The 10 Best Sci-Fi/Horror Novels To Add To Your TBR
If you’re new to Maude’s Book Club, the one thing you need to know is that we love science fiction novels. For our book club, we choose from a variety of sci-fi books! We encourage our community to share their favourite sci-fi books and take their vote into consideration when we pick our book of the month.
The month of October is dedicated to horror and for our book club, we want to focus on sci-fi/horror specifically. The stories from sci-fi authors are already obscure and worrisome because technology has taken over our world. But when horror elements are added to sci-fi, readers will almost always get lost in that space. No matter what you’re reading from sci-fi authors, there are underlying elements of horror because what they’re writing holds some truth.
Here are the 10 sci-fi/horror books we recommend this October!
Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Lynesse is the queen's lowly Fourth Daughter, always getting in the way.
But a demon terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).
But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer and is forbidden to help, for his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…
Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey Synopsis
Humanity has colonized the solar system — Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond — but the stars are still out of our reach.
Jim Holden is the XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for — and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.
The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey Synopsis
Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.
Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children’s cells. She tells her favourite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.
The Passage by Justin Cronin
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear — of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
As civilation swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man hanunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse.
Under the Dome by Stephen King
This is the story of the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine which is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. No one can get in and no one can get out.
When food, electricity and water run short, the normal rules of society are changed. A new and more sinister social order develops, Dale Barbara, a young Iraq veteran, teams up with a handful of intrepid citizens to fight against the corruption that is sweeping through the town and to try and discover the source of the Dome before it is too late…
World War Z by Max Brooks
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from the apocalyptic years, travelled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet.
He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Two months since the stars fell…
Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.
Two months of silence, while a world holds its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all.
On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope — and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
The Fireman by Joe Hill
No one knows exactly where it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, and Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trichophyton. To everyone else, it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies — before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Emperor needs necromancers.
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordsman.
Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.
Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.
Have you read any of the books listed above? If you have, let us know which one is your favourite! If you have any recommendations drop them in the comments below.
If you want a fun space to discuss your favourite novels, come join our Discord and become a Patreon member for other great book club perks.
