Five speculative fiction reviews explore AI, grief and climate futures

Five speculative fiction books use AI, folklore, horror and future China to explore how technology, grief and climate change could reshape people’s lives. Together, the reviews highlight stories that question whether apparently helpful systems can be trusted, and how people cope with loss and separation.

Lilja Sigurðardóttir’s *Alfa* imagines an AI-led Iceland where a murder challenges a surveillance-based utopia; Zoé Duhaime’s *The Lost Spectacular* centres on a feud shaped by magical books and stories. Jason Rekulak’s illustrated horror novel follows a grieving comic-book artist, while *China +100* gathers 11 writers’ visions of China a century after Covid-19, including a story linking 2019 and 2119. The supplied text begins the review of Andrew H Murray’s *Everything Happens So Much* but cuts off before its details.