10 of the best sci-fi books nominated for the Booker Prizes

In 1938, a radio adaptation of H.G Wells’ classic novel The War of the Worlds sparked panic, convincing some listeners it was a genuine news broadcast and a real-life alien invasion was underway. Fortunately, this was not the case and while humanity endures, this event marked the onset of what is now known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction, a period which heralded a surge in the genre’s popularity, firmly establishing its place in mainstream culture.

Beyond the tropes of intergalactic travel and societies overridden by robots, sci-fi has always played by its own rules, with its writers embracing a multitude of sub-genres. From the emergence of climate fiction (cli-fi) to the exploration of dystopian worlds and speculative narratives, science fiction remains more fluid than its critics would admit; these overlaps help propel SF forward, as its works extend to the big screen, TV, podcasts and video games. 

Naturally, the influence of science fiction extends to the Booker and International Booker Prize too, which features numerous sci-fi and sci-fi-adjacent works. Doris Lessing’s 1981 novel, The Sirian Experiments, broke ground as the genre’s earliest inclusion on the list. The influence of Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction cannot be underestimated, including Oryx and Crake, and of course, The Handmaid’s Tale, shortlisted in 2003 and 1986 respectively. Even as recently as last year’s prize, Martin MacInnes garnered critical praise for his epic work, In Ascension, which journeyed undersea and into space, showing sci-fi’s appeal persists. 

Here, you’ll find 10 of the best from the Booker Library, that underscore science fiction’s enduring relevance and cultural impact.

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

The Booker Prize’s most recent sci-fi nomination, Martin MacInnes wrote his 2023 longlisted novel during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when travel wasn’t possible. This was bound to influence the novel ‘both positively and inversely,’ MacInnes told the Booker Prizes website last year, citing its impact on ‘the claustrophobia and regulation of domestic space in the novel’s ships, to the dramatic and expansive voyages [the characters] sail on’.

Protagonist Leigh’s world is defined by water – an expanse that serves as both refuge and barrier in an upbringing shadowed by her father’s abuse. As an adult, this fascination leads her to a career in marine microbiology. She joins an expedition to investigate an underwater vent three times deeper than the Mariana Trench, on a journey in search of Earth’s earliest life forms, which sets the stage for an odyssey that leads her across the breadth of the cosmos.   

Written with verve, In Ascension is a juggernaut of an SF novel. Both epic and intimate, it explores the vastness of the natural world while intertwining the intricacies of one woman’s life, as she attempts to move beyond her troubled childhood. 

The Sirian Experiments by Doris Lessing

Widely considered one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th century, Doris Lessing’s The Sirian Experiments is the third in her five-book Canopus in Argos series, which documents Earth’s evolution as three advanced extra-terrestrial civilisations fight for control of the human race. Told from the perspective of the Sirians, the inhabitants of Sirius – the brightest star in our night sky – the novel is narrated by Ambien II, a ‘dry, dutiful, efficient’ Sirian administrator who undergoes a gradual moral awakening as she watches a god-like colonisation unfold.

In a preface to the series, Lessing wrote that she intended the series as a vehicle to ‘put questions, both to myself and to others’ while exploring ‘ideas and sociological possibilities.’ Here, in this visionary space opera, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981, she imagines not just a world, but a galaxy, where advanced technology is abused by those in power, resulting in grotesque experimentation. It was Lessing’s attempt to look at the world from a new perspective.

Lessing was an expansive writer, and throughout an extraordinary career which spanned around 70 works and winning the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, her fiction consistently defied convention. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, as well as being shortlisted, for her entire body of work, for the International Prize in both 2005 and 2007.

The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken

Aboard the ship Six Thousand, millions of kilometres from Earth, a crew of humans and humanoids operate alongside each other while collecting mysterious objects from the planet New Discovery. When brought aboard, these beguiling items begin to exhibit a strange hold on the employees, and rifts ignite.

While the humans long for their home, the humanoids seek connection beyond the parameters of their programming. Here, The Employees explores the blurred lines between human and machine, and the need for meaning in an increasingly technological world. Ravn’s choice of structure is unusual – the novel is presented as flash fiction, through a series of short witness statements from those working onboard the spaceship. Yet her background as a poet elevates this story into a deep space odyssey with a compelling story arc across just 130 less-is-more pages.

A satirical take on workplace culture that casts a critical eye on a life governed by labour, The Employees was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

In Jane Rogers’ sci-fi slash dystopia, an act of biological warfare means the end of humankind is just a generation or so away. Here, every woman is infected with a deadly virus called Maternal Death Syndrome which is activated upon pregnancy. MDS spells death for the mother, their unborn child, and ultimately, the human race. 

Sixteen-year-old Jessie is determined to make a difference. Her father is a research scientist, working to find a cure and tells her about the sinister ‘Sleeping Beauties’ programme where young girls induced in comas become incubators, allowing their unborn children the opportunity to survive. While Jessie wants to volunteer, her father is horrified and responds the only way a despairing parent knows how – by imprisoning her. Rogers writes Jessie’s story across a dual narrative, juxtaposing her present in captivity with the days before. As the world falls apart, an impassioned Jessie recounts her ambition to save it and the lengths she will go to do just that.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb draws on the work of the greats. There are obvious nods to Atwood to Huxley in this exploration of scientific boundaries spliced with the thwarted dreams of a teenage girl. Surprisingly, the novel was Rogers’ first foray into the science fiction genre. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2011 and went on to win the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction in 2012. 

Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated by Tiffany Tsao

Another genre-bending collection, Happy Stories, Mostly, stitches together elements of sci-fi, absurdism and alternative-historical realism, while destabilising traditional heteronormative conventions in fiction.  

The 12 stories written by Norman Erikson Pasaribu chart the pursuit of happiness through contemporary and near-future Indonesians in the traditionally conservative country. In ‘Metaxu: Jakarta, 2038’, Indonesia has been flooded and Jakarta has disappeared. A female narrator lays bare her confessions over ‘videxfessions’ to a priest, detailing the sins and cruelties she committed against her little brother. A new technology, which can erase such bad memories, offers hope. It’s a space Erikson Pasaribu thrives in, probing individual traumas while querying who we would become without them. Elsewhere, we follow a speculative-historical story of an abandoned city that intertwines with colonial-era folklore, where a man is haunted by the existence of a hundred-foot-tall man. 

Happy Stories, Mostly is a tragicomic collection that reconfigures myth and folklore with tropes of SF, while meditating on queer survival in a binary world. It was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022, and has since been a runaway hit with the bookstagram communities of TikTok and has even been seen in the hands of actors Anya Taylor-Joy and Jenna Ortega.