Let’s face it: We’re living in the world that science fiction made. Perhaps we don’t inhabit colonies on Mars or commute in flying automobiles, as SF writers of the 1950s envisioned, but there’s no doubt that the innovations of Big Tech—from the internet and smartphones to driverless cars and 3-D printing—have transformed our society into something more, well, Orwellian than it once was.

Now artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize the way we live still further, propelling us into a science fiction future straight out of the imaginations of Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. To help us better understand the technology and its impact, there’s a host of recent nonfiction to be read, including Christopher Summerfield’s These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned To Talk and What It Means (Viking, March 11) and Parmy Olson’s Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World (St. Martin’s, 2024).

But as so often is the case, fiction can take us beyond straight facts to feel what AI could mean for human life. By imagining speculative scenarios well outside our current reality, SFF writers chart a course for us—and deliver a warning. Here are a few recent works that incorporate the possibilities—and the dangers—of AI into their storylines:

We Lived on the Horizon by Erika Swyler (Atria, Jan. 14): On page 1 of this novel, readers are introduced to Parallax, the AI system that is literally wired into the walls of Bulwark, a thriving desert city built centuries ago. “Parallax is not separate from the city of Bulwark’s residents,” writes the author, “and has never considered themselves to be—the system does not question function or purpose, and they are secure in their reason for existence.” Scared yet? Our starred review calls the book “singularly stunning and stunningly singular.”

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Pantheon, March 4): This novel dispatches its protagonist to a women’s “retention center” after a federal agency determines, based on biometric data collected while she slept, that she’s at high risk of committing a crime. Once at the center, Sara and her fellow inmates are enlisted to evaluate the credibility of AI-generated images for a software subcontractor—a chilling vision of the inescapable loop by which we’re both targeted and exploited by technology. It’s an “engrossing and troubling dystopian tale,” according to our starred review.

Luminous by Silvia Park (Simon & Schuster, March 11): Set in an indeterminate future where North and South Korea have been unified, Park’s first novel situates its sibling protagonists, Jun and Morgan, in a world gone fully robotic—including bionic appendages and a robot sibling who was introduced into the family and then removed without explanation. Our starred review calls it a “messy, visionary debut.”

Awakened by A.E. Osworth (Grand Central Publishing, April 29): “Society talks about the future of artificial intelligence in so many erroneous ways,” posits this winning fantasy novel in which a coven of transgender New York City witches wields magic against a nefarious AI that threatens its way of life. The book is a “charming, magical romp with a focus on the importance of finding and building queer community,” according to our starred review. Couldn’t we all use a little less technology—and a little more magic—in our lives?

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.