Agency is a sequel to Gibson's 2014 novel, The Peripheral, which also rests on the idea of "stubs", through which alternative timelines evolve. The "jackpot" caused a dramatic global political and climate collapse in the 21st century, which killed 80 per cent of the global population and left control in the hands of a sinister group of billionaires, "the klept", who meddle in history through stubs from 2136 London.

The novel opens in an alternative San Francisco where Trump has not been elected nor Brexit occurred. Verity, a young "app-whisperer", is meant to test the abilities of Eunice, a streetwise AI, but Verity is largely a go-between as Eunice and powerful players from the future interact in a complex, and sometimes confusing narrative, about our loss of "agency".

Jeff VanderMeer has much in common with Gibson in terms of concerns over hyper-capitalism and in delivering a Mobius strip novel with multiple timelines. VanderMeer is a prime exponent of the 'New Weird' fiction with novels like Borne and Annihilation, made into a 2018 Netflix movie starring Natalie Portman.

Dead Astronauts (Fourth Estate, $29.99), set in the same universe as Borne, follows three very diverse individuals battling, across time and space, a devious corporate biotech corporation, known only as the Company, which has devastated and transformed Earth's ecosystem. A messianic blue fox, a broken-winged duck and a giant fish play key roles and provide a non-human perspective .

VanderMeer reflects current political and ecological challenges and the need to fight for a future even when it may already be lost. This message takes some unearthing as VanderMeer juxtaposes "the technical and the subconscious" through 'nested' multilayered plot narratives embellished by multiple text repetition echoing musical structures, marginalia and varied typefaces.

Andrew Hunter Murray's The Last Day (Hutchinson, $32.99), is set in 2059 when the impact of a solar catastrophe has virtually halted the Earth's rotation leaving most countries totally uninhabitable either through excess heat or cold. Britain has survived, although as a rundown Orwellian state, headed by an authoritarian leader, with ruthless border controls. A devastated America has been allowed a small colony in the south of England.

Ellen, a scientist working on an Atlantic oil rig, becomes a key player when she receives a cryptic message from her former Oxford tutor, once one of the most powerful political figures in England. In a novel that combines sci-fi with the elements of a spy thriller, Ellen, "one person against a totalitarian government", tries to uncover, although perhaps too slowly, knowledge which will affect the future of the human race.

Chinese science-fiction has boomed in recent years, through authors such as Cixin Liu, with his Hugo award-winning 'Remembrance of Earth's Past'. Liu's The Supernova Era (Head of Zeus $32.99), originally published in 2004 in China, has now been translated by Joel Martinsen to capitalise on that success.

Given its earlier provenance, which began as a reaction to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, it is understandably a less mature work than the trilogy. When a star goes goes supernova, its radiation kills all humanity except for children aged 13 and under. Not a totally original SF idea and similarities resonate with William Golding's Lord of the Flies, although Liu's novel is played out on a much larger canvas.

The global impact is played out in microcosm through a middle-school class in Beijing and a boy named Huahua. Children have to confront the psychological trauma of losing parents and how to maintain the fabric of society. Many children descend into alcoholism and dramatic variations of The Hunger Games.

Ultimately, the children, especially between America and China, must ultimately determine the future, one in which "they knew they were living on but a speck of dust in the cosmos".

Dr Stephen Baxter in World Engines Destroyer (Gollancz, $32.99) revisits his character Reid Malenfant, NASA astronaut, who previously appeared in Baxter's 'Manifold' novels (1999-2001). Malenfant has been cryogenically frozen since 2019 and is woken in 2469 after a message from Phobos, allegedly from his former wife Emma who died on the Phobos mission in 2005.

Malenfant on a rapid AI learning curve, which deliberately echoes H. G. Wells' The Sleeper Awakes, learns that a climate change-disrupted Earth has become a stagnant, almost empty, utopia and is now facing destruction in 500 years from the impact of a rogue planet.

Humanity will need a disruptive individual, a Malenfant or bad child, to act as a catalyst.

Baxter, as ever, packs his novel with scientific predictions which morph from hard sci-fi into multiverse cosmic visions in the mould of Arthur C. Clarke and Olaf Stapledon.