These Sci-Fi Cozy Mysteries Are Out of This World

Bester won the first-ever Hugo Award back in 1953 for this genre-spanning detective novel that is generally viewed as the first ever science fiction crime novel. 

The Demolished Man is set in a future earth where many people can communicate telepathically. The novel has the dystopian atmosphere of Brave New World, but the murder at a house party during a game of sardines is the sort of classic Golden Age plot Dame Agatha Christie herself might have given the thumbs up to.

This is the twenty-fifth outing for Douglas’s wise-cracking and wildly popular feline PI Midnight Louie, a furball answer to Sam Spade. In Cat in an Alien X-Ray the hardboiled gumshoe tom and his pal PR guru Temple Barr find themselves caught up in the world of UFO fans. 

These conspiracy-minded tourists have travelled to The Strip in Las Vegas to take a look at the latest attraction, an exhibit that claims to display real extra-terrestrials. The trouble is the ET carnival and its visitors are being stalked by a serial killer. 

But have no fear, the short, dark, and handsome Louie is soon on his trail.

Mack Megaton is a robot gumshoe patrolling the mean streets and towering high rises of Empire City. When his neighbours are kidnapped Mack sets off on their trail. Soon he’s being slugged by mutants, throttled by a talking gorilla and set up by a glamorous dame. 

All of which could have something to do with a mob boss from another planet. Sharp and tightly plotted, The Automatic Detective reads like a cosy crime version of Blade Runner. 

This is four-time Hugo Award-winner Kowal’s vastly entertaining take on the Dashiell Hammet classic The Thin Man. The novel features Tesla and Shal — a glitteringy witty futuristic version of Nick and Nora Charles — as they investigate the death of a fellow passenger on a deluxe space cruise to Mars. 

With a list of suspects that range from magicians to robots, The Spare Man is exceptional fun.

Adams was a master of British surreal humor and author of cult classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. His venture into cozy crime is predictably inventive, philosophical and a touch mad — Lord Peter Wimsy re-written by Monty Python. 

To say it features a robotic monk, time travel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a diligent ghost, the music of Bach and a character constantly battling with the incompetence of Britain’s telephone network gives you a flavour of Gently’s rambling investigation, but barely covers a tenth of it.

Winner of the 1999 Hugo Award, Willis’ brilliant mystery features time-travelling historian Ned Henry and his quest to locate the “Bishop’s bird stump”, a McGuffin that is apparently vital for the restoration of Coventry’s medieval cathedral — destroyed by Nazi bombers in 1940. Finding this mysterious item involves Ned travelling back from 2057 to 1940. 

Unfortunately, the man operating the time machine has other ideas and sends him to 1888 instead. Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark crossed with Back to the Future, and you are getting close to the spirit of Willis’s rollicking tale.

Acclaimed sci fi author Newitz is at her sparkling best in this comic novella about internet trolling. A quartet of food industry robots have set up their own restaurant. The droids love the work and the customers love what they do. 

Well 99% of them do anyway. Because somebody is bombarding social media platforms with bad reviews. 

To save their new enterprise from bankruptcy the bots must find out who the anonymous critic is and put a stop to their antics.

Harkaway is as much a master of a style of steam-punk tinged sci-fi as his father, John le Carre was of the espionage novel. 

This mystery from 2023 tips its hat to Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, as well as Philip K Dick. Cal Sounder is a police detective working for a department that deals with sensitive cases. 

When a tech-bro is found murdered, Sounder is sent to take a look. The circumstances of the death are nothing out of the ordinary, but the 91-year-old victim is very peculiar indeed: seven-feet tall and with the body of a 30-year-old.  

Sounder’s investigation leads him slowly into the world of the medically enhanced elites, people with secrets they will stop at nothing to protect.

Star Trek meets Miss Marple in this spaceship-set mystery featuring doughty silver-haired sleuth, Dorothy Gentleman. 

In the opener of what is now justifiably popular series, the redoubtable Dorothy finds herself on board Britain’s most luxurious and modern interstellar cruiser, HMS Fairweather. 

There’s just one problem: thanks to the interference of parties as yet unknown, our amateur detective is occupying a body that isn’t her own. Oh, and somebody has just been murdered.