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December may be a quieter month for publishing, but science fiction readers still have plenty to unwrap in 2025. From Brandon Sanderson’s new collection Tailored Realities to a Stranger Things tie-in and eerie translated fiction, this month’s releases are all about bending reality—sometimes literally.
Sanderson’s Tailored Realities leads a compact but buzzy slate
New Scientist’s latest roundup of December releases highlights a lean but intriguing list of science fiction titles, with Sanderson’s Tailored Realities taking a marquee spot among the month’s offerings.* The collection, out 9 December, gathers shorter fiction that hops between sci-fi and fantasy, pulling in stories from his sprawling Cosmere universe plus a brand-new novella, Moment Zero.
For Cosmere fans, the timing is perfect. Sanderson has just crossed a major milestone by finishing Wind and Truth, the midpoint of The Stormlight Archive, and is now pivoting toward the next era of his universe-spanning saga.* As we’ve already seen in recent coverage of Sanderson’s Tolkien comparisons and our early look at why Tailored Realities is catnip for completionists, readers are hungry for anything that deepens the Cosmere map.
Beyond December, Sanderson shows no signs of slowing. He’s already set to follow this collection with Isles of the Emberdark in February 2026, while quietly building toward Mistborn Era 3 and the new series opener, Ghostbloods, which he previewed for fans at WorldCon 2025.**
Stranger Things, Russian weirdness and cosmic threats round out the list
Sanderson isn’t the only draw in New Scientist’s December picks. The month opens with Sunset at Zero Point, a new illustrated dystopia from Swedish artist and author Simon Stålenhag, whose work The Electric State has just been adapted by Netflix.* Set around an abandoned Swedish military facility and “giant futuristic machines” lurking in a forbidden zone, it promises more of his signature retro-futurist melancholy.
Other standouts include Kirk Weddell’s thriller Edge of Oblivion, in which a quantum AI and its human partner race to repair a fracture in space-time before Earth is wiped out, and Bethany Jacobs’s trilogy finale This Brutal Moon, closing out the acclaimed Kindom space opera.
Adding a dose of TV-fueled nostalgia, Stranger Things: One Way or Another by Caitlin Schneiderhan picks up two months after season four, sending Nancy and Robin on a new investigation in Hawkins. And from Russia comes Darya Bobyleva’s The Village at the Edge of Noon, a surreal novel where a village finds every path leading back home, technology vanishes and the surrounding forest seems to creep closer by the day.
December’s sci‑fi keeps the genre conversation going
Even in a relatively slim release window, December’s line-up slots neatly into a larger boom time for science fiction. John Scalzi’s recent novel The Shattering Peace has already added political space opera fireworks to 2025’s reading list,* while the Nebula Awards Showcase anthologies continue to spotlight the field’s award-winning short fiction.*
Meanwhile, Sanderson’s own reach now extends far beyond the page. His Cosmere tabletop RPG ranks among Kickstarter’s most‑funded game projects ever,* giving fans a new way to inhabit worlds they’ve only read about. Paired with December’s Tailored Realities and the coming wave of Cosmere novels, this month’s sci‑fi crop underscores how the genre is thriving across formats—whether you’re paging through illustrated dystopias, diving back into Hawkins or plotting your next campaign on a shard-scarred world.
