Sometimes, you might find yourself wanting something a little spooky but in space and with science. This is why I have put together some of what I consider to be the best sci-fi horror books you can get your hands on. As they say, in space, nobody can hear you scream.
Combining two genres, like sci-fi and horror, can result in some truly terrifying outcomes. Space and the future are already pretty scary, with its limitless unknowns. It is when those unknowns turn out to be hostile that everything goes pear-shaped.
Finna – Nino Cipri
Finna is actually just a quick novella that you can maybe even pick up and read in only a few hours. However, the premise is fantastic. If you have ever visited an Ikea, you will understand the weird world that this book exists in. Finna is based on the idea of a missing person in one of these Ikea-type shopping buildings. However, while looking through the various departments, the two employees find themselves entering new multiverses.
The horror of this short book goes beyond just being stuck in a huge box furniture store. The various multiverses the pair enter are also home to many terrifying situations. To compound these horrors, the two only broke up a week ago, and just to top it off, they’re doing the whole thing for minimum wage. This is a funny first entry to the best horror sci-fi list, but a great read nonetheless.
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream – Harlan Ellison
This is yet another short story for this science fiction horror list, but it is guaranteed to give you chills. This short novella takes the idea of a malevolent AI and pushes it to its limits. The horrors the AI inflicts on the characters are, in some ways, a reflection of the people who built it, turning the blame inward.
The AI in this book was built in an effort to control supplies and troops during a war. When it becomes sentient it turns on humanity, hating it. It wipes out everyone but five last humans, which it focuses its entire vitriol against. Their lives are hell as they try to figure out how to survive. They are unable to kill themselves due to the AI, and they live in constant torture. The horrors of this book run deep, leaving the reader feeling trapped and hopeless.
The Day of The Triffids – John Wyndham
You know what is really terrifying? Flowers. I can’t even look at the damn things without screaming a little. This is why The Day of The Triffids is such an impactful book in the sci-fi horror genre. John Wyndham takes a few tropes from horror and repackages them into something truly imaginative. This book, published way back in 1951, preludes a lot of the zombie and apocalyptic books that came before it.
The Day of The Triffids sets up the apocalypse in a wonderfully imaginative way. We are first faced with carnivorous, violent plants that are able to move around. They are cultivated for their oils and are mostly controlled. However, when a meteor shower blinds most of the population, they are no longer controlled. The story takes us on a journey through a world where most are blind and there are killer plants on the loose. It sounds insane, and it kind of is, but I would also still consider it a classic in the sci-fi horror genre.
1984 – George Orwell
After the First and Second World Wars and the revelation of what science was used for in the Atomic Bomb, a lot of sci-fi writing became very dystopian. Gone were the starry-eyed writers dreaming of a world assisted by robots, flying cars, and magical megacities. Science fiction took a turn down a dark route, and the age of dystopian science fiction was born. I feel that Orwells 1984 is a fantastic example of the horror that was imagined by sci-fi writers post-war.
1984 speaks deeply of the paranoia and fears after the horrors of the war. People in the book are constantly lied to, willingly accepting the clear misinformation for the sake of an easy life. The world is in a perpetual war, or so the government says, and the population is kept under permanent control in an effort to save their country from foreign threats. The horror in this sci-fi book resides close to the reality Orwell paints. 1984 is often referenced incorrectly by critics of current governments and organizations.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War – Max Brooks
Whatever you do, don’t judge this book by the rubbish film of the same name released in 2013. It has little to no similarities to the sci-fi horror book put together by Max Brooks. The book itself breaks down the horrors of the zombie outbreak, taking stories from many different perspectives. Max Brooks compiles letters, accounts, and other sources to flesh out the zombie apocalypse in intricate detail.
In World War Z, an outbreak and eventual overrunning of zombies ravaged the world. Through the various perspectives, the true devastation is expanded. Every country, every profession, all ages and races are able to tell their story. There are few books, either science fiction or not, that tell such a detailed account of the zombie apocalypse. This is a must-read for any sci-fi horror fan.
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
I can’t write a list of science fiction horror without mentioning the mother of the genre herself. Frankenstein is widely considered to be one of the first science fiction books of all time, and it most certainly also fits the horror genre, too. Frankenstein is a classic, written before we really understood anything about the science we have today. It includes body horror, reanimation, and a number of interesting observations about society as a whole. After all, what is sci-fi, if not an exciting way, to turn our gaze toward ourselves?
Frankenstein has wonderful horror elements mixed in with a very early understanding of the future of science. Shelley drew on a very limited understanding of what powerful electrical current could do, theorizing that it may bring back a cadaver. The monster that is born from this experiment is somewhat less of a monster than the township of people who decide that it is evil rather than misunderstood.
The Gone World – Tom Sweterlitsch
This fascinating book combines three very well-blended genres together, mixing crime, horror and science fiction. The horror used in this time-traveling narrative is one of my favorites, too, the kind that feels unavoidable and utterly consuming. The wonderfully poetic use of language wraps this gripping narrative up that explores the horror of realizing the fate of the entire population rests on the shoulders of one single human. Someone who has no idea how to stop it.
As Shannon Moss starts to uncover the burial murder of a family, it turns out that it may have been done by some presumed dead time-traveling naval soldiers. As the crime gradually unfolds, Shannon delves deeper into the future in an attempt to crack the case. However, it seems that every possible future she travels to results in the inevitable extinction of the human race. This makes for a gripping crime fiction, sci-fi, horror book that will have you completely invested.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
This is another throwback to the age of classic sci-fi horror. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a book about the horror of scientific progress gone awry, resulting in a schizophrenic monster running riot in a city. The duality of man is the core focus of this classic masterwork of fiction, told in a police report style. Like many great works of science fiction, this digs into the two sides of a person’s humanity. Through a failed experiment, the two facets of Dr Jekyll are massively blown out of proportion, resulting in a monster and a master.
This publication came out far before the ideas of the two sides of a personality were ever discussed in science. Again, this is a case of sci-fi prediction of the future of progress, but this time with psychology rather than technology. The mind of the sci-fi writer has often foreseen advances in science and wrapped them up in a horror setting.
Cell – Stephen King
This sci-fi horror book from Stephen King may have been written under the influence, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great read. In a very Black Mirror-style setting, cell phones have wormed their way into the population’s minds and made them wildly violent. The brain worm that has infected the world turns humans into a violent hive mind dedicated to spreading itself further and removing any resistance in its way. The narrative is terrifying and twisting, but the sci-fi horror elements are all there.
This kind of sci-fi plays on very current fears of what the technology we already have in our lives could have the power to do. When this was written in 2006, the wide use of phones was really only in its infancy. Now, we use our phones for everything, from navigation to communication. However, our phones haven’t turned us into the violent hive-mind zombies he predicted. The real horror is how they have turned us into isolated, pacified addicts.
The Body Snatchers – Jack Finney
Like a lot of the classic sci-fi novels, this was originally serialized in a magazine. This results in a story that is full of suspense and chapters that end in cliffhangers. In this classic sci-fi horror from 1955, spored fell from the skies, dropped by an alien race. At first, these spores go unnoticed until people start to notice something wrong happening with their loved ones. It turns out that these spores grow into perfect replicas of people on Earth. They copy everything, from memories to scars. They then find their double and replace them, with the original never being seen again. The replicas are unable to reproduce, feel emotion, or live more than a few years.
This book actually turns out, like many others, to be a criticism of the human race as a whole. In the book, one of the replicants redirects the question and criticism of what they’re doing. It raises the point that human beings are already doing exactly what the aliens do. They kill indigenous populations, use resources like a virus, and kill anything they need in the name of survival. Truly horrifying.
