A virus leaves millions of people “locked in,” in John Scalzi’s Lock In (Gollancz, £8.99) — fully conscious but unable to move a muscle. Because plenty of the rich and important are among the victims, action is swift, and soon new technology allows sufferers to transfer their consciousness to prosthetic bodies so they can hold down jobs and generally take part in life. One such “Haden” is the novel’s narrator, Shane, newly qualified as an agent with the FBI.

But then right-wing politicians succeed in slashing government support and subsidy for the afflicted. For working-class Hadens it’s a disaster — but monopoly capitalism sees it as a great opportunity. Can Shane stop their dastardly plans before the nation erupts in sectional violence?

Scalzi’s written a good fun techno-thriller, with some really well-thought out ideas in sociology and economics as well as tech.

Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler (Gollancz, £8.99) is officially an SF story, as, when originally published in 1991, it won several SF awards. But you could choose to read it as crime fiction, literary fiction, or historical fiction. You could certainly view it as a textbook lesson in how to write a feminist, anti-racist novel that people will read not out of duty but with delight.

It starts when a strikingly hideous and seemingly mute woman wanders into a camp of Chinese railway workers in that Washington Territory in 1873. In the tale of wanderings that follows, this mysterious figure is variously viewed as a lunatic, a demon, an escaped murderess or an unidentified wild creature by the equally variously lost, excluded or exploited individuals who become entangled with her.

In writing that can only be described as exquisite, Fowler takes us on a tour of the grotesqueries of the US in that era, a country that seems to be growing too fast for its bones, like a teenager. Hilarious, chilling and moving, this is a true classic, thoroughly deserving its reissue.

Hild by Nicola Griffith (Blackfriars, £9.99) may well be a future classic. In 7th-century Britain the king of Northumbria plots to become overking of all the Anglisc. Crucial to his plans is his young niece Hild, promoted by her politically savvy mother as a great seer. Hild doesn’t think of herself as having magic powers, just an ability to see patterns, in nature and in the ways of men and women, which allows her to predict probable outcomes. Whether this will be enough to keep her and those she loves safe, amid the constantly shifting alliances of a fractured land, remains to be seen.

Though it’ll undoubtedly be popular with fans of heroic fantasy fiction this book, too, could be read as a feminist historical novel, or even a political thriller. The writing is lucent and the plot enthralling, but perhaps most impressive is how, partly through her focus on the details of daily life, the author creates and sustains a rare feeling in the reader of really living among the characters.