Cal Flyn, Deputy Editor

Every year, the judges of the Arthur C Clarke Award select the best sci-fi novels of the previous twelve months. We asked prize director Tom Hunter to talk us through the six science fiction books that made the 2023 shortlist—including a space opera romance and a high-concept action thriller that has already won the most prestigious award in Francophone literature. See our list of The Best Science Fiction of 2024

Environmental history is the study of the relationship between society and the natural world—both in terms of human impacts on the environment, and the constraints placed upon cultures by the landscapes they live in. Here, John R. McNeill, a pioneer of the field, recommends five of the best environmental history books with ambition, engaging prose, and heft.

Many of us fantasize about suddenly coming into a great fortune, but literature has often explored the dissatisfaction and moral corruption of the very wealthy. Here, the novelist and broadcaster Andrew Hunter Murray selects five brilliant novels about rich people and reflects on why you probably don’t want to be a billionaire.

Korean popular culture—television, film, and music—has been sweeping the globe. But Korean literature is darker and more serious than you might assume, given the fun and irreverent nature of ‘K-pop.’ Here, the respected translator and academic Bruce Fulton highlights five key Korean novels that offer insight into the culture and troubled history of the Korean peninsula.

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor—chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Those seeking insight into the otherworldly landscape and unique culture of Iceland would do well to read these five books, ranging from a work of ethnography to a spellbinding fantasy novel, selected for us by the award-winning memoirist Sarah Thomas. In Iceland, she explains, the landscape “is a protagonist, not a backdrop; one from which we can learn everything we need to know.”

Space opera—a popular subgenre of science fiction—features louder-than-life characters, hair-raising action sequences, and spacefaring civilisations. Kate Elliott, a prolific author of sci fi and fantasy novels, recommends five space opera books that will grab you by the collar and drag you off on an intergalactic adventure.

History too often glosses over basic questions of subsistence and food availability, argues Oxford academic Diane Purkiss—whose new book English Food is a social history told through the food on people’s tables. Here, she recommends five books about the history of food that focus on the diet of the common person as opposed to the royal banquet table.

Science fiction helps us work through not only the possibilities of the cosmos but also the nature of humanity itself, argues Jaime Green—science writer and author of a new book on the search for alien biology, The Possibility of Life. Here she highlights five classic works of sci-fi that explore ideas of consciousness and communication in the setting of outer space.

Nature is intrinsic to our experience of being alive and reading about it allows us to connect not just with the natural world but with ourselves. Here Victoria Bennett, author of All My Wild Mothers, a memoir of grief and creating an apothecary garden, recommends five other nature memoirs, highlighting personal and reflective prose by writers including Lauret Savoy, Mary Oliver, and Jamaica Kincaid.