If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading sci-fi books, it’s that the future is anything but bright. Alien horrors! Malevolent AI! Faraway planets better left undiscovered! The future holds all sorts of nasty things that are better left untampered with … but humanity will do it anyway.
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Dan Simmons’ Hyperion is what genre nerds like to call “soft science fiction”. It doesn’t go all that heavy into actual science. There’s no time because there’s too much horror to get through! Set in a far-flung future, seven pilgrims are chosen by an enigmatic religious organization to journey to the frontier world of Hyperion and explore the mystical Time Tombs therein. The problem? The tombs are guarded by The Shrike, a biomechanical monstrosity with godlike powers and a penchant for impaling still-living victims on a giant metal tree.
Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is a sci-fi horror classic, and might end up being a sci-fi/horror work of prophecy if AI keeps going the way it’s going. In a post-apocalyptic future, an AI super-intelligence known as the Allied Mastercomputer (or AM) has rendered the human race extinct, save for five unlucky souls. AM keeps these poor people alive through the centuries with its godlike powers, subjecting them to every conceivable torture imaginable. It’s a grim story where death is by far the best option.
Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem was terrifying readers long before the Netflix series. Centered around an ensemble of Chinese scientists, civilians, and military personnel, the series tells the tale of Earth’s first contact with an alien race known as The Trisolarions. To escape their uninhabitable homeward, the Trisolarions have turned their eyes to Earth, and are going to exterminate us off the face of it. It’s a trilogy about the (theoretical) realities of space warfare, and the reasons why alien life doesn’t want to be discovered in the first place.
Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation is a surrealist work of cosmic horror that makes H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space sound like a kids’ story. An anomaly has shown up on planet Earth, a region of distortion called The Shimmer, which is slowly encroaching across the planet’s surface. The Shimmer is a place where genetics erode, where plants and animals are stitched together into mutant monstrosities, and an all-female team of scientists has to go in and figure out how to stop it.
H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds is a sci-fi/horror OG. Lumbering on alien tripod feet so The Three-Body Problem could fly, this genre classic tells the dark tale of an alien invasion. The Martians are coming, and they intend to obliterate all life on Earth in order to colonize the planet for their own ends. How will humanity stop them? With guns? Nukes? Or maybe something much, much smaller?
Part of his Skeleton Crew anthology, Stephen King’s The Jaunt proves that the King of Horror can do more than just scary ghost and killer clown stories. The Jaunt is a parable about the horrors of eternity. In the distant future, humanity has come up with an instantaneous form of travel called “jaunting” which people use to skip merrily across space and time. There’s a catch: you can’t be conscious for your jaunt, or else irrevocable psychological damage will occur. What do conscious people who enter the jaunt space see that drives them insane? You’ll find out.
Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild is the story of a young man who lives on an alien planet inhabited by a species known as the Tlic. The Tlic and humanity have a funny relationship. Not funny “ha ha” but funny “oh no.” Human bodies just so happen to be the perfect place for Tlic eggs to thrive, and so the females of the species implant them into human males … and the main character is next in line.
Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead is the story of cave diver Gyre who is sent on a mining expedition deep underground in exchange for a big chunk of change. Her hi-tech suit is controlled by her handler, Em, but Gyre soon becomes suspicious of her guide’s motivations. Em has a penchant for withholding critical details and injecting Gyre with drugs, and Gyre’s paranoia and distrust rise the deeper she descends.
Set in the city of Neo Tokyo in the aftermath of World War III, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira is the story of a lawless biker gang who comes into contact with an escaped government test subject, with cosmically horrifying results. It’s hailed as one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, and if you can stomach it, you’ll find out why.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is more than just a hallmark of the genre, it’s the originator. It’s the first science fiction story ever told! You know the basic plot, but what you may not know is that Frankenstein’s monster isn’t the grunting, shambling horror Hollywood would have you believe he is. He’s sensitive. Intelligent. Still totally murderous though.
Remade into an equally creepy horror movie starring Scarlet Johansen, Under the Skin is the story of an alien being named Isserley masquerading as a woman on planet Earth. Her job? Seduce and capture men with no families and return their parts to her homeworld for … processing. It’s a freaky novel about isolation, consumption, and—most bafflingly of all—compassion.
Horror manga master Junji Ito’s Hellstar Remina is essentially Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia but far, far worse. Scientists notice an alien planet hurtling towards Earth, and one scientist names the anomaly Remina after his young daughter. The problem? Everything in the alien planet’s path gets mysteriously gobbled up. Upon further inspection, the alien planet appears to have an eye … and a mouth … and TEETH.
Unto Leviathan by Richard Paul Russo is about the last remnants of humanity, floating through the stars in the spaceship Argonos. After receiving a mysterious signal from a faraway planet, a group of scientists step into the steaming jungles of that alien world to search for answers in the ruins of a lost civilization. Spoiler alert: they aren’t going to like what they find.
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