Best books that combine science fiction and horror
In space, no one can hear you scream. Legend has it that this famous tagline was coined by writer Christopher Fowler, whose horror and crime novels, such as the long-running Bryant & May series, are well worth seeking out. Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and films such as “Predator” — which is getting a new entry this year called “Prey” — show that, at least on the big screen, science fiction and horror go together like lox and bagels. But what about in novels?
Silvia: “Alien” set the template for many science-fiction films and books to come, but the Ridley Scott classic probably owes a debt of gratitude to Mario Bava’s 1965 film “Planet of the Vampires” and “The Space Vampires” (1976) by Colin Wilson. Wilson’s novel went on to be adapted in its own right as “Lifeforce” by Dan O’Bannon, who was also the screenwriter behind “Alien” — it’s a curious book that’s summarized by its title: A group of explorers find an alien spacecraft that looks like a floating castle, with giant, desiccated bats inside. Cue mayhem.
“Dead Silence” by S.A. Barnes is a recently published science-fiction novel that follows this same template. Here, a crew stumbles onto a luxury cruiser that went missing years before, proving that it’s always a bad idea to heed emergency beacons in space. And, speaking of “Alien” and its long-running franchise, V. Castro, who has published several indie horror novels, has written the forthcoming “Aliens: Vasquez,” which zeroes in on one of the coolest characters in this sci-fi horror film series. I’m not normally one for tie-ins, but Castro is one lean, mean horror writer.
Lavie: Alien’s DNA goes back even further! A.E. Van Vogt’s “Black Destroyer” (1939) concerns a ship landing on an alien planet that picks up a lifeform that starts killing the crew one by one. Sound familiar? According to science-fiction scholar David Ketterer, Van Vogt ended up collecting an out-of-court settlement from the studio decades later.
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The Golden Age also gave us “The Thing,” from John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 story “Who Goes There?” Also, Judith Merril’s “That Only A Mother” (1948), is both touching and deeply unsettling as a woman gives birth in a post-nuclear war world. And though Pamela Zoline never published frequently, her “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967) remains a classic of the New Wave in its claustrophobic portrayal of a housewife preparing breakfast for her children. It was collected in “The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories” (1988). So much of what seems new today in science fiction builds on the work that came before it, and writers like Meryll and Zoline deserve reintroduction to the modern reader.
Science fiction has often been ambivalent about the future. Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth’s classic “The Space Merchants” (1952) is both prophetic and horrific in its examination of environmental change, the dream of going into space and the people who sell that dream. It feels more relevant today than it did when it was just science fiction. And the scene in which a giant mass of chicken flesh nicknamed “Chicken Little” is endlessly harvested is horrific enough to still haunt me today.
But the story I keep going back to is Avram Davidson’s “Or All the Seas with Oysters” (1958), collected in his 1962 collection of the same name. It concerns a man working in a bicycle shop who begins to suspect the everyday objects around him are really predatory organisms, with a life cycle that leads from pins (larvae) to coat hangers to bicycles — and the discovery means death. It’s not just an extremely effective marriage of science fiction and horror, but a comment on modernity.
Swedish author Karin Tidbeck’s masterful horror collection “Jagannath” (2012) riffs on the idea of strange evolution in “Brita’s Holiday Village” and Finland’s Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen looks at the secret lives of trains in “Where the Trains Turn” (2014), translated by Liisa Rantalaiho. There is something endlessly disconcerting about the way we anthropomorphize objects, and writers have tapped into that for decades.
Silvia: “Ring” (1991) by Koji Suzuki is one of those novels that many people don’t typically associate with science fiction because its film adaptations place it in the realm of the supernatural. But Suzuki’s novels veer more and more into science fiction as the series goes on, which makes sense since the premise of the book is a videotape going “viral” and causing the death of anyone who watches it within a few days. VHS tapes are probably quaint for today’s readers and some elements of “The Ring” have not aged well, but it remains a creepy title by one of Japan’s masters of horror.
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Another book that marries horror of the viral sort and science fiction is “I Am Legend” (1954), the classic by Richard Matheson that inspired “Night of the Living Dead.” I remember reading it as a teen and biting my nails as hero Robert Neville attempts to survive in a post-pandemic world where vampires roam the streets at night. At about 50,000 words, it’s a reminder that many classic science-fiction novels used to be rather short, and still packed a punch. So, what’s your favorite science-fiction horror tale, dear reader?
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books include “Mexican Gothic,” “Velvet Was the Night,” “The Return of the Sorceress” and the forthcoming “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.” Lavie Tidhar’s most recent novels are “The Escapement” and “The Hood.”
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