The 29 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2024…So Far

Here are the 28 best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2024…so far. Are you a fan of horror? Check out my picks for the best horror books of 2024, too! I love sci-fi and fantasy. Along with Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and fantasy were a mainstay of my childhood. Isaac Asimov and the Three Laws of Robotics. The Foundation Trilogy. Seeing Jason & The Argonauts on TV and then Star Wars in the movie theater. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings! And then we’re off to the races, from the juvenile pleasures of Lucky Starr (hey, the science was up-to-date…at the time) to the mind-blowing anthology of Dangerous Visions to all the Tolkien wanna-be’s (I’m looking at you The Sword of Shannara) and so much more. I don’t think we ever outgrow those first reading experiences. We recreate them or we find the more complex and satisfying storytelling that populates the genre today. Not that anything can better Sherlock Holmes or Bilbo Baggins.

Happily, sci-fi and fantasy remain rich, complicated genres with everything imaginable on offer, from comfort-food space operas to humor to stories told from the point of view of the colonized planets (and not just the Empire) and stories by women (when sci-fi used to have a “No Gurlz Allowed” sign on its door) and work so good critics hasten to call it “speculative fiction” or “magic realism.” But we know sci-fi and fantasy when we see it.

Here are some of the best of the year. You’ll find the books I loved, books praised by critics, books that broke through to a wide audience, books championed by readers like you on BookTok and GoodReads and the like. Keep checking back! I’ll add to the list all fall as great new titles hit the stores. By the end of the year, it will contain great books for you, great gift ideas and everything from graphic novels to short story collections to the unexpected. I mean, since you love sci-fi I figure you’ll probably also be into some great coffee table books bursting with images from space, cool architecture books displaying mind-blowing projects that were never made (they look like out-takes from Dune) and some of the best science books about the cosmos. So let’s get reading! At the head of the Parade are….

The 28 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2024…So Far

1. The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien by J.R.R. Tolkien

“The Road goes ever on and on/ Down from the door where it began./ Now far ahead the Road has gone/ And I must follow, if I can….” Yes, I wrote that from memory. It’s a poem that appears in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. (In different versions, as Stephen Colbert might hasten to point out.) If you have a Tolkien fanatic in your life (or you’re friends with Colbert!), this lavish, three volume set could be the perfect gift. But be clear: this isn’t just a fancy keepsake of Elvish works and other poetry that appear in his two most popular works. It includes everything from juvenilia to poems from Oxford, the trenches of World War I and yes, poems that are key to his imagining of Middle Earth. In all, you’ll find more than 200 works that encompass Professor Tolkien’s entire life and all his interests. At more than 1700 pages, it’s rather remarkable. More than 50 years after he died, we still have so much to learn about everything Tolkien accomplished.

The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien by J.R.R. Tolkien ($125; William Morrow) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

2. In The Belly of the Whale by Michael Flynn
3. The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei
4. The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey

The late Michael Flynn was a master of science fiction, as eight nominations for the acclaimed Hugo Award make clear. His final novel looks to be a fitting capper to a renowned career. Here Flynn brings to life the people living on an asteroid that’s been hollowed out and sent on its way to colonize a planet hundreds of years away. Just generations into the voyage, the society of some 40,000 people is collapsing. An increasing number of its inhabitants have never known anything except life on The Whale, as the ship is called. It’s a microcosm of life on Earth, of course, but Flynn brings it to life with his usual clear-eyed talent for marrying hard science with rich characters.

Sci-fi author Yume Kitasei follows her acclaimed debut The Deep Sky with another winner. The Stardust Grail is space opera of the smartest sort, focusing on the current trend of museums shamed into returning stolen artifacts to their original cultures. Except in this case the “repatriation” is done by an interstellar art thief tasked with the challenge of a lifetime. Retrieve and return a stolen artifact that could save an entire alien species from extinction.

Fans of The Expanse (hey, my friends the Spencer-Smith family!) are very excited. James S.A. Corey launches an all-new series titled The Captive’s War. Humanity is just a pawn in the intergalactic battles of other empires. When some of them stranded on an alien world are snatched away by another race of beings called the Carryx. If humans can prove useful to their captors, maybe they can…survive? That’s about the best one can hope for in this new reality. Or is it? Across the board raves mean Corey has another winner on his hands.

In The Belly of the Whale by Michael Flynn ($19.99; CAEZIK SF & Fantasy) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei ($28.99; Flatiron Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey ($30; Orbit) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

5. The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
6. Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi
7. The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

Lev Grossman shot to fame with his three novels invariably described as Harry Potter for adults, books filled with cursing and sex. Now he tackles the tales of King Arthur with The Bright Sword. Anyone expecting a caustic, modern spin on Camelot won’t be disappointed. You’ll find Python-esque humor, transgender knights, queer knights (in the closet or whatever constitutes a closet in those days), a tiresomely perfect Lancelot and at least one hero of the expected sort. He’s an 18 year old kid, mostly abandoned, seen as useless but determined to be a knight and, who knows, perhaps of more kingly bearing than he imagines? Frankly, I was not easily won over. But Grossman isn’t here to tear down Arthurian myths or reveal them as far too lacking when it comes to gender and sexual politics. Oh, he does that too. But Grossman isn’t tweaking the story of King Arthur. He’s telling it again, in his own way. Each character is given a back story that deepens and impresses on our mind, from the lesser knights we begin with to Arthur and Lancelot and the whole gang. Ultimately, it becomes quite moving. These tales will be told again and again as long as stories are told. But they won’t always be told well. Here, they are.

Navola will inevitably be compared to Game of Thrones aka A Song of Ice and Fire. (Take your time, George! We’ll wait.) But this fantasy novel by Paolo Bacigalupi shouldn’t be sold as a rip-roaring tale with dragons. It’s mostly a coming of age story set in an Italian-ish country where backstabbing and shifting alliances and Medici-like power is always balanced on the edge of a knife. Bacigalupi may shift into high gear in the later volumes (there will assuredly be more). But here he admirably takes his time, painting a full portrait of Davico di Regulai, the heir apparent of a family dynasty but a young man who seems ill-suited to the treacherous and subtle world of his father. Davico is just…too honest, too open. It’s a quietly compelling book as we wonder if Davico will simply be consumed by the world he’s meant to help lead…or is he actually more ruthless than we think? No one can be taken at surface level–not even our hero–and that dragon’s eye (an ancient artifact) will at some point open. But the feel of this novel is more Wolf Hall than Game of Thrones. Know that and you will enjoy it without tapping your toes wondering when the fireworks will start. It’s the revelation of character that casts a spell here, not wizards and magic.

Best-selling author Leigh Bardugo outdoes herself with The Familiar, a fantasy novel set during Spain’s Golden Age. A kitchen maid uses bits of magic to make her dull work easier. But when her talent is discovered, she becomes a pawn in the hands of a social-climbing mistress and then an aide to the King who is desperate to get back in good graces with his people after a disastrous defeat to England. Our heroine enters a high stakes world of intrigue and plotting and deception. As the Inquisition looms she wonders what is more dangerous: her Jewish blood or the immortal “familiar” she depends on that strikes an ever-harder bargain.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman ($35; Viking) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi ($30; Knopf) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo ($29.99; Flatiron Books) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Related: The 32 Best Romantasy Books of All Time

8. The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
9. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
10. The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

The Last Murder at the End of the World combines a delicious murder plot with an unexpected setting: an island of survivors after the world is wiped out by a mysterious fog. When one of the handful of people left is brutally murdered, it’s both shocking and dangerous since the island’s defenses against the fog must be rebuilt in less than five days or they’ll all die. Take that, Agatha Christie!

Kaliane Bradley has what might turn into the unclassifiable debut of the year. The Ministry of Time is a time-traveling/workplace comedy/romance between a civil servant in the near future and her unexpected roommate: an Arctic explorer who perished back in 1845…at least until the Ministry of Time got a hold of him. Nutty, surprising and just as easily filed under Romance or Literary Fiction, for the snobs who can’t bear to read sci-fi, even if it is as acclaimed as this is proving to be.

Author Scott Alexander Howard plays with the concept of time travel in The Other Valley. In his case, it’s a head-spinning concept played not for fancy but heartbreak. Our hero Odile lives in a town bordered by two more versions of the same town: one 20 years in the future and another version 20 years in the past. She wants to sit on the group that controls who can cross their borders from the past or the future (such as people who want to mourn a loved one by skipping back in time to observe the dead person when they were still alive). But she also feels closer and closer to a boy she knows will die too young, a boy in the Other Valley who has no idea of his fate. With this initially puzzling setup, Howard illuminates so much about life and destiny and heartbreak that it proves yet again why sci-fi is such a satisfying way of tackling the big questions we all face.

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton ($27.99; Sourcebooks/Landmark) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley ($28.99; Avid Reader Press/S&S) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard ($27.99; Atria Books) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

11. Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
12. The Practice, The Horizon and The Chain by Sofia Samatar
13. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Writer Cebo Campbell delivers his debut sci-fi novel and Sky Full Of Elephants has a doozy of a premise. The United States becomes a post-racial society for a very simple reason: one day, every white person in the country just walks into the nearest body of water and dies. One year later, the country is still reeling and reforming itself in unexpected ways, from events large–like the Kingdom of Alabama–to small, like a Black man named Charlie Brunton released from prison for a wrongful conviction and now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University. When Charlie’s estranged daughter reaches out, they go on an eye-opening road trip to see what this new land of opportunity is really like and if anything has been lost. 

Writer Sofia Samatar burst onto the scene a decade ago with the award-winning duology led off by A Stranger In Olondria. Her latest is a novella exploring enslavement, in this case on a mining ship out in deep space. In The Practice, The Horizon and The Chain, one of the Chained–the boy–is plucked out of obscurity and given a chance at education that will change his life. He's overseen by the professor, a woman who was once one of the Chained herself. Depressingly, enslavement occurs across time and space. Happily, so does the desire to burst those chains and achieve the freedom all deserve. 

Nothing holds up a mirror to our hometown or country or world like a visitor, the classic fish out of water. Whether it’s someone from another part of our country, our world or our galaxy, they see our lives with fresh eyes that startle and amuse and illuminate. That’s the case with Beautyland, a novel pitched as literary fiction but sci-fi through and through. When Voyager 1 launches into space in 1977, a child named Adina is born at the same moment to a single mom in Philly. Adina is…different. She just knows she’s an alien from a distant planet, sent to earth to report on our strange customs. A strange fax machine mysteriously arrives to allow Adina to send her reports back home and she does, capturing the fragile, violent, beauty of the world. But maybe Adina should also share her messages with us? When it came out in January, this was showered with attention. We’ll have to see if others remember it at the end of the year.

Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell ($27.99; Simon & Schuster) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Practice, The Horizon and The Chain by Sofia Samatar ($18.99; Tor.com) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino ($28; Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

14. The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills
15. The Cautious Traveller’s Guide To The Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
16. Road to Ruin by Hana Lee

Writer Samantha Mills hardly comes out of nowhere. She’s won numerous awards for her short stories, including the Nebula Award, which honors the best in sci-fi and fantasy. Now Mills delivers her first novel, and its universal acclaim mark this as one of the most notable debuts of the year. The Wings Upon Her Back is a fantasy novel set in a world where the most honored soldiers are mechanically modified warriors who protect the city of Radezhda with unquestioning devotion. The trouble begins when our hero Zenya actually does begin to question, never a good idea in a world where questions are the enemy of loyalty.

Sarah Brook has the steampunk debut of the year with The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands. It’s a fantasy novel that combines Murder on the Orient Express with a cast of characters on board the Trans-Siberian Express who must trust each other if they want any hope of surviving the journey. Across the board acclaim make this another book fans of the genre should jump on.

If you loved the new Mad Max movie, then Road to Ruin is the dystopian fantasy novel you need. In it, a royal messenger travels from a domed city into the wastelands to (try and) deliver love notes from her prince to a stranded princess via a magic-powered cycle. The messenger is a Furiosa in love, since our hero Jin has a thing for both the prince and the princess. She agrees to rescue the young woman and flee for safety across a terrain dotted with beasts, marauders and the pursuing forces of the princess’s father. Will she survive? And if she does, will she deliver the princess to the prince or strive to win the woman’s heart for her own? But first, survive.

The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills ($18.95; Tachyon Publications) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org 

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide To The Wastelands by Sarah Brooks ($28.99; Flatiron Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org 

Road to Ruin by Hana Lee ($18.99; S&S/Saga Press) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

17. Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
18. I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
19. Hum by Helen Phillips

Three works of cli-fi. That’s the genre of climate fiction, once the purview of futuristic speculation, then near-future possibility, then a peek at what will take place next week and now a look into what’s happening around the world right now.

In Lost Ark Dreaming, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean aren’t rising. They’re risen and the world is still reeling. Remnants survive in wealthy skyscrapers now turned into the arks of the title. As always, the wealthy and powerful live on the top floors, the useful some floors down and the poor are scraping by in the dank, moldy prison of an existence found in the floors below sea level. Then three people–one from each level–must band together in a desperate plan if the ark is to survive at all. Author Suyi Davies Okungbowa is one of the many reason Nigeria is punching above its weight in the literary scene and here he’s delivered what critics call a wildly entertaining adventure wrapped up in a social critique Bernie Sanders would appreciate.

After 9/11, Leif Enger’s novel Peace Like A River arrived just in time as a balm for troubled times. He has a knack for tackling difficult, troubled subjects and yet claiming a hopeful optimism as our right. Enger does it again with I Cheerfully Refuse. This picaresque tale is set in a near-future America. The country is collapsing but our hero Rainy takes to the waters of Lake Superior in search of his beloved wife (a bookseller!). His super power? A naive openness that makes Rainy a radical when the world around him is so troubled, fearful and full of apprehension.

Helen Phillips tackles it all in Hum. Climate crisis? Check. Artificial Intelligence? Yep. Privacy as a practical impossibility? Check. Human-seeming robots called “hums” that disturbingly have a mind and motive of their own? Oh, HAL yes. Critics rave, so naturally they ignore the obvious. The New York Times praises this “speculative fiction.” Vogue and others enjoy this “dystopian” work. Esquire calls it “prescient” and People says it describes a “familiar yet distorted world.” Uh-huh. The genre tag they’re avoiding? Science fiction. Embrace it! And read it.

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa ($19.99; Tor.com) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger ($28; Grove Press) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Hum by Helen Phillips ($27.99; S&S/Marysue Rucci Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Related: The Best Books Inspired By Greek Myths Of 2024…So Far

20. A Short Walk Through A Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke
21. The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang
22. Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin

Remember the action film Speed? In the Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock thriller, if a bus fell below a certain speed, a bomb would go off and kill everyone on board. In this epic fantasy debut, a young woman in Paris falls prey to a mysterious curse. When she plays with a wooden puzzle ball on the way home from school, young Aubry gets sicker and sicker. Soon she realizes the only way to stop dying is to keep moving. Soon Aubry is circling the globe in a mad dash to escape death and experience life. If it’s “not the destination, it’s the journey,” why then Aubry might just be the luckiest person alive.

"Romantasy" is a hot genre. It mixes fantasy with romance in a way never imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien, who felt even hand-holding was a bit much for Middle Earth. Not anymore, where dragons and magic might be the backdrop for a steamy affair that would make Jackie Collins blush. In his polished, acclaimed debut The Emperor and the Endless Palace, Justinian Huang proves romantasy can also be a launchpad for great writing. He combines reincarnation and a love that crosses millennia to share the story of an emperor and courtier fated to be. They meet in a palace and again 1700 years later at an isolated inn...and again at an underground rave in LA. So they're fated to be...but it's going to take a while. Think Kim Stanley Robinson's marvelous The Years of Rice and Salt.

Ancient myths and legends inspire all sorts of novels and romances, and not just romantasies. Arthurian tales, anyone? But for one of the best–and one inspired by Chinese folklore–check out Song of the Six Realms. You’ll feel right at home if you’ve read any of the books mentioned above. But you’ll also have the treat of being immersed in an entirely “new,” millenia old mythology peopled with all sorts of characters and ideas fresh and unfamiliar to many Westerners. Xue is a lowly musician surviving by her talents. A god in disguise woos her with an offer to free Xue from her indentured life. His only request? She performs at his palace for one year. That’s when she discovers he’s actually the Duke of Dreams and a ruler of the Six Realms and that the Six Realms are in danger of ruin. And who holds the key (pun intended)? Xue.

A Short Walk Through A Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke ($28.99; Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang ($28.99; MIRA) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org 

Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin ($20.99; Feiwel & Friends) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

23. How To Become The Dark Lord & Die Trying by Django Wexler
24. I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle
25. Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
26. Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente

Ahh, humor. The least appreciated element in the arts. (Too easy, say critics! Really? Tell me a joke.) Bob Dylan? Hilarious. Ingmar Bergman? Watch The Seventh Seal with a crowd and marvel over the laughter. Happily, sci-fi and fantasy are welcoming to a good rib-tickler. R.I.P. Douglas Adams, and thanks.

Django Wexler knows how to hit the sweet spot of humor in the often too-serious world of fantasy. He combines the fatalistic time-loop of Edge of Tomorrow with the knowing comedy of Redshirts by John Scalzi in How To Become The Dark Lord & Die Trying, the story of a woman bored by endlessly trying to defeat the Dark Lord only to be foiled by a time loop. So, what the hell, she decides to become the next Dark Lord instead.

Now everyone knows Peter S. Beagle’s gentle classic The Last Unicorn. In his whimsical latest, Beagle tells the story of a dragon exterminator who doesn’t really like exterminating dragons and would much rather be a prince’s valet, but life just isn’t fair, is it? Equal parts Monty Python and Dragonheart? The Smaug section of The Hobbit? Let’s just say Beagle’s latest is all that and its own creature entirely.

Adrian Tchaikovsky has a name fit for a sprawling space opera. In Service Model, happily, he offers a jaundiced, very amusing story about a servant rising up against its cruel master. The servant happens to be a robot, a service model that swallows some errant code and–boink!–offs his human master and becomes a freelancer, thank you very much. And just in time, for society is collapsing and all the robots programmed to serve need to figure out what new purpose they can embrace. Perhaps, fun?

Speaking of space operas, few are as funny as Catherynne M. Valente’s novel Space Opera, which turned intergalactic war and the term “space opera” on their head. Now civilizations clash in a Eurovision for the known universe. Literally, a space “opera” and the stakes were deadly (as they often are in operas). In the sequel Space Oddity, humanity realizes surviving the last novel’s round of Metagalactic Grand Prix won’t keep them safe forever…or even until the next competition. Douglas Adams would be proud. But she had me at the David Bowie reference. 

How To Become The Dark Lord & Die Trying by Django Wexler ($19.99; Orbit) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org 

I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle ($26.99; S&S/Saga Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org 

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky ($28.99; Tor Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente ($28.99; S&S/Saga Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

27. The Long History of the Future by Nicole Kobie 
28. Atlas of Never Built Architecture by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin

Two offbeat titles that might just catch your fancy.

In The Long History of the Future, Nicole Kobie explains why we still don’t have the flying skateboards from Back to the Future in an engaging history of failed ideas along with some cool illustrations of how we imagined the future in the past. (Say that three times fast!)

The coffee table worthy book Atlas of Never Built Architecture offers just that: a look at some of the most elaborate proposed projects around the world that never came to fruition. You’ll swear you’re looking at some outtakes from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune in some cases. It’s a glimpse into the present that might have been, a look at some of the most impressive ideas in architecture and just plain lovely to look at. 

The Long History of the Future by Nicole Kobie ($28; Bloomsbury Sigma) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Atlas of Never Built Architecture by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin ($150; Phaidon Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Related: The 33 Best Horror Books of 2024…So Far