“Silence has a different quality to it when you’re the only one left alive. It’s thicker. Heavier somehow.”
Space and the wacky world of science can be scary places at times. The pursuit of knowledge and pushing the boundaries on what we can do with science has certainly tempted many ambitious scientists over the years, however, there’s more often than not been a hulking Xenomorph or deadly virus lurking around the corner to bring about a messy demise.
Ultimately, science-fiction horror books can tap into our nightmares in a way few other genres can manage. There’s an unsettling realness to the emptiness of space or possibilities of modern technologies that give these pieces of fiction an added dimension that we can’t help but love. With that in mind, join us at What We Reading as we run through our 8 most terrifying sci-fi books.
Six Wakes – Mur Lafferty
Mur Lafferty takes readers on a chilling adventure into the worlds of cloning and humanity’s desperate pursuit for survival in Six Wakes. This locked-room mystery novel follows six criminals on board a spaceship transporting 2,000 cryogenically frozen people en route to a new Earth-like home planet. The crew are routinely cloned, with the process allowing them to keep their memories and ensure a smooth journey.
The horror emerges when bodies begin to be discovered brutally murdered and mangled. Locked in the ship, the six criminals are forced to clean up the mess and work out which of them is a killer.
Salvation Day – Kali Wallace
In Salvation Day, author Kali Wallace introduces readers to the hulking exploration ship, the House of Wisdom. The ship had been long abandoned by the time of the book’s opening, with the entire crew bar one being wiped out by a virus. The story follows Zahra, the leader of her kind who believes the ship will be a source of their salvation.
Concocting a meticulous plan to kidnap the lone survivor on board the ship, Jaswinder Bhattacharya, it is only when Zahra and her people board the ship that they realise there is something far worse than a virus present, and they’ve just woken it up.
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The Luminous Dead – Caitlin Starling
The Luminous Dead is Caitlin Starling’s debut work and blends the claustrophobia of The Martian with the spectacles of Gravity. Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, the book follows Gyre Price as she joins up with an expedition led by the mysterious Em.
As Gyre is led further down the expedition by Em, certain things begin to play out that make her question the nature of the job, and the sinister motivations her superior might have planned for her. An isolating and suspenseful tale, Gyre’s tale will see her have to face the many demons that begin to creep into her mind in the dark isolation, as well as the horrors lurking in these cavern’s shadows.
Dead Silence – S.A. Barnes
‘In space, no one can hear you scream’ is one of the most famous horror quotes of all time, and it is this terrifying reality that S.A. Barnes taps into in Dead Silence. The book follows Claire Kovalik and her salvage crew picking up a distress signal coming from the depths of space.
Following the signal leads the crew to the Aurora, a luxury space cruiser that had disappeared two decades ago. It is when the crew board the ship that this terrifying sci-fi book begins to hit its heights. With paranoia, secrets and the true horror of what happened to the Aurora and its crew buried in the ship’s maze of corridors, Dead Silence is a spine-chilling classic.
Check Out Our Review For Dead Silence
Salvaged – Madeleine Roux
Madeleine Roux’s Salvaged is the story of a woman named Rosalyn Devar on the run from her job, family and seemingly every other part of her life back home. Her quest to get away has led her to a position as a ‘space janitor’, traversing around cleaning up the remnants of failed experiments.
Facing the sack for making too many blunders, Rosalyn is sent on a last-chance mission to clean up the Brigantine, a research vessel that everyone has assumed only houses skeletons now. However, when the janitor arrives, she discovers something has kept the crew very much alive, albeit not quite as human as when they set off…
One of the most terrifying sci-fi books of the past decade, Salvaged is an absolute must-read for any fans of John Carpenter’s The Thing.
We Have Always Been Here – Lena Nguyen
We Have Always Been Here follows Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park as she boards the spaceship Deucalion. Her mission is to observe thirteen human crew members as they assess the colonisation potential of an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy.
On board the Deucalion, Park begins to befriend the various android workers they have, finding them much more agreeable than the complex humans. When the inhabitants of the ship are forced to hunker down against a radiation storm, tensions and alliances begin to form, with things on the planet gradually being exposed as not being as they first seem. Lena Nguyen is a master storyteller and, in We Have Always Been Here, she delivers a standout psychological twist to traditional sci-fi horror.
Parasite – Darcy Coates
As the name would suggest, Darcy Coates’ Parasite kicks off when a guard on a remote moon outpost discovers and decides to investigate a strange alien lifeform.
These parasites can copy a human’s personality and wear their skin, giving them the perfect cover for infecting as much of the race as possible. Coates gives readers a chilling run-through of how these disgusting creatures are able to dismantle all of humanity’s frameworks, whilst a small band of survivors club together to attempt some sort of a fightback, helping to make this one of the most terrifying sci-books going.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
