Science fiction has the ability to both transport us to somewhere unfamiliar – filled with beings we could never imagine on Earth – and see our own world through a new lens.
From exploring the impact of advances in technology to looking at how we treat those who live on the margins of society, here are some of the best classic and new science fiction novels.
Named one of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World, Aldous Huxley 's Brave New World is set far in the future, where World Controllers have created the ideal society. In this world, through genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, everyone is happy. Apart from Bernard Marx, who thinks he's alone in wanting to break free. When he visits a Savage Reservation, where imperfect life continues, he discovers what may be a cure for his distress.
Brave New World was first published in 1932, but its vision of a society which uses technology to try and create a happier populace, while not seeing the problems caused, rings true even today. Writing in The Guardian , Margaret Atwood said that on rereading Brave New World she found it was as "vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when" she first read it in the 1950s.
HG Wells ' classic novel The War of the Worlds is the first modern depiction of extra-terrestrials attacking the earth, and its imagery of tentacled Martians is still what many people imagine when they hear the word 'alien'.
The book, originally published in serial form in 1897 in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan in the US, shows human civilisation threatened when Martians land in England, build killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays and feast on the warm blood of humans. But, as the aliens discover, humans may prove harder to beat than they at first appear.
Since its first publication in book form in 1898, The War of the Worlds has never been out of print, and its enduring popularity can be seen in the numerous adaptations – on TV, film and radio – that it has spawned.
When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital and removes his bandages, he realises he's the only person who can see. Everyone else – doctors and patients – have been blinded by a meteor shower.
Masen is trapped in a London full of sightless mobs who prey on those few who can still see, but there's a bigger threat looming… Taking advantage of the chaos are Triffids, walking carnivorous plants with lethal stingers who are feeding on human flesh.
When The Day of the Triffids was reissued in 2001, The Guardian John Wyndham avoided easy allegories, instead questioning "the relative values of the civilisation that has been lost, the literally blind terror of humanity in the face of dominant nature, and the possibility of regeneration without offering easy answers".
Marge Piercy 's Woman on the Edge of Time is both a classic of science fiction, and a feminist classic. When it was first released, though, The New York Times
Piercy's protagonist is Connie Ramos, who is unfairly incarcerated in a mental institution with no hope of release. The authorities view her as a danger to herself and to others, and Connie’s family has given up on her.
But Connie has a secret, and a way to escape the confines of her cell: she can see the future...
Canadian writer Sylvain Nuevel 's Sleeping Giants is the first novel in his The Themis Files trilogy.
It follows Dr Rose Franklyn, who as a child discovers a giant metal hand by accident, and a group of scientists as they try and track down and assemble a giant robot of mysterious origins.
But the task of finding the remaining pieces, and discovering where the robot is from, is complicated by a paranoid military desperate for answers, foreign agents trying to get their hands on what Dr Franklyn knows, and the obstacles the hand's unknown makers put in her path. But most puzzling of all is the identity of the cryptic, unnamed interrogator piecing together the story.
Reviewing Sleeping Giants , NPR
This Mortal Coil is the first in a series of the same name, and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2018.
Its central character is Catarina, who is devastated when a lone soldier, Cole, arrives with news of the death of her father Lachlan Agatta. Lachlan was the world's leading geneticist and humanity's best hope of beating a devastating virus.
But all is not lost: hidden in Cole's genehacked enhancements Catarina finds a message that tells her Lachlan created a vaccine. Only she can find the vaccine, if she can unravel the clues her father left for her.
But the closer she gets, the more a shadowy organisation called Cartaxus, which has a stranglehold on the world's genetic tech, pursues her.
A science fiction novel and a thriller, this is a book that will leave you gasping at its twists and turns.
Kurt Vonnegut 's fourth novel, Cat's Cradle , uses his trademark black humour to explore science, technology, the purpose of religion and the arms race.
Set in the mid-20th Century, the book focuses on a writer called Jonah, who in researching a book comes across Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, whose deadly legacy is the invention of a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet.
Jonah is led to Hoenikker's three eccentric children and an island republic where an absurd religion called Bokononism is practised.
Cat's Cradle earned Vonnegut a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1971, almost 25 years after the institution turned down his original thesis.
