Author Simon Stålenhag has a new work out this month. December is traditionally a quieter month for new releases from publishers and that's definitely true this year, with a sparser than usual science-fiction offering to chew over. That said, there are some intriguing titles out this month, and I'm looking forward to the new book from artist and author Simon Stålenhag, another illustrated dystopia, as well as a mysterious-sounding Russian novel, and the conclusion of Bethany Jacobs's excellent space opera trilogy. Jacobs has written a piece for the New Scientist Book Club about how the late Iain M. Banks inspired her own world-building. The Book Club is currently reading Banks's classic Culture novel - do join us .

June's new science fiction includes a space opera from Megan E. O'Keefe Do you like your world ravaged by unstoppable and deadly viruses or technologies? If so, then June is your month, because we have everything from a contagion that makes people lustful to a neural chip that lets us turn off sleep. We've also got an environmental apocalypse from Inga Simpson in The Thinning, and I'm definitely in the mood for a slice of feminist body horror from E.K. Sathue pitched as American Psycho meets The Substance. Elsewhere, we have Megan E. O'Keefe's new space opera, which sounds intriguing, and Taylor Jenkins Reid's look at the 1980s space shuttle programme, Atmosphere. Those dastardly scientists are at it again, this time developing a neural chip that allows you to turn off sleep.

Bora Chung's Red Sword is set on a disputed planet While there are no big names publishing new science fiction novels this May, there are some real gems nonetheless – including a big tip from me, Grace Chan's near-future Every Version of You. I want to press it into the hands of everyone I know. There are also two fascinating sci-fi-edged thrillers out this month, by Adam Oyebanji and Barnaby Martin, while Catherine Chidgey's creepy The Book of Guilt has intrigued me enough to make it my next read – if it's not ousted by Bora Chung's real history-inspired story of war on an alien planet, Red Sword, that is… Set in late-21st-century Australia, this novel (published in Australia in 2022 but out now more widely) follows Tao-Yi in a world where most people spend their lives in an immersive virtual reality called Gaia. Every morning, she climbs into a pod in her apartment to enter Gaia, where she works and socialises. In the real world, the unrelenting heat of the sun means there are no trees left and hardly any animals: this is a terrifying vision of the future.

When the sun is out, it's just about warm enough here in north-east London to read outside – which means it's time to crack out the best new science fiction and find a sheltered spot. I love the way the genre continues to tackle the biggest issues of our day, whether that's ageing or artificial intelligence. Top of my pile is Lucy Lapinska's look at how a robot might deal with being freed from human governance, but I'm also looking forward to Nick Harkaway's latest, set in a world where a drug can (for a huge price) stop you from ageing, but it will also make you grow very large. And I'm keen to try out Sayaka Murata's strange and disturbing vision of the future, Vanishing World. Amane lives in a society where children are conceived by artificial insemination and raised by parents in "clean", sexless marriages. When she and her husband hear about an experimental town where residents are selected at random to be artificially inseminated en masse and children are raised collectively and anonymously, they decide to try living there.

The moon has turned to cheese in John Scalzi's new sci-fi novel My only complaint about the science fiction due to be published in March is: how in the world are we meant to find the time to read all these great novels? There are so many must-reads out this month, whether it's the latest from Nicholas Binge, Silvia Park's tale of a lost robot sibling or Laila Lalami's vision of a future where our dreams are policed for what we might be going to do (sounds quite Minority Report – a very good thing in my view). All I can say is, I think it's time to step away from the computer and get reading, if we want to keep up… Sadly for humanity, in this latest slice of comic sci-fi from the excellent John Scalzi, the moon has turned to cheese and they have to work out what to do about it. This sounds like a lot of fun, but I'm primarily planning to read it to find out what type of cheese the moon has become. Our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson heartily approves of Binge's latest, writing that this time travel tale is well-deserving of its upcoming big-screen treatment.