If you’re a fan of the Alien films, there are several terrifying sci-fi novels you should definitely add to your reading list. The situation of being trapped out in space with a hyper-evolved killing machine is one that none of us ever want to be in, but you can’t help but wonder.
Science fiction books for Alien fans
Alien is a very particular kind of science fiction and is quite specific in its horror style. In space, as they say, nobody can hear you scream. This is what adds to the desperation and skin-crawling aspects of these novels. Who knows what you’re about to face when you’re up against an alien, on a remote planet, or on a distant ship? The Alien films perfectly capture this trapped, lonely horror, and so do these sci-fi books.
The Day of The Triffids – John Wyndham
Do you know what is just as scary as a super-evolved killing alien aboard a drifting, empty spaceship? Homicidal plants roaming the streets of Britain. In Wyndham’s fantastic novel, Triffids have been bred to become carnivorous and able to move, being farmed for their valuable materials. They’re kept under control by the human population until a meteor shower blinds everyone.
Although the plot sounds bizarre, and it is, the horror of the book runs deep. Being constantly stalked by violent plants is only the beginning of the characters’ problems. Human beings become, typically, evil. They enslave and trap people with sight, using them as their eyes. The book is one of survival and an exciting study of society pushed to the brink.
Annhialation – Jeff VanderMeer
Now a hit film, Annihilation is a creepy and complex story taking place in an area full of the alien unknown. Akin to the Alien films, a team needs to survive in an area that is both hostile and not understood in this sci-fi novel. In a zone known as Area X, many weird and confusing events occur, ranging from mass suicide to cancer. It is up to an expedition team to attempt to unravel the mysteries or die in the process.
VanderMeer pushes the limits of imagination with Annhialation in a book that embraces the unknown. Akin to books like Roadside Picnic by the Arkadys, the zone is full of mysteries beyond human comprehension. This leaves the narrative open to terrifying horrors and eye-opening wonder.
Pitch Dark – Courtney Alameda
If the trapped horror aboard a spaceship is what you love about the Alien films, pick up a copy of Pitch Dark, a tale that will make your skin crawl. This fantastic young adult sci-fi horror will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.
On a spaceship that has been floating for generations, the remnants of Earth are preserved and ready to start anew. The crew sleeps, awaiting arrival. However, a ship raider finds them drifting and boards their vessel. She wakes them, sure that she has found the saviors of humanity. Once awakened, they must fight against a swarm of mutant aliens bent on their destruction.
Stinger – Robert R. McCammon
If you have ever seen the Alien vs Predator movies, then you will feel right at home with this sci-fi horror book. In Inferno, Texas, things are already looking pretty bleak. Crime, racism, and poverty wrack the town, leaving it violent and dangerous. However, when two alien crafts land just outside the city, things are about to get severely worse.
This book is a breakneck ride, taking place over only 24 hours. The first crat crashed due to a malfunction, and the second one landed because the hyperviolent alien inside it was hunting the first. Throughout the sci-fi book, horrors are unleashed across the town as the hunt ensues. This book is a fantastic read for the action, violence, and horror as the people of Inferno fight back against this unknown force.
Tommyknockers – Stephen King
Tommyknockers was written by King during some of his weirder years, but it still stands as a fantastic sci-fi horror. After an alien craft lands in a remote American town, the population is brainwashed by a mysterious gas. This gas makes the people affected weirdly inventive and does not let them leave the town they live in. They slowly become more and more like the aliens who crashed the ship. The population’s minds become telepathically melded, and they will do anything to protect each other and the crashed ship.
The idea of an alien being existing in people’s heads and slowly taking over their bodies is similar to the unseen nature of the creature in the Alien films. A creeping and hard-to-fight enemy is central to this book. It is up to one man to save the day, deal with the loss of loved ones, and fight against the hive mind.
Hyperion – Dan Simmons
Although this sci-fi book is a vast space opera, a creature exists in Hyperion that is just as violent and terrifying as Alien. The Shrike has been sent back through time to stop events that will eventually endanger its creators far into the future. Simmons Hyperion Saga goes much beyond just this situation, but the Shrike still plays a central role.
Like the Alien in the films, the Shrike is a perfect killing machine. It can move at phenomenal speeds and transform its body in terrifying ways. Its humanoid shape is covered in atom-sharp blades, making it the perfect killing machine. The Shrike can warp reality around itself, causing untold pain to anyone it manages to get its hands on. It is up there with some of the scariest sci-fi villains in the genre.
Revelation Space – Alistair Reynolds
Far in the distant future, Lighthuggers exist. These are ships designed by genetically engineered humans so close to being completely machine that they teeter on the border of transcendence. These huge ships can rebuild, repair, and reshape at will, controlled by almost sentient micromachines. However, when a ship is so close to being alive as these Lighthuggers are, it can also be possessed by malevolent viruses.
In Revelation Space, where the crew’s minds are melded with the ship’s, there is an alien threat. It exists in the spaceship’s very being and has its own agenda. The crew interacts with the ship through neural links, constantly fighting the alien within the network. However, Lighthuggers are no causal vessels. This one, in particular, is armed with weapons designed to destroy galaxies.
Ship of Fools – Richard Paul Russo
A generational ship drifts through space, with the vast crew unable to even remember what their purpose aboard it was in the first place. As they finally come across a new planet, a situation arises. Should they land on the planet and begin settling, or is that not what this is all about? However, the planet once had human life and is now devoid of any. There is also a mysterious ship floating in the planet’s orbit. When exploring, there is a single elderly woman aboard.
Ship of Fools plays on the fear of the unknown elements in the sci-fi novel so familiar to fans of the Alien franchise. Not only is the planet, now devoid of life, a terrifying mystery, but also the lone woman. Inviting her on board the ship, full of humans, is a risk. Who is she? Is she responsible for the genocide, or is she the last remaining human?
Infected – Scott Sigler
If you’re looking for a sci-fi novel that plays on the horror elements of Alien more than the alien parts, then Infected might be the book for you. In this story, an alien invasion comes to the Earth on a microscopic level. The aliens are smaller than the human eye can see, and they infect their hosts, slowly mutating them into homicidal, psychotic killers. Across America, human beings are going mad, running riot, and it’s up to the protagonists to figure out why.
Like Alien, the enemy is mostly unseen but phenomenally dangerous. It’s hard to fight against something that knows no other objective than impregnating humans to produce more of their homicidal kin. Like Alien, this creature from the vast nothingness of space is only interested in humans for their ability to host its young.
Sphere – Michael Crichton
The deep, unknown depths of the ocean are the location for this science fiction horror. Equally remote as the vacuum of space, this book is a similar trapped horror of Alien, pitting the crew of a deep sea exploration mission against an alien being. While exploring a spaceship constructed by the US Navy and sent back in time, they come across a sphere that begins manifesting creatures bent on killing the team.
What makes this sci-fi horror so terrifying is the remote and lonely situation of being deep under the ocean. The small craft the team is exploring is deep under the ocean’s surface, and a cyclone forces its rescue vessels to abandon them for five days. They must battle against an entity on board the ship, working to survive and figure out what they are fighting against.
Published: Aug 17, 2024 09:24 am