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The New Scientist Book Club has just finished our December read, Iain M. Banks's sci-fi novel The Player of Games - and most of us were fans of this big-thinking Culture tale

The author of the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, on how she created her startling protagonist

In this extract from the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are introduced to Sierra Greer's protagonist, a sex robot called Annie

A woman's body has been found to consist of varying proportions of male and female cells because of an extremely rare form of chimerism

Researchers have confirmed the mass of a free-floating planet thanks to a lucky convergence of ground- and space-based telescopes

Chess960 involves shuffling the pieces at the back of the board, and an analysis suggests doing so can increase the complexity of the game to favour white, black or neither player

Olivia Remes, a mental health researcher at the University of Cambridge, says these are the three things everyone should do this New Year to cultivate a more positive mindset

Understanding the chemical properties of a molecule is an inherently quantum problem, making quantum computers a good tool for the job – and we may start seeing this take off in 2026

Astronomers have found a system of three supermassive black holes, all actively feeding, that appear to be combining into a single system – a rare event that will help elucidate the physics of complex mergers

An explorer and a glaciologist are kite-skiing across Antarctica with a ground-penetrating radar to gather data that will help understand the past and future of the ice sheet

In 1892, astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard thought he saw a bright star near Venus, but then it vanished. We may now know why

Reflect Orbital plans to launch thousands of reflective mirrors to produce "sunlight on demand", but researchers are sceptical about whether the reflected light will be enough to generate electricity

Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound have transformed how we treat obesity, but more effective treatments could be down the road

After the New START treaty expires in February, there will be no cap on the number of US and Russian nuclear weapons - but some are sceptical about whether the deal actually made the world safer

After the New START treaty expires in February, there will be no cap on the number of US and Russian nuclear weapons - but some are sceptical about whether the deal actually made the world safer

The BepiColombo mission has been on its way to Mercury since 2018 and will finally start orbiting the planet and taking X-ray images in the second half of 2026

Flocean, a Norwegian company, is set to open the world’s first commercial-scale subsea desalination plant, an approach that could cut the cost and energy used to make seawater drinkable

The price of weight-loss drugs like Wegovy put them out of reach for most people with obesity, but new arrivals and expiring patents should change that this year

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will be launching the Martian Moons eXploration mission next year, which should finally tell us how Mars acquired the moons Phobos and Deimos

Eleven companies are working towards an ambitious goal as part of the US Department of Energy's plan to fast-track the development of advanced nuclear reactor technologies