I’ve been on a cosmic horror kick lately, and what I’d really like to read is stories or novels of the awful and unfathomable on a spaceship. Stories where we go to them, poke what shouldn’t be poked, scan what shouldn’t be scanned, and things proceed from there.
Blindsight by Peter Watts. One of the few books in recent memory to genuinely give me the creeps.
I haven’t read the book, but watched the movie. I think Event Horizon might be what you’re looking for.
I’ve heard references to these sorts of stories in the 40k universe, but again I haven’t read the books.
I think because of the coincidence between both Event Horizon and ships in 40k running into ‘chaos’ in the warp.
But as much as people keep making the parallel, it is just as likely that both drew their ideas from H.P. Lovecraft’s ideas of what lies beyond what we know as spacetime in our comfortable sphere.
It’s not exactly Cthulhu but the revelation space has ships that are monstrous and so old that people barely ever go to most of the parts of them. Could be worth a read.
Alastair Reynolds is the author. It’s not really horror exactly but some screwed up stuff in em. That’s all I got for you sorry! I’ll follow this to see what others suggest
Ah yes, the massive, ancient ship with the interesting business with the captain. That was creepy.
I really enjoy Alastair Reynolds’ novels.
Was there one with torture chamber pods onboard or something? Was that Absolution Gap? I may be mixing up books. Memory no worky.
I’m surprised, because there’s some obvious answers to this I don’t see here.
Blindsight A bunch of zombies, led by a vampire fly into deep interstellar space to rendezvous with an alien object that doesn’t understand or care about them.
The God Engines by John Scalzi. VERY different from Scalzi’s other work. FTL works because of psionic aliens who are horrifically tortured by priests to force them to warp space.
The Outside by Ada Hoffman. AI gods rule the universe and are horrific.
The Sollan Empire books by Christopher Ruocchio have MANY elements of this (and other SciFi tropes). The alien race at war with humans worship dark gods from outside the galaxy who want to destroy reality. They also consider humans to be an edible slave race and you’ll encounter the horrific things they do to humans right in book 1, but they really get into that in the most recent book.
Hyperion If the Shrike isn’t a form of cosmic horror, IDK what is.
Sphere by Michael Crichton. Ok, technically a submarine base, but there IS a space ship…
S.A. Barnes - Dead Silence
Very well written, and exactly what you are looking for.
