My favorite book is the collection of Douglas Adam novels, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide. I also just finished re-reading both of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park books, and his book Sphere. I already have The Andromeda Strain, and don’t feel like re-reading it right now. Hopefully something long. Feelings of dread would be nice.
by DailyDiscord
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100% Red Rising
Ah the bleak beauty
100%, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream – Hopeless and bleak.
Flowers For Algeron – While not too grim. It is very sad and heart-breaking.
The Wanting Seed – A dystopian about heterosexuality being illegal. Lots of gritty stuff about infertility.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell fits your request perfectly. I’ll spare you a plot summary, but that book is dark, and conveys an amazing amount of dread.
David Feintuch’s Midshipman’s Hope and sequels. A very good writer, but oh does he love the misery and “being foresworn” which I believe is some kind of puritan guilt trip. Plus lots of disasters seem to kill off everyone around him. And traditional naval elements
A great read though.
The Stand by Stephen King
Planet of the Apes is very good. It’s free if you have audible premium, and you get to watch the movie after!
* A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
* Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
* The Man in the High Castle (note: there is an Amazon Prime tv show adaptation, but I do not like it)
* The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
* Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. First in a trilogy so if you want something long this is good.
* The Rifters series by Peter Watts. The whole series is available as free ebooks on his website. Also very long, the final book was initially published in two separate parts.
* Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It’s been published in many different combinations, from a series of 4 to one big volume.
How bleak? Very very creepy and bleak – Blindsight, Peter Watts. Small deep space mission with vampires and disturbing horror aliens and musings about consciousness. Relentlessly bleak.
Partially but not completely bleak – A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge. A generation ship encounters a planet with aliens who must hybernate for 200 years at a time while the planet periodically freezes over. They intend to study the aliens in secret. A second unrelated generation ship joins the first, in their observations of this planet. Something is….wrong with some of the people. Sheen of creepy throughout, but not relentlessly bleak.
Not sure if this fits here- A Nightmare’s Point of View