A Closed and Common Orbit
Historical crime novel set in County WEXFORD
Ten Great Books with ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE at their Heart
14th September 2025
Novels centred around artificial intelligence explore the complex and often unsettling relationship between humanity and its creations. These stories delve into what it means to be conscious, the ethical dilemmas of creating sentient beings, and the potential for AI to surpass or even replace its creators. In classics of the genre, the line between human and machine blurs, forcing characters and readers to confront their own biases. Other narratives offer a more intimate perspective, exploring themes of companionship and loyalty through the eyes of an AI. These novels serve as cautionary tales and philosophical inquiries, using artificial beings to help us reflect on the very nature of our own existence.
Here are ten of our favourites:
Luminous by Silvia Park – KOREA
In a recently reunified Korea, robots have integrated seamlessly into society. They are our teachers, our bus drivers and policemen. They are our lovers. They are even our children.
Eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scrap metal in a Seoul junkyard, searching for anything that might repair her failing body. There amongst the piles of junk she happens across a robot boy: lifelike, strange and unlike anything she’s seen before.
Across the city, estranged siblings Jun and Morgan Cho haven’t spoken since the abrupt disappearance of their robot brother Yoyo, which shattered their childhoods and left a gaping hole in their lives. But Ruijie’s discovery is about to bring the lives of brother and sister hurtling back together, forcing them to confront the reality of Yoyo’s true nature, and the dark purpose their father never revealed.
At once a dazzling work of speculative fiction and a poignant family drama, Luminous is a timely, unforgettable story about what it really means to be human.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – UNITED KINGDOM
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
In Klara and the Sun, his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly-changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers – SPACE
A warm, comforting, big-hearted stand-alone set in the same world as the award-winning The Long way to Small Angry Planet.
Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She’s never felt so alone.
But she’s not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over.
Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it’s anything but empty.
Culpability by Bruce Holsinger – CHESAPEAKE BAY
When the Cassidy-Shaws’ driverless minivan fatally collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat. His father, Noah, is beside him, and in the back with his younger siblings is his mother, Lorelei—a renowned AI researcher—who is lost in her work.
During a weeklong retreat on the Chesapeake Bay, the Cassidy-Shaws wrestle with the moral fallout of the crash as a routine police enquiry starts to unravel. As Lorelei’s increasingly odd behaviour stirs her husband’s suspicions that there may be a darker truth behind the incident, the arrival of tech billionaire Daniel Monet (who has a mysterious history with Lorelei) cements them. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenage daughter, tensions among the Cassidy-Shaws reach breaking point.
A psychosocial thriller and a propulsive family drama, Culpability explores a world newly shaped by non-human forces such as chatbots and autonomous cars, and forces us to examine our own relationship to artificial intelligence, and the nuanced ways in which we are all, in fact, culpable.
Accelerando by Charles Strauss – UNITED KINGDOM
His most ambitious novel to date, ACCELERANDO is a multi-generational saga following a brilliant clan of 21st-century posthumans. The year is some time between 2010 and 2015. The recession has ended, but populations are ageing and the rate of tech change is accelerating dizzyingly. Manfred makes his living from spreading ideas around, putting people in touch with one another and leaving a spray of technologies in his wake. He lives at the cutting edge of intelligence amplification technology, but even Manfred can take on too much. And when his pet robot cat picks up some interesting information from the SETI data, his world – and the world of his descendants – is turned on its head.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein – THE MOON
In 2075, the Moon is no longer a penal colony. But it is still a prison…
Life isn’t easy for the political dissidents and convicts who live in the scattered colonies that make up lunar civilisation. Everything is regulated strictly, efficiently and cheaply by a central supercomputer, HOLMES IV.
When humble technician Mannie O’Kelly-Davis discovers that HOLMES IV has quietly achieved consciousness (and developed a sense of humour), the choice is clear: either report the problem to the authorities… or become friends.
And perhaps overthrow the government while they’re at it.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been called Robert A. Heinlein’s crowning achievement. His best-known novels include Starship Troopers Mistress andStranger in a Strange Land.
Palisade by Lou Gilmore – LONDON
When opposition Chief Whip Esme Kanha is handed a secret dossier containing evidence of government corruption, she suspects its original owner, a top journalist, was murdered for gathering it. Despite the danger, she feels she must investigate. Meanwhile, lowly backbencher Harry Colbey is working his own leads. A known campaigner against big tech, he is often sent data from anonymous sources and this time round he has something truly alarming.
But both Colbey and Kanha must tread carefully in a world dominated by AI, where ‘what can see watches, what can hear listens, and what can be followed is tracked’.
As Kanha and Colbey again join forces, they are locked into a deadly race against political corruption, no matter what the cost. But when an old enemy returns, it may already be too late…
Leave No Trace by Jo Callaghan – WARWICKSHIRE
DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock return in the provocative new thriller from the Sunday Timesbestselling author of In the Blink of an Eye.
‘A smart, agile, immaculately plotted and moving thriller that is unswervingly gripping and scary, and at the same time beautifully tender and humane’ NICCI FRENCH
‘Chilled me to the bone and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Callaghan writes with such intelligence; interspersing humour with moments of utter heartbreak’ NIKKI SMITH
One detective driven by instinct, the other by logic.
It will take both to find a killer who knows the true meaning of fear . . .
When the body of a man is found crucified at the top of Mount Judd, AIDE Lock – the world’s first AI Detective – and DCS Kat Frank are thrust into the spotlight as they are given their first live case.
But with the discovery of another man’s body – also crucified – it appears that their killer is only just getting started. With the police warning local men to be vigilant, the Future Policing Unit is thrust into a hostile media frenzy as they desperately search for connections between the victims. But time is running out for them to join the dots and prevent another death.
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan – LONDON
Britain has lost the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. In a world not quite like this one, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding.
Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London.
Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans.
With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever – a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma.
Ian McEwan’s subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: what makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart?
This provocative and thrilling tale warns of the power to invent things beyond our control.
AI Laughed by Konstantin Fuchs – WORLD
The world is in the hands of artificial intelligence.
While everyone joins the new rule or accepts it, two people fight back.
Abel and the mathematician have set themselves the goal of destroying the AI and freeing humanity again.
On their way through the desolate land and into the depths of the future, they meet seekers, lost people and, above all, themselves.
Of course, the world is coming to an end— the final battle is imminent.
A humorous dystopia about man and machine.
Enjoy our selection of books with Artificial Intelligence a their heart!
Tony for the TripFiction team
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