FANTASY/SCI-FI

XX by Rian Hughes (Picador €25)

VASTLY ambitious, XX is the most astonishing blend of narrative, metanarratives and visuals. Real ‘wow’ moments and big ideas combine with brilliant typographical flourishes to create the Moby Dick of sci-fi.

There’s a close encounter on the moon, while on earth, a lateral-thinking genius manages to translate a mysterious signal from outer space into a trio of AI constructs: a foppish dandy, a very modern girl and a sort of metal behemoth. Each with their own typeface, the medium really is the message.

It’s also the start of an invasion, but as news spreads, the world must work out what it is to be an alien, or a human, and we wonder whether memes really are harmless fun . . .

TWO TRIBES by Chris Beckett (Corvus €23)

IT’S the 23rd century. Britain is an unimportant and exhausted outpost of a Chinese empire, but at least order has been restored after the civil wars between Liberals and Patriots.

In this bleak, overheating world, archivist Zoe is trying to make sense of the diaries of a pair of 21st-century, Brexitcrossed lovers.

Two Tribes holds up a mirror to our fractured times, stripping away the shallow concerns of contemporary politics with razor-sharp observations.

The issues of the day — class, fitting in, Brexit — might loom large in the minds of the lovers, but set against the potential horror of tribal politics and climate change, the phrase ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ comes uncomfortably to mind.

THE YEAR OF THE WITCHING by Alexis Henderson (Bantam €17.55)

HERE’S a magnificent, raw slice of folk horror, dark with threat and clenched with suspense.

Set in Crucible country, it’s a story of oppression, cruelty, fear and redemption as a community struggles to control forces that will not be contained.

In the lands of Bethel where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle has bad blood: her father is an outlander, her mother had a tendency to go AWOL in the woods, and when plagues hit her village, she feels she must be responsible.

But it’s not only trysts with alarmingly sexy witches that thwart her: there’s the high priest with the hots for her, his romantically distracting son and her family’s troubled, complex past.

And she starts understand that it’s Bethel that is the problem. A brilliant debut to chill the brightest summer day.