Chris Beckett won the 2013 Arthur C Clarke award for his novel Dark Eden, about the survival and adaptation of human colonists on a world without light. The sequel, Mother of Eden (Corvus, £17.99), begins generations later, charting the growth and political divisions between the colonists. It follows the rise of Starlight Brooking, a humble fishergirl, and her quest to bring equality and revolution to Edenheart, a settlement ruled by a conservative patriarchy. Beckett doesn’t do traditional heroes and villains: Starlight Brooking is contradictory and flawed, at once brave and vulnerable, and likewise his villains are portrayed with sympathy and understanding. He also eschews easy answers and formulaic plotting; where a hundred other writers would have Starlight triumph over her enemies, her victories are on a more profound and personal level, and not without tragedy. Mother of Eden is a masterpiece.

When the captain of the Wayfarer starship is offered a job travelling to a faraway planet that could make him and his crew financially secure, he agrees despite the dangers involved.Such a precis might suggest that Becky Chambers’s first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99), originally self‑published and shortlisted for the Kitschies awards, is an action-adventure space opera. But this is a slow, discursive novel of character as the motivations of the diverse and likable crew, comprising humans and aliens, are laid bare for the reader’s delight. It is a quietly profound, humane tour de force that tackles politics and gender issues with refreshing optimism.

stephen palmer

Stephen Palmer’s marvellous ninth novel, Beautiful Intelligence (Infinity Plus, £8.99), posits a beleaguered 22nd century in which oil has run out, water is scarce, and in a neat inversion of the contemporary world order, Europe is an economic ruin and Africa the promised land. Two techno wizards abscond from a Japanese laboratory, each attempting to develop artificial intelligence according to their own philosophies – one based on the social intelligence theory of consciousness, the other on a linguistic approach – but billionaire tech-mogul Aritomo Ichikawa will stop at nothing to get them back. What follows is a thrilling chase across a ravaged Europe, a burgeoning North Africa and balkanised US, interleaving excellent action set-pieces with fascinating philosophising on the nature of consciousness. A gripping read to the poignant last line.

In the fourth, standalone volume of the Apollo Quartet, All That Outer Space Allows (Whippleshield, £7.99), Ian Sales follows the life of Ginny Eckhardt, astronaut’s wife and science fiction author, through the 60s to her husband’s mission to the moon in 1971. Eckhardt is a brilliant, conflicted creation, torn by her love for her husband and the awareness of her role as an “accessory”; by her resentment of Nasa and her desire to be in her husband’s place. The novel would be beguiling enough if it were merely an account of this disaffection, but Sales adds a brilliant twist: the story takes place in an alternate reality in which SF is seen as a women’s genre, its principal authors and editors are female, and Eckhardt is writing a series of stories about an all-female astronaut programme.

When the world is hit by a flu epidemic, a group of privileged survivalists take to a vast underground bunker in Maine created for just such an eventuality in SL Grey’s Under Ground (Pan Macmillan, £12.99). What follows is an examination of societal breakdown in miniature as it soon becomes apparent that, while leaving one form of killer behind, they have locked themselves away with a murderer. It’s JG Ballard meets Agatha Christie, with a soupcon of Patricia Highsmith thrown in. Grey rotates the viewpoint through the eyes of five very different characters, ramps up the tension to an almost unbearable level, and ends with a stunning double finale.

Alex Lamb’s first novel, Roboteer (Gollancz, £14.99), hits the ground running with an explosive space battle between the crew of the starship Phoenix and a battlefleet from Earth – and hardly lets up for the next 400-plus pages. Will Kuno-Monet is a roboteer who programs artificial intelligences in a long-running battle with the forces of Earth. Humanity has fractured: Earth is ruled by a totalitarian religious regime that has banned genetic modification and is bent on reclaiming autonomous colony worlds; Will was born on a colony whose environment is so inimical that genetic modification was the only option. Lamb handles the politics without resorting to info dumps and in Will has created a sympathetic and well-rounded hero.

• Eric Brown’s latest novel is Jani and the Greater Game (Solaris).