3 Great Sci-Fi Books From 2025 That Deserve a Movie or TV Adaptation

The sci-fi genre is one of the best. With stories that take you to far-flung worlds, futuristic timelines, and explore complex themes that often involve technology and its intersection with the human experience, sci-fi offers some of the most exciting entertainment options out there. This is especially true for movies and television, but some of the best sci-fi movies and shows started out as books first — and there are always more great books to adapt.

Now that 2025 has wound down, we’re looking back at some of the new sci-fi books that came out in the past year to look at what stories need to get the page-to-screen treatment next and while there was a wealth of great sci-fi novels that came out in 2025 (and even a few in late 2024 that were truly fantastic) there are three that feel like they would make great impact on screen. By leaning into real concerns about the growing use of AI and exploring different ideas of mortality, these three books offer some unique stories that we think deserve to be on screen ASAP.

3) We Lived on the Horizon

With AI becoming an ever-intrusive element of our daily lives, We Lived on the Horizon was a timely sci-fi release in 2025 and is a novel that would make for a great film adaptation. Written by Erika Swyler, We Lived on the Horizon is set in Bulwark, a walled, AI-controlled city where the lives of the city’s citizens are controlled by an AI system of “life hours” that are determined by so-called ancestral contributions. It’s a system that creates a harsh class divide. The story follows Enita Malvois, part of the privileged “Sainted” class and a bio-prosthetic surgeon she, along with her personal AI Nix, find themselves drawn into a rebellion after the murder of a fellow Sainted and cover up.

With themes about AI, ethics, class struggle, and the always fascinating relationship between humans and robots, We Lived on the Horizon is both a bleak and slick futuristic sci-fi with shades of Blade Runner that could make for an incredible live-action adaptation.

2) The Dream Hotel

A story in which the AI algorithm makes the thought police concept even more terrifying, The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami could make for a more terrifying take on Minority Report if adapted to live-action. The book is set in a near-future realty where AI monitors people’s dreams to both predict and prevent crimes. When Sara Hussein ends up detained at the airport after AI flats her dreams as making her a risk to her husband, she ends up incarcerated for her thoughts and ends up having to fight the system for her freedom in a world where even your dreams are criminalized.

With chilling themes about technology, privacy, the surveillance state, and the ever-growing threat of AI, The Dream Hotel makes for both an interesting human drama and a great bit of social commentary. It might not be the most action-packed story, but it would certainly be high-drama and would certainly leave people with a lot to think about.

1) Murder by Memory

Written by Olivia Waite, Murder by Memory is the first book in the Dorothy Gentleman series and would be a great kickoff to a television series. Set on the luxurious interstellar passenger liner the Fairweather, detective Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers just as someone else is found murdered. She soon finds that someone is not only killing bodies but deleting minds from the ship’s Library as well and finds herself dealing with a crime that makes murder truly final — and given the centuries-long journey of the killer has had hundreds of years to scheme.

A murder mystery on a spaceship could be a seriously entertaining sci-fi adventure that is cozy, entertaining, and more fun than forbidding or serious which would make it a perfect book to be adapted for television. And given that this is the first book in a series, there could be plenty of material for multiple seasons, making it an even better option.

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