‘Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do,’ Margaret Atwood famously said, often considered mother of the genre. ‘Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.’  

Her comment emerged during a long-running (and occasionally heated) debate – one that saw her butt heads with SF titan Ursula K. Le Guin, who countered that speculative fiction is science fiction, and that trying to draw a line between them was merely splitting hairs. 

Whichever side of the fence you sit on, most of us can agree that works of speculative fiction offer a window into worlds both strange and familiar, inviting readers to question what might be possible, just beyond the edges of our current reality. Most would also agree that speculative fiction is having a moment. This year alone, four novels longlisted for the International Booker Prize sit firmly within speculative territory – begging the question: What in our current world is pushing writers, and readers, toward imagined futures and alternate presents? 

If you’re asking similar questions and looking for answers, these Booker-nominated novels offer sharp, surprising reflections on society – and what might come next.  

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder 

On an unnamed island controlled by a totalitarian, government-run militia, things begin to vanish – and when they do, people forget they ever existed. Only a select few can remember, and the Memory Police are on a mission to ensure those people are erased too. A young novelist hides her editor, who can still recall the past, in a desperate attempt to preserve what remains of truth and identity. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, this haunting dystopia explores repression and the terrors of state surveillance, echoing the greats such as Orwell and Kafka. 

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood 

The first book in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the population has been wiped out by a plague. Snowman, possibly the last human alive, survives alongside a group of bioengineered creatures he calls ‘the Crakers’. He reflects on his past life, where he was best friend of the brilliant but dangerous Crake, whose genetic experiments spiral into catastrophe. Snowman grapples with the weight his role in the downfall of society while facing this entirely new world. Written amid the 2002 SARS outbreak, Atwood weaves biotech, climate disaster and corporate greed into a cautionary tale that was shortlisted for the Booker in 2003. 

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda 

In a distant future, humanity sits on the brink of extinction. Small tribes inhabit Earth under the vigilant gaze of ‘Mothers’ – AI figures that oversee reproduction, raise children, and manage the evolution of humanity. Humans are now genetically engineered. Some are grown from animal cells, while others derive sustenance from water and light, resembling plant life. When shortlisted for the prize, the International Booker Prize 2025 judges described the novel as ‘an urgent enquiry into the implications of AI, the promise of a genetically adapted or machine-led future for the human project, but done in a gorgeous, ambient, non-doctrinaire sci-fi style’. Across 14 interconnected stories, Hiromi Kawakami speculates on a world that has evolved beyond human limits, while raising big questions about connection and survival. 

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel 

A mysterious ‘clinic for the past’ in Zurich offers patients with Alzheimer’s the chance to live again in the decade of their choice, in Georgi Gospodinov’s International Booker Prize 2023-winning novel. But as an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’ while hoping to escape the horrors of modern life, the past slowly begins to invade the present. Translated into English by Angela Rodel, the novel explores two timely global themes: the weaponisation of history and the seductive dangers of nostalgia. ‘It compels us to question our concepts of identity,’ said the panel of judges that year, ‘not just national, individual, societal, but also historical and temporal’. 

On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J. Haveland 

Cross Groundhog Day with a metaphysical crisis, and what do you get? Solvej Balle’s slip of a novel, On the Calculation of Volume I. Tara Selter has slipped out of time, and every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. But for everyone around her, it’s a new day they’ve never lived before. They do not remember, and they do not believe Tara when she tries to explain. Through Balle’s sharply observed realism, Tara’s endless loop reflects on isolation, memory, and the fragile scaffolding of shared reality. This is the first in a planned septology, and when it was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025, the judging panel said it was ‘a profound meditation on love, connectedness and what it means to exist, to want to be alive, to need to share one’s time with others’. 

Bewilderment by Richard Powers 

Astrobiologist Theo Byrne raises his troubled son Robin after the death of his wife. While Robin is loving and funny, he is also consumed by the planet’s suffering and his own grief. As everything else fails, Theo enrolls Robin in an experimental programme led by AI-mediated neural imaging, allowing him to get closer to his mother’s mind. Powers blends elements of traditional sci-fi with the speculative, using both to tenderly explore this father-son relationship against the beauty of the cosmos. ‘The book has its roots in two different worlds,’ said Richard Powers in an interview with the Booker Prizes upon being shortlisted for the prize in 2021. ‘It is, in part, a novel about the anxiety of family life on a damaged planet… but it is also a kind of “planetary romance” that pays homage to both contemporary and classic speculative fiction.’ 

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter 

Presented as the fragmented manuscript of a failed writer, Solenoid pulls us into the rhythms of an ordinary life, before veering into something altogether stranger. Set in 1970s communist Romania, it’s a surreal, sprawling journey by way of a tuberculosis preventoria, anti-death protests, dream-detecting societies and even via the lives of dust mites on a microscope slide. Mircea Cărtărescu’s novel is huge in scale and anything but straightforward, blending sci-fi, philosophy and autobiography in looping, labyrinthine prose. ‘It’s a mind-boggling, bravura and ceaselessly entertaining book, unlike anything else,’ said the International Booker Prize judges, when it was longlisted in 2025, adding that it transports readers ‘to the far sci-fi reaches of the imagination and back again’. 

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 

In this alternate take on history, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad depicts one woman’s attempt to escape the horrors of slavery. This railroad is not just a metaphor but an actual subterranean train network ferrying enslaved people to freedom. Cora, a young woman escaping a Georgia plantation, embarks on a harrowing journey in a dilapidated boxcar, travelling across different states; each embodying a different dystopian vision of American racism. Whitehead’s story uses speculative elements to deepen the emotional and historical truth of slavery. It often feels difficult to tell where reality and fantasy blur, yet they combine to create an essential reminder of America’s bloody past in this Booker Prize 2017-longlisted novel.  

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 

One of Kazuo Ishiguro’s best-loved novels, Never Let Me Go takes readers to Hailsham, a school in late 1990s England – but it is not the England we know. At first glance, Hailsham seems like a typical boarding school, but its students are clones, created to harvest their organs for others. ‘If the story works close to folktale, the concept satisfies an anxious interest in speculative and dystopian fiction,’ wrote Anne Enright, praising Ishiguro in the Guardian. While many works of the genre are set in radically different worlds, Ishiguro’s novel takes a more subtle approach, and it is here that it finds its success. His world is understated yet devastating, and despite being written 20 years ago and shortlisted in 2005, Never Let Me Go continues to feel relevant, especially in our current reality where genetics and AI begin to combine. 

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook 

Set in a near-future America ravaged by overpopulation, climate breakdown and pollution, The New Wilderness explores a world where mega-cities have slowly consumed the natural world, leaving little but a toxic wasteland. Bea’s daughter’s failing health leaves her with one choice – to join an experimental programme to live nomadically in the last scraps of unspoiled wilderness, where she is forced to abandon everything she knows. Survival in this new wilderness, however, is not for the faint of heart. Author Diane Cook portrays the bleakness of life on the edge while exploring the complexities of a maternal bond in extremes. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020, it’s a hauntingly urgent tale of survival that challenges readers to reckon with their own environmental impact. 

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell 

In David Mitchell’s signature style, The Bone Clocks features a set of interlocking stories spanning decades and multiple timelines. His sixth novel follows a rebellious teen who becomes the unwitting pawn in a supernatural war between two factions of immortals. One group survives through reincarnation, the other by stealing life from others. It’s ‘600 pages of metafictional shenanigans in relentlessly brilliant prose,’ said sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin. ‘Death is at the heart of this novel. And there lies its depth and darkness, bravely concealed with all the wit and sleight of hand and ventriloquistic verbiage and tale-telling bravura of which Mitchell is a master.’ The novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2014. 

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

The beauty – or horror – of Paul Lynch’s 2023 Booker Prize-winning novel, Prophet Song, lies in the fact that it’s all so chillingly plausible. Set in a near-future Ireland sliding into authoritarianism, scientist and mother Eilish Stack watches helplessly as political violence escalates around her and her family. With her husband detained, now missing, Eilish struggles to hold everyone together while the world around her unravels. ‘It can be read as a warning,’ said Lynch in an interview for the Booker Prizes when longlisted in 2023. ‘I sought to deepen the dystopian by bringing to it a high degree of realism. I wanted to deepen the reader’s immersion to such a degree that by the end of the book, they would not just know, but feel this problem for themselves.’ Written in breathless, unbroken prose, this is an urgent novel that speaks to what it means to endure, when there is no clear path out. 

The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon 

When all Palestinians in Israel vanish overnight, their sudden absence has far-reaching consequences. Alaa, a Palestinian journalist, wakes to find his community gone and begins searching for answers. He is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of displacement – echoes of a history that now feels dangerously close. Ibtisam Azem uses this speculative disappearance to explore erasure, identity and collective memory. It’s an intimate, layered story that pushes readers to imagine the unimaginable. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, the book was described by speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons as ‘masterful… a stunning illustration of the direct connection of the personal with the systemic, the systemic to the global’.