Pew! Pew! BwaHaHa! The Best Science Fiction Horror
Posted on November 6, 2024
by Amy H
There’s something about the inherent eeriness of science fiction that combines well with horror to create a new level of “whoa!” for those who enjoy each genre alone. Here are some great books to read for that spine-tingly feeling of uneasy wonder.
paradise 1 by David Wellington
Paradise-1. Earth's first deep space colony. For thousands of people, it was an opportunity for a new life. Until it went dark. No communication has been received from the colony for months. And so it falls to Firewatch inspector Alexandra Petrova and the crew of the Artemis to investigate. What they find is more horrifying than anything they could have imagined.
william by Mason Coile
Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home laboratory, has achieved the discovery of his career: he has created artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William. No one knows about William. ... Henry's agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on William keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife Lily. When Lily's coworkers show up one day, wanting to finally meet Henry and see their new house, the smartest-of-smart-homes, things start to go wrong. Because William can 'talk' to the house, and it turns out he's not a fan of visitors--especially not the man who seems to know Lily a little too well. Soon Henry and Lily discover the security upgrades they wanted to keep danger out are even better at locking people in.
ghost station by S. A. Barnes
Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS, a disease that presents itself in violence--the most famous case of which resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. She's assigned to work with a small exploration crew who recently suffered the tragic death of a colleague as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, and it becomes clear that crew is hiding something. Ophelia's new crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizers' hasty departure than dealing with their own loss. That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia's worst nightmare starting--a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something even more sinister? Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what's happening. But trust is hard to come by...and the crew members aren't the only ones keeping secrets.
womb city by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Nelah seems to have it all: fame, wealth, and a long-awaited daughter growing in a government lab. But, trapped in a loveless marriage to a policeman who uses a microchip to monitor her every move, Nelah's "perfect" life is precarious. After a drug-fueled evening culminates in an eerie car accident, Nelah commits a desperate crime and buries the body, daring to hope that she can keep one last secret. The truth claws its way into Nelah's life from the grave. As the ghost of her victim viciously hunts down the people Nelah holds dear, she is thrust into a race against the clock: in order to save any of her remaining loved ones, Nelah must unravel the political conspiracy her victim was on the verge of exposing--or risk losing everyone. Set in a cruel futuristic surveillance state where bodies are a government-issued resource, this harrowing story is a twisty, nail-biting commentary on power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy.
the world wasn't ready for you by Justin C. Key
Long obsessed with monsters after reading R. L. Stine's Goosebumps as a kid, author Justin C. Key imagined himself battling monsters and mayhem to a triumphant end. But when watching "Scream 2", in which the movie's only Black couple is promptly killed off, he realized that the Black and Brown characters in his favorite genre were almost always the victim or villain--if they were portrayed at all. In this short story collection, Key expands the horror genre to expertly explore issues of race, class, prejudice, love, exclusion, and loneliness while revealing the horrifying nature inherent in all of us. In "The Perfection of Theresa Watkins," a husband uses new technology to download the consciousness of his recently deceased Black wife into the body of a white woman. In the title story, a father tries to protect his son, teaching him how to navigate a prejudiced world that does not understand him and sees him as a threat. This is a distinctly original collection that demonstrates Key's remarkable literary gifts as well as his utterly fresh take on how genre can be used to delight, awe, frighten, and ultimately challenge our perceptions. Wildly imaginative and powerfully resonant, it introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction..
the scourge between stars by Ness Brown
As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears' failed colony on a distant planet. Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn's crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion. Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship's unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.
black tide by K. C. Jones
Mike and Beth were strangers before the night of the meteor shower. Chance made them neighbors, a bottle of champagne brought them together and sparked something more. Following their drunken and desperate one-night stand, the two discover an astronomical event has left widespread destruction in its wake. But the cosmic lightshow was only part of something much bigger and far more terrifying. When a lost car key leaves them stranded on an empty stretch of Oregon coast and inhuman screams echo from the dunes, the rising tide reaches for their car and unspeakable horrors close in around them, these two self-destructive souls must fight to survive a nightmare of apocalyptic scale.
sleep donation by Karen Russell
Trish Edgewater is the Slumber Corps' top recruiter, inspired by memories of her deceased sister, Dori, who was one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia plague that has swept the globe. She can get even the most reluctant healthy dreamer to donate sleep to help an insomniac in crisis--one of hundreds of thousands of people who have totally lost the ability to sleep. Run by the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers, the Slumber Corps is at the forefront of the fight against this deadly new disease. But when Trish is confronted by "Baby A," the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious "Donor Y," whose horrific infectious nightmares are threatening to sweep through the precious sleep supply, her faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter.
awakened by James S. Murray
"Alien" meets "The Taking of Pelham 123" in this scifi thriller. After years of planning and construction, New York City unveils its newest subway line, connecting with communities across the Hudson River. Major dignitaries, including New York City's mayor and the U.S. president, are in attendance for the inaugural run. But as the first train slowly pulls up to the new pavilion's platform beneath the river, those present realize all the train's cars are empty and the interiors are drenched in blood. Chaos descends, and everyone scrambles to get out of the station. But high levels of deadly methane have filled the space, and the structure begins to flood. For those who don't drown, choke, or spark an explosion, another terrifying danger awaits--the thing that killed all those people on the train. It's out there . . . and it's coming. There's something living beneath New York City, and it's not happy we've woken it up.
cold storage by David Koepp
When Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz was sent to investigate a suspected biochemical attack, he found something far worse: a highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction. He contained it and buried it in cold storage deep beneath a little-used military repository. Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. Only Diaz knows how to stop it. He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards--one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again. All they have is luck, fearlessness, and a mordant sense of humor. Will that be enough to save all of humanity?
head on by John Scalzi
Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps," robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field. Is it an accident or murder? FBI agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth--and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.
blindsight by Peter Watts
Two months after thousands of alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, burned to ash in the atmosphere, a space probe detects a faint signal from the edge of the solar system. Earth must send someone to force introductions with the unknown and unknowable alien intellect that apparently doesn't wish to be met. They send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores; a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound; a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed; and a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist--an informational topologist with half his mind gone--as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.
grass by Sheri S. Tepper
Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. Over time, they evolved a new and intricate society. But before humanity arrived, another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It, too, had developed a culture. . . .Now, a deadly plague is spreading across the stars. No world other than Grass has been left untouched. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier has been sent from Earth to discover the secret of the planet's immunity. Amid the alien social structure and strange life-forms of Grass, Lady Westriding unravels the planet's mysteries to find a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself.
the fold by Peter Clines
Mike Erikson is presented with an irresistible mystery he is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to "fold" dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step. The invention promises to make mankind's dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, traveling through the Door is completely safe. Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn't quite what it seems--and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret. As his investigations draw him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there's only one answer that makes sense. And if he's right, it may only be a matter of time before the project destroys everything. A cunningly inventive mystery featuring a hero worthy of Sherlock Holmes and a terrifying final twist you'll never see coming: Step into the fold. It's perfectly safe.
tomorrow and tomorrow by Tom Sweterlitsch
Pittsburgh is John Dominic Blaxton’s home even though the city has been uninhabitable ruin and ash for the past decade. Dominic lives in the Archive, an immersive virtual reconstruction of the city’s buildings, parks, and landmarks, as well as the people who once lived there, including Dominic’s wife and unborn child. When he’s not reliving every recorded moment with his wife in an endless cycle of desperation and despair, Dominic investigates mysterious deaths preserved in the Archive before Pittsburgh’s destruction. His latest cold case is the apparent murder of a woman whose every appearance is deliberately being deleted from the Archive. Obsessed with uncovering this woman’s identity and what happened to her, Dominic follows a trail from the virtual world into reality. But finding the truth buried deep within an illusion means risking his sanity and his very existence...
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