that Liv’s most outspoken proponent and opponent are both men: entrepreneur and founder Auden White versus venture capitalist Tom Williamson. Rounding out their triangle is Mara Reed, a woman in Auden’s inner circle who might have some killer secrets for Tom.

Casey Scieszka, The Fountain (Harper)
March 17

For over a decade, Casey Scieszka’s Catskills Bed & Bar the Spruceton Inn has sponsored writing residencies for over a hundred authors including spec writers like Carmen Maria Machado and Aimee Pokwatka (whose new book Accumulation comes out in May). Now, Scieszka’s debut filters Tuck Everlasting-esque immortality through the social media age—examining how someone hides their eternal lifespan from facial recognition technology and venture capitalists looking to capitalize upon family property and the ultimate anti-aging secrets. Forever age 26, Vera Van Valkenburgh returns home to the Catskills after nearly two centuries, seeking release from immortality, but instead grapples with the aforementioned property developers and her estranged brother.

John Chu, The Subtle Art of Folding Space (Tor Books)
April 7

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning short fiction author John Chu’s debut is a quantum physics feast of the personal and the (multiply) universal. Sisters Ellie and Chris clash over how to care for their comatose mother, who Ellie visits every week, in-between assassination attempts from Chris. There’s something wrong with the skunkworks, or the machinery that keeps each universe functioning; their cousin Daniel discovers an illicit device in the skunkworks that is keeping their mother alive—but which has the potential to collapse this universe.

Cameron Reed, What We Are Seeking (Tor Books)
April 7

Not since Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow have I been this excited for a sci-fi novel about a man getting stranded on an alien planet. It’s not Jesuits and first contact with a humanoid species and conlang, but it’s a doctor from a world without marriage stuck among Scythian people who practice matrimony (gasp) while plants give birth to insects. As Cameron Reed told Reactor, “It’s got weird biology and alien languages and a surprising amount of cooking, but mainly it’s about how to make a life when you’re forced to live among people with radically different customs—whether they’re human, alien, or AI.”

L.D. Lewis, Year of the Mer (Saga Press)
April 7

If you’re part of the SFF community, no doubt you’ve seen L.D. Lewis’ name affiliated with organizations like Clarion West, the Ignyte Awards, and FIYAH Literary Magazine (which she co-founded), as well as her speculative poetry and short fiction. Her debut novel is a bloody reimagining of The Little Mermaid, exploring the ripple effects of how Arielle’s choices affect two kingdoms and two generations. With her father assassinated, her mother poisoned, and the throne taken in a coup, Arielle’s granddaughter Yemaya Blackgate has little choice but to turn to Ursla, the sea witch who has been biding her time since she lost her bargain to Arielle. But both Yemi and her bodyguard/fiancée Ennova Grey fear that the princess may never be able to swim back to the surface from Ursla’s literal and metaphorical darkness. Lewis has described the book as both a “sapphic tragedy” and a “harrowing beach read.”

Laura Cranehill, Wife Shaped Bodies (Saga Press)
April 14

Nicole is the kind of wife who moves out of her father’s home into her husband’s home, and who has been taught to be repulsed by the mushroom spores covering her body, just like all the women in their community. As she haunts her husband’s decaying house rather than build a life together, Nicole finds a kindred spirit in another spore-wife—one whose rebellion sparks Nicole’s resentment into full-on retribution. While you wait for the next season of The Last of Us, the growing subgenre of mycological horror is here to show a monstrous new way to reshape the world.

S.L. Huang, The Language of Liars (Tordotcom Publishing)
April 21

Ro is a linguist and a spy, dedicating his life to the crucial moment of absolute psychic connection with a Star Eater. Only those humans who have mastered this alien species’ language can mind-meld with them to learn their secrets to harnessing space travel. But with Ro’s training comes a necessary layer of emotional distance: It will feel real, his elders tell him. It will never be real. And only by comprehending the Star Eaters will Ro also comprehend his part in their potential destruction. All that in a novella!

Portia Elan, Homebound (Scribner)
May 5

Big Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow vibes with this debut, which opens in 1980s Cincinnati, as queer teen Becks mourns her beloved uncle by completing a video game project he left her before he died. But their collaboration doesn’t just bring Becks closure; it ripples across the centuries, connecting her to a 400-year-old sentient automaton, a scientist astronaut slipping through time, and a 26th-century sea captain on a space odyssey.

Ann Leckie, Radiant Star (Orbit Books)
May 12

The latest standalone novel in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe concerns a metaphorical moment of going supernova: As the Radchaai prepare to absorb a religious site into their empire, they concede to the people of Ooioiaa by allowing for one more person to become a “living saint” at the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star. But a religious savant’s preparations to be mummified occur against the backdrop of food shortages, riots, and a communications blackout from the rest of the Imperial Radch… which sounds like Ooioiaa going out with more of a bang than a whimper.

Sarah Gailey, Make Me Better (Tor Books)
May 12

It always gets my attention when an author describes a book as their most ambitious work to date. Especially from Sarah Gailey, whose high-concept SFF works feature clone wives, sentient (and sexy) parasites, and magic school noir—now, delving into the darkness of self-improvement communities. Desperate for some way to heal herself, but especially for a family, Celia jumps at the chance to visit Kindred Cove and its fabled Salt Festival. No matter that the remote island and its reclusive community should give her pause; she’s willing to do whatever they say. No matter that the mysterious reef surrounding the island is impossibly still growing; Celia wants to be part of something. She’ll get her wish, no matter how much it hurts.

S.A. Chakraborty, The Tapestry of Fate (Harper Voyager)
May 19

Amina al-Sirafi sails again! Our favorite pirate queen and mom-doing-her-best thinks she can truly have it all: scouting lost treasure for immortals, raising daughter Marjana—despite hiding what exactly takes her away for stretches of time—and even the occasional pirates’ adventure out, as a treat. But when her latest husband, discord spirit Raksh, provokes the council’s wrath, Amina must clean up his blunder, contend with Marjana’s demands for the truth…and figure out who on her crew is plotting a mutiny.

Molly Tanzer, And Side By Side They Wander (Tordotcom Publishing)
May 19

The sheer audacity of the recent Louvre heist has whetted us readers’ appetites for heist stories—space heists, all the better! Joining the ranks of books like Yume Kitasei’s The Stardust Grail is Molly Tanzer’s novella, which follows a group of misfits trying to infiltrate the intergalactic Greenwood Museum. Three hundred years ago, its alien curators proposed a simple trade to help Earth with its climate and cultural issues: our artifacts as collateral for their aid. But now they won’t give it back—and why can’t humans just enjoy the replicas, anyway? As narrator Fennel Tycho explains how the heist went south, Tanzer examines real versus fake, clones versus their primes, and synthselves versus humans.

Isabel J. Kim, Sublimation (Tor Books)
June 2

Isabel J. Kim has been publishing SFF short fiction since 2021; her debut novel is an expansion of her first published story, “Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self,” in which immigration splits you into two selves, or instances. Soyoung Rose Kang leaves her instance behind in Korea at ten years old, as they go on to lead separate adult lives. When Rose’s grandfather dies, her instance calls her back for the funeral—but she’s plotting to de-instance or merge them and steal her life in America. A TV adaptation is already in the works for this Past Lives-meets-Severance mashup.

Melissa Albert, The Children (William Morrow)
June 2

Melissa Albert brings all the dark magic and fraught mother/daughter dynamics of her contemporary fantasy YA novels The Hazel Wood and The Bad Ones into her adult debut. Siblings Guinevere and Ennis came of age in their mother Edith Sharpe’s popular Ninth City fantasy series, their fictional adventures other kids’ bedtime stories. But they also came of age half-feral, underfed, in rural 1990s Vermont, where they more often than not fled their artist mother as she turned out stories…until a fire consumed their house, her life, and her unfinished stories. In adulthood, Guinevere is peddling a ghostwritten memoir and estranged from Ennis, until he reemerges with an art installation that digs at emotional scabs, forcing her to reevaluate their shared—or separate—memories of their unusual upbringing.

Deb Olin Unferth, Earth 7 (Graywolf Press)
June 9

Two women, Dylan and Melanie, cross paths on an artificial beach in a near-apocalyptic meet-cute: one has emerged from the underwater pod in which she was raised, the other works at a luxury resort as a bartender…and may also be a robot. But in a world where most Earthlings have either fled to Mars or uploaded themselves into a digital network, it’s not so strange a way to find connection—especially when they bond over an ambitious plan to collect enough molecules to start life over on a new Earth.

Grace Curtis, Heaven’s Graveyard (DAW)
June 16

Grace Curtis’ latest had me at “sinister lesbian history mystery,” but let’s excavate further, shall we? It’s a science fantasy mystery about archaeologist Cod hunting the ghost of her idol Aleya Ana-Ulai, who most of her peers and friends have written off as entirely a myth rather than a flesh-and-blood figure. A breakthrough comes when Cod’s former mentor unearths the ruins of an enchanted city—here might finally be solid evidence of Aleya’s existence! But there might be ancient magics trapped underground as well, sparking competing interests with Cod’s potential discoveries in this standalone adventure.

Meg Elison, Foundling Fathers (Tachyon Publications)
June 23

Meg Elison describes her satirical novella as “Hamilton x The Boys From Brazil,” but I’m getting big “Clone High x The Village” vibes from the premise: A right-wing billionaire cabal clones the Founding Fathers and raises them in isolation…until clone!Benjamin Franklin discovers a smartphone on what he believes to be a 1750s-era plantation, and it all goes to shit. I can’t wait for Elison’s skewering take on why returning to the past is never a good idea, even (or especially) with futuristic tech.

H.G. Parry, The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood (Redhook)
July 21

I’m a sucker for a Lady of the Lake retelling, and this WWII-era Arthuriana promises to scratch the itch created by Alix E. Harrow’s The Everlasting (one of my favorite books from last year). In 1941 Wales, the populace all begin dreaming of King Arthur’s return, while also claiming to witness waking phenomena like dragons in the London Underground and lights at Stonehenge. All except librarian Elaine Ambrose, hell-bent on protecting the British Museum’s artifacts from the Blitz yet somehow connected to the sorceress Nimue, herself a protector of a certain mythical sword. Can’t wait to dive into this one.

august clarke, The Felicity Complex (Erewhon Books)
July 28

I’ve been eagerly awaiting august clarke’s dystopian satire since Reactor Magazine teased it in 2023, but the official cover copy is even more tantalizing: Hallelujah is one of six lab-grown women raised in a Cold War-era billionaire bunker ready to cater to the one percent at the end of the world. Except that perhaps Hallelujah, her lover Anastasia, and her sister specimens didn’t realize that they were less hospitality workers for the filthy-rich survivalists and instead more, er, service models. The fact that they use Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot as a comp promises scathing commentary on what men expect from women literally made for them, and how those women learn to find the loopholes in their creation in order to ensure their survival.

K.S. Shay, Portrait of a Witch Undone (Erewhon Books)
August 25

More SFF heists! Debut author K.S. Shay asks, “Ever wondered who was behind the largest art heist in modern history—the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist in 1990? Ever think about it so much that you wrote a book where the art was stolen by witches to imprison a demon? Haha me neither…” In her contemporary fantasy novel, ex-witches and estranged friends Maeve and Ash both got burned by Maeve’s botched spell to contact the dangerous and demonic Lady of the Fens, who blasted Maeve with unbound wild magic slowly eating away at her until she becomes one of the Lady’s Revenants. But when Ash discovers a link between the Lady and the Gardner Museum heist, literally disappearing into a portrait frame, Maeve must follow her to the Other Marsh—the Lady’s dark domain, where the rules of magic are twisted in her favor.

Freya Marske, Bodies of Magic (Tor Books)
September 15

Every new Freya Marske story provokes a squee, but a magical medical school murder mystery (say that five times fast) sounds like the darkest thrill yet. The Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr’s latest cohort of healer mages are about to embark upon the Grand Exam: five days, five cases, five candidates who must all pass—or fail—together. But on day 1, they discover the dead body of one of their classmates, who would have beaten them all had she still been alive. The stress of medical exams plus mysterious magic and motives to uncover…! Just what the doctor ordered.

Emily St. John Mandel, Exit Party (Knopf)
September TBD

How I love seeing the Mandel Literary Universe keep expanding and/or branching off into parallel realities! Where her 2022 novel Sea of Tranquility addressed the COVID pandemic (as well as time travel and future pandemics), her latest Exit Party explores political schisms in an alternate 2031: The Republic of California has separated itself from the rest of America, but for one night the curfew is lifted in Los Angeles and of course there’s a big party. Like in The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility, this soiree will include people who should not be there and reveal potential different lives for our protagonist: this time a young woman named Ari, recently released from prison. I can’t wait to see how many of Mandel’s characters reappear, whether as the versions we’ve met or entirely new selves depending on what timeline we’re in. “A story of crimes committed and loves lost across space and time” is how the UK publisher Picador describes it in the announcement—eagerly waiting for my invite.

Becky Chambers, As You Wake, Break the Shell (Harper Voyager)
October 13

What’s that warmth creeping over you? Why, it’s the awareness of new cozy sci-fi from Becky Chambers, this one a duology. Told in alternating timelines between present meet-cute and future domestic bliss, it follows two humans on the misnomered planet of Fortune: Signy is a botanist who bio-prints medicine for those who need it, even if their resource-poor world won’t allow that kind of mutual aid. Cora is a rorqual pilot who has an unusual connection with her living ship—the kind of connection that could ruin her flying career. Her search for an unorthodox aid is what brings her into Signy’s shop, and the rest is future history. But even if we have an idea of how it ends, Chambers will no doubt take us on several emotional detours to reach our destination.

Nghi Vo, The Scarlet Ball (Tor Books)
October TBD

Some book announcements get dropped as I’m in the final days of compiling this list, and they’re auto-adds, like anything by Nghi Vo. But especially her demonic take on Edith Wharton, in what Reactor describes as “a nightmare of manners”? Hell yes. Judith Ban is a Gilded Age grifter, accustomed to stitching faces onto her own in order to steal others’ fates. Her latest con is impersonating missing heiress Iphigenia Marshall to make her debut with the Four Hundred, New York’s high society matchmakers of demonic marriages.

Daniel Abraham, Judge of Worlds (Orbit Books)
Fall TBD

Yes, we’re kicking off the year by looking forward to the end of an era—specifically, the Kithamar trilogy from Daniel Abraham, one half of the author duo James S.A. Corey (who also has The Faith of Beasts out in April). Age of Ash introduced readers to the sprawling city of Kithamar, its centuries of multiple identities layered upon one another, through the movements of a dozen key citizens. Blade of Dream retold the events of the first book through what readers might have written off as secondary characters, maintaining the dramatic irony throughout and building to a hell of a cliffhanger. Now it all culminates in Judge of Worlds, whose cover copy I don’t even know yet but I’m psyched to see how Kithamar ends (and begins again?) come fall.