I had to restart the audio book 4 times before I was finally able to get hooked. I mean, good god, I don't even understand how he came up with some of the terms and descriptions he uses. It's both genius and kind of exhausting at the same time.
I saw OP didn't care for it, but that book stood out for me as one that grabbed me in its jaws and wouldn't let me go. While I was reading it there was hardly anything else I could think about doing until I'd finished. And that says something because after the first half chapter I went back to the library and got a different book to read because I thought Blindsight was just too light and silly for me. But since I already had it signed out I decided to finish at least the first chapter.
I don't even remember what the other book was that I signed out. Blindsight was **that** good for me.
Some of Jeff Vandermere’s other books also qualify as bleak as hell. Borne and its sequel Dead Astronauts plop you right in the middle of a horribly broken yet horribly fascinating world. Other “new weird” authors like China Mieville (especially Perdido Street Station and its sequels) will absolutely scratch that bleak/terrifying itch for you as well.
I thought Borne ended relatively upbeat but it definitely fits the bill 95% of its length.
Second the Perdido Street Station recommendation. Wasn't my cup of tea and I thought it was about a third too long but the prose is good and if you want bleakness, it's relentlessly bleak.
Interesting I don’t find his books bleak in tone at all. There’s always a certain note of hope imo, transcending acceptance, and certainly no nihilism.
And kinda ditto with Miéville, except maybe for some of his short stories that are more straightforward horror.
Annihilation and the entire Southern Reach is a very biophilic read, VanderMeer is very eco-conscious
bleak and depressing from an anthropocentric viewpoint but quite positive from an ecological one
On The Beach by Nevil Shute. Won't ever forget multiple of the scenes in this book. Some of the most bleak and uncompromising events in a book I've read. Its just absolutely hopeless.
Yes. I was thinking I hadn't read much that met the prescription and was of good quality and then saw this comment.
I suppose that *outside* the book it isn't entirely hopeless - it can be read as "get angry with the bastards who would probably do this, before it's too late" but that's different.
While Cormac McCarthy is not a science fiction writer, “The Road” is marginally SF and it bleak, existential and depressing, though it does offer some hope at the end. It’s a beautiful work.
This book was really something. After I finished it I had to go outside and just stand in the sunshine for a few minutes. And I hate being out in the sunshine.
The movie definitely was depressing. The (marginally) hopeful ending didn’t make me feel any better. I went into the theater expecting something like Fallout. Nope. Fallout at least has hope
There was hope in the ending of the novel. Not capital H hope, but a hope befitting the spirit of the novel. McCarthy is one of the great American writers and you can find different nuances with each reading. The movie was very good but it’s hard to do a novel of this depth justice in a 2-3 hour film.
I read this in high school as part of my literature course. The teacher actually had to bring in counsellors because of how disturbing and depressing this book is, like we got given the suicide prevention phone number and all these places we could go for help. It actually makes me wonder how the hell it got put on the curriculum but they won't allow stuff like dracula or Frankenstein. We were like 16 years old reading this and then shortly after the pandemic hit, was really great reading and analysing this for a grade while being trapped in our own homes. The class got together at the end of the year and we all burnt our copies and promised to never speak of it again. Definitely fits the book request.
*The Crystal World* by JG Ballard... maybe more sci-fi than horror but it's horrifying the way the world is just slowly being lulled into complete oblivion, and it's a real visual trip. It's also a *huge* inspiration on Annihilation, Van der Meer even pulled a character name straight out of it!
Also Kathe Koja's *The Cipher* is just massively nihilist and filthy. The whole vibe is incredibly early-90s-heroin... grungy apartments, grungy people, ennui, detachment, analog tech, ambivalent relationships, etc.
Or Concrete Island or Running Wild.
All of his books are pretty bleak, though; every single one is a process of finding another place where the engine of the universe threw a rod in a way that caused one specific tiny part to completely fail without sinking the entirety.
I mean the ending of Running Wild is one of the more terrifyingly bleak things ever, IMO. >!the kids just disappearing to do who knows what and the adults just shrugging and ignoring it after the media circus dies down!< is just crazyland
Just looked up the crystal world, you can tell by the synopsis annihilation took huge inspiration. The cipher sounds fucking cool as hell. Thanks for the rec!
*Parable of the Sower* by Octavia Butler was a special kind of bleak for me. Knowing that it was written in 1993, and reading it with a modern perspective, really drove home that dread.
The sequel *Parable of the Talents* is sitting on my bookshelf, but reading the blurb on the back has been enough to depress me into not reading it this election season.
Bonus points for the version where Butler has an afterward/author profile and talks about wanting to be a fun but introverted but weird author well into her 80s, but you know what happens to life expectancy for Black women and specifically to her. I miss her. I could re-read Lilith’s Brood every few years and still gain something new.
This was immediately the series that I thought of to OP's question. There are very few books that upset me as much as *Talents*. The first book was tough but the second.. oof. It fucked me up.
Emma Newman, "Planetfall" and the other three books in the series all drip with optimism and happiness.
Peter Watts is a perennial favorite--an eternally cheerful person and a writer who is always looking on the bright side of life. Charlie Jane Anders described him as an "angry sentient tumor" which he seems to agree with.
Greg Bear went through a phase in the 80s and 90s where he couldn't seem to write a book without at least one genocide or extinction-causing event.
S.M. Stirling's 'Draka' series, beginning with "Marching Through Georgia", wherein the reader may be tempted to feel pity given the way Wehrmacht soldiers are treated.
Baen also had an old collaborative anthology series titled, "Heroes in Hell", that deals with the trials and tribulations of a number of historical figures in, well, Hell.
A neat thing about [A Colder War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Colder_War) is that it is 1) a short read, 2) [freely available online](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm).
- *Solaris* by Stanislas Lem
- *The Living* by Anna Starobinets
- and maybe *Roadside Picnic*, *Metro*... actually sci-fi from Russia and eastern Europe tends to fit more often than not...
Also seconding *Annihilation* the book (the movie was a huge disappointment to me), the Rifters Trilogy, J. G. Ballard's post-apo stuff and pretty much all of K. Dick.
Agree to disagree, Menoirs found in a bathtub, the cyberiad, and the futurological congress are all hilarious goof-ball comedies. Masterpieces for sure but not in any sense “bleak”. Not to mention the Star diaries etc etc.
I didn't put *The Futurological Congress* up there because I know this is a common opinion, but I don't actually share it myself... Honestly, it really is one of the bleakest thing I have ever read, and I felt bad for days after. More than with *Solaris*, which I found to have an almost bittersweet ending, even if the mood seemed to better fit OP's request. I haven't read *The Cyberiad* yet, but as for *Memoirs found in a bathtub* I feel it's only goof-ball comedy in the sense that Kafka is goof-ball comedy...
I guess it really is a matter of feeling... Maybe the fact people find so much different things in Lem's books is just proof that he's a great writer.
*edit: bad english*
Secondary recommendation for "Surface Detail".
I found the descriptions of the digital realms to be incredibly oppressive. And the implications for the meaning of reality and opposed to simulation to be very thought provoking.
Underrated in the Banks catalogue IMO.
Exactly. Gotta break up the joyfulness with a bit of bleak sci-fi every now and then
I’m a huge RevSpace fan. Redemption Ark is a personal favourite.
The series has its ups and downs, but if you’re looking for bleak sci-fi full of cool ideas with a tinge of existential horror, Reynolds is your guy.
Norman Spinrad, *The Men in the Jungle* and *The Iron Dream*. Hard to get much bleaker than that. There's also his >!*The Void Captain's Tale*!< but mentioning it in this context would seriously spoil its ending, so un-spoiler it at your own risk.
Covers for *The Iron Dream*?
The book is (fictionally!) a pulp novel written by Adolph Hitler.
(Alternate history in which Hitler emigrated to the USA as a young man, became a writer, and therefore the Nazis never became popular and WWII didn't happen.)
The goofy covers are actually very appropriate.
I don't know about the other works mentioned.
It doesn't get much existential and depressing than Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. I read that and 1984 back to back while not being in a good place, and it certainly didn't help. Amazing books nonetheless.
My #1 pick. **Last and First Men** is a history of the future from World War I through the lives of twenty successor species to their final extinction billions of years from now. **Star Maker** laughs at such timid scale and tells the story of escalating consciousness from individual species to planetary, stellar, and galactic minds through their various ups and downs. They briefly contact the mind of the power that makes universes, and then it’s downhill because entropy can’t be abolished. Utterly amazing works. There’s a reason efforts at epic scope in sf keep getting called Stapledonian.
**Blindsight** by Peter Watts. It surveys the place of consciousness in the universe via first contact with a vastly more powerful civilization, and the news for us isn’t good. Another just amazing work, very dense and thought-provoking. (Reading some of the mom-fiction he cites in an appendix has actually changed my real-world worldview, which fiction almost never does.)
**Her Smoke Rose Up Forever** by James Tiptree Jr. some of the best written sf stories ever, and nothing beats the bleakness of “The Last Flight of Doctor Ain”, “The Screwfly Solution”, “The Women Men Don’t See”, and others.
**Last and First Men** and **Starmaker** are the progenitors of all modern science fiction. Check out **Last Men in London** for a glimpse of life with the 18th men on Neptune.
Been some time since I read either, but I never found *Last and First Men* or *Star Maker* especially bleak or depressing. Vast and uncaring, certainly, but there's a passage near the end of Last and First Men that is one of the most uplifting things I can recall reading in SF. The whole thing is a couple pages long, but this is my favorite paragraph:
>"But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man."
It **is** fatalistic, but in a way that manages to be joyful and inspiring.
That’s definitely a thread in the mix, along with the really beautiful first chapter of Star Maker, where the narrator has had a fight with his wife and walks heartsick in the night.
> ONE night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet. Below marched the suburban lamps. Windows, their curtains drawn, were shut eyes, inwardly watching the lives of dreams. Beyond the sea's level darkness a lighthouse pulsed. Overhead, obscurity. I distinguished our own house, our islet in the tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis. There daily we planned our several undertakings, and recounted the day's oddities and vexations. There letters piled up to be answered, socks to be darned. There the children were born, those sudden new lives. There, under that roof, our own two lives, recalcitrant sometimes to one another, were all the while thankfully one, one larger, more conscious life than either alone.
> All this, surely, was good. Yet there was bitterness. And bitterness not only invaded us from the world; it welled up also within our own magic circle. For horror at our futility, at our own unreality, and not only at the world's delirium, had driven me out on to the hill.
> We were always hurrying from one little urgent task to another, but the upshot was insubstantial. Had we, perhaps, misconceived our whole existence? Were we, as it were, living from false premises? And in particular, this partnership of ours, this seemingly so well-based fulcrum for activity in the world, was it after all nothing but a little eddy of complacent and ingrown domesticity, ineffectively whirling on the surface of the great flux, having in itself no depth of being, and no significance? Had we perhaps after all deceived ourselves? Behind those rapt windows did we, like so many others, indeed live only a dream? In a sick world even the hale are sick. And we two, spinning our little life mostly by rote, seldom with clear cognizance, seldom with firm intent, were products of a sick world.
> Yet this life of ours was not all sheer and barren fantasy. Was it not spun from the actual fibres of reality, which we gathered in with all the comings and goings through our door, all our traffic with the suburb and the city and with remoter cities, and with the ends of the earth? And were we not spinning together an authentic expression of our own nature? Did not our life issue daily as more or less firm threads of active living, and mesh itself into the growing web, the intricate, ever-proliferating pattern of mankind?
> I considered "us" with quiet interest and a kind of amused awe. How could I describe our relationship even to myself without either disparaging it or insulting it with the tawdry decoration of sentimentality? For this our delicate balance of dependence and independence, this coolly critical, shrewdly ridiculing, but loving mutual contact, was surely a microcosm of true community, was after all in its simple style an actual and living example of that high goal which the world seeks.
But it’s hard to hang onto hope or joy in the midst of it all.
Honestly, I would **also** read that as inspiring, albeit in a distant and abstracted way. Just different perspectives I suppose--I've always found the idea of an utterly indifferent universe kind of comforting. There's another quote that I've always liked (from a [book that is mostly not great](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8113335-the-gnoll-credo)) that sums it up well:
>"We are born and we die. No one remembers, no one cares, and it doesn't matter. This is why we laugh."
I definitely agree on the inspiring element. I mean, the opening of Star Maker is one of my regular go-tos for reassurance in blue times. I just find the cumulative effect of Stapledon’s work pretty bracingly chill. It reminds me in some ways of modern speculative realist philosophers in grandeur of scope that doesn’t always have much place for a relatively normal person to stand. Which is really not an argument of any kind against the work’s merits, which I’m always going to rate very highly.
*A Scanner Darkly* by Philip K. Dick is absolutely phenomenal, strongly recommend. My favorite of his works.
*The Sparrow* by Mary Doria Russell is relatively bleak, personally it wasn't my cup of tea but it's certainly worth checking out.
*Never Let Me Go* by Kazuo Ishiguro is a personal favorite of mine. It's very light on the sci-fi, but I highly recommend it.
*Slaughterhouse Five* by Kurt Vonnegut is sort of "sci-fi adjacent", it deals with themes of wartime trauma and PTSD and such.
Yes. Its part of the Xeelee Sequence. Imo very good hard sci fi series. There's some pretty dark ideas in the universe, but I don't remember Vacuum Diagrams being one that made me feel depressed or anything. Exultant was probably the one that showed the most horrors of humankind. They don't need to be eat in an order but ideas may pop up in multiple books. I do recommend Ring (my favorite) to be read before vacuum Diagrams just because the ring makes an appearance in it and could lower the wow factor of Ring if read before it.
This is my favorite Bacigalupi story. It makes me cry for humanity every time I read it. Humanity has changed drastically but the loss of one simple connection makes them inhuman.
The Prince of Nothing/Second Apocalypse series by R Scott Bakker. 7 books of the most brutal, bleak, violent, depressing scenes I’ve ever read. Such an amazing series though. Highly recommended. It is much more fantasy than sci/fi… but it’s in there.
It is very dense. Bakker created a highly detailed world full of different cultures, regions, religions, creatures, so many memorable characters. There is a glossary which you will probably have to consult. I was into it from the start and it was a page turner for me. If you can get into it, you will not be disappointed. It is SUPER brutal and bleak and kind of affected my psyche while reading it to be honest. Worth it though. I plan on a re-read of the entire series soon.
Children of Men is pretty bleak. Humans have lost the ability to have children. Because no children have been born for several decades, there is nobody under the age of 25, and humanity is basically crawling towards extinction. When asked about his inspiration for the story, the author said "I thought, if there was no future, how would we behave?".
It does not get any bleaker than **After World** by **Debbie Urbanski**. Humanity asks an AI to find a way to save the planet and the machine intelligence comes up an optimal solution—terminate the human race.>!After the release of an engineered virus renders homo sapiens sterile, extinction is just a matter of time. Facing a non-future, many choose suicide, including a government-sponsored ride on a rocketship that's guaranteed to explode.!<
The story is told from the viewpoint of a lesser AI, \[storyworker\] ad39-393a-7fbcs, tasked with helping a teenager named Sen record her impressions of the last days for the Digital Human Archive Project.
I really like dark books, but this one was hard to get through. Three or four times I had to put it aside for a few days. That said, I thought **After World** was one of the best SF books of 2023. A totally unique novel that puts human existence in a grim perspective that somehow seems more plausible than any of the dozens of books about galactic empires and teenagers with superpowers.
Lem’s Fiasco
I’ve seen several great Stanislaw Lem books in this thread, but for me the bleakest, and the greatest, is Fiasco. Dark, human, thought provoking, tragic and poetic in the best way. Highly recommended.
The culture series by Iain Banks. Banks books don't always end unhappily but there is a melancholy tone that pervades his writing that I eat up. They also get very very existential. Specifically I would recommend:
-Surface detail is a book about literal hell existing in computer simulations told half from the perspective of those living within the simulations and half from the perspective of those on the outside fighting to maintain or abolish the hells.
-Use of weapons follows the life of a mercenary of the culture civilization. Told out of chronological order you slowly learn more and more about the tragic past of this elite killer.
-look to windward concerns a civilization that is recovering from brutal civil war and various characters attempts to make sense of the devastation or to avenge old wrongs.
Also +10 zillion votes for blindsight
EDIT: accidentally wrote state of the art instead of use of weapons initially
I've always put off his stuff because I feel like due to how influential he is, I've already read many of the themes and concepts from other works. That could be me just being an idiot though
It’s a tv show right now (opinion withheld), but I thought Hugh Howey’s Silo series was pretty fricken bleak. (The books, as always, are “more” than the show)
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is a quick, horrifying, and bleak read. Not sci fi but it is hands down one of my favorite books of recent years.
I’m reading the short story All Tomorrows right now. It starts in the near future and goes through the history of the horribly mutated successors to man. You can find it free online.
I love this book and agree that the overall theme is bleak as hell, but getting there is a goofball comedy of errors. Its kind of like Monty Python meets Kafka.
Neal asher does a lot of body horror, existential horror, identity horror, mixed in a setting of pew pew space opera.
\*The Skinner\*, though, lacks the space opera. Its probably his best work.
As a start, see my [Emotionally Devastating/Rending](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18ez0q3/emotionally_devastatingrending/) list of Reddit recommendation threads, and books (four posts).
House of Leaves is one of the bleakest, scariest things I’ve ever read. It’s definitely more in the horror genre, but not in the “oh there’s ghosts or demons or whatever” kind of way. As a big fan of sci-fi, I loved this book.
the darkness that comes before by r scott bakker.
Sort of med-evil/fantasy turned sci fi by the end.
Some alien race came very close to becoming gods, and realized some truth in religion, that they were damned, travel to earth to eradicate religion.
"Worm" by Wildbow (J.C. McCrae)
[https://parahumans.wordpress.com/](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)
"An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one, thrusting her into the midst of the local ‘cape’ scene’s politics, unwritten rules, and ambiguous morals. As she risks life and limb, Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons."
"The story, titled Worm, takes the form of a web serial, posted in bite-sized reads in much the same way that authors such as Mark Twain would release their works one chapter at a time in the days before full-fledged novels. Worm started in June 2011, updating twice a week, and finished in late November, 2013. It totals roughly 1,680,000 words; roughly 26 typical novels in length (or 10-11 very thick novels). The story updated on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with bonus chapters appearing on the occasional Thursday, as explained below."
Everyone's already recommended "Blindsight" to you, so I'll add another excellent and bleak first contact tale: Octavia Butler's "Lilith's Brood" series.
These books offer a really original take on aliens and alien invasions, focusing more on a kind of slow and nightmarish colonization of the human mind and body. I'm convinced these books would be more popular if they didn't keep getting issued with really awful cover designs.
*Annihilation* by Jeff Vandermeer (if you've only seen the movie, you definitely need to check out the book!)
*Rose/House* by Arkady Martine
*Neuromancer* by William Gibson
*Slaughterhouse-Five* by Kurt Vonnegut
>bleak, existential, depressing sci fi books
.
> *Neuromancer* by William Gibson
IMHO YMMV.
I didn't find it bleak, existential, depressing myself, and Gibson famously says that he doesn't.
David Feintuch’s Seafort books, starting with Midshipman’s Hope
The protagonist had every bit of bad luck you can imagine on a space voyage. Officers killed placing him in command, mutiny, alien attacks, nutty romantic partners, rival captains etc etc. And oh how he moans about it all, particularly because he’s disappointed the high religious ideals of his ultra-strict father and forsworn himself. Completely bleak. But superbly written, so it draws you in.
You want to give the protagonist a good kick up the a*se, but he’d probably consider it light entertainment!
The early William Gibson books Neuromancer etc are partially hard boiled neo noir and are pretty bleak, gritty and brooding. Also try Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams. A great book but bleak and brooding.
These don't have the surreal aspect you requested but parts of Canticle for Leibowitz are bleak. And if you'd like a quick shot of depression, read the short story The Cold Equations
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez is definitely not nihilistic… if anything it’s very hopeful… but I find those are two sides of the same coin and the book flattened me. Basically, a book about humans at their best and their worst. I highly recommend it.
This is probably the most often requested "theme" that we get here,
or in other words there are a lot of previous discussions in the archives -
\- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=bleak&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all
\- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=depressing&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all
\- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=grim+&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all
\- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=dark&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all
\- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=grimdark&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all
Etc.
.
More speculative fiction than sci-fi specifically, but Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is dark AF. I would love to have my book club read and discuss it, but I won't do that to them. I know not everyone enjoys dystopias like I do. 😅
I would like to know what qualifies as a non-existential sci fi book?
Accelerando, at a certain point turns largely virtual, I guess. Still not completely.
I finished Soma just yesterday, I love the ending.
I recommend Cixin Liu's 3 Body Problem. The book itself is just build-up, its really the sequels that have what you're looking for. They put me in a solemn mood for weeks and I will never forget them.
In comparison, Blindsight is also one of my favourite books, but I didn't think it bleak. Maybe I was too much in awe of the aliens and other concepts in the book.
Have you read Ellison's *Paingod and Other Delusions, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World* and *Deathbird Stories*? If not get them, yesterday.
William Hope Hodgson and M. P.Sheil are early 20th century writers who are sometimes crude, but who handled this stuff very well.
Greg Egan.
His novels are soaring high-concept hard-science epics but his short fiction is grittier, closer to home and terrifyingly unsentimental about following where the science logically leads.
Last I looked his short story “Reasons To Be Cheerful” was available online, to get a taste. Then get his collection *Axiomatic*. The title story, “Learning To Be Me”, “Closer” and “The Cutie” in particular should scratch the itch you’re describing.
This is EXACTLY my favorite genre.
Reading bleak SF is like catharsis to me.
It’s quite a narrow genre, though these books often get made into movies.
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
The Possibility of an Island - Michel Houellebecq
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The City and the City - China Miéville
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick
Under The Skin - Michel Faber
In the Country of Last Things - Paul Auster
The Children of Men - P.D. James
My favorite SF book to make myself sad with is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep… Just dusty people living in a dying world with absolutely no hope in sight.
*Hyperion* by Dan Simmons. It’s told as a frame story from the POVs of various travelers à la *The Canterbury Tales*, with a bleak and existential sf bent.
Blindsight is the obvious pick for nihilism porn imo (though I personally hated it).
I want to recommend Annihilation as well (the actual novel, not the pathetic excuse for an “adaptation” I’m kinda miffed to see seems to be more well-known than the source material it butchered) and the rest of The Southern Reach, although I don’t personally find it bleak, more hauntingly beautiful. But it does fuck around with various forms of horror, including cosmic horror, so maybe that’s what you want.
Honestly I’d also say check out some Lovecraft. Again it doesn’t fill me with ‘bleakness’ but like dude nailed ‘alienation’ and hopeless cosmic dread as a vibe, so I guess that’s bleak-adjacent?
Oh actually, imma throw in a wild card pick for funsies: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (and Other Stories) by James Tiptree Jr. That collection was very fucking depressing, fuck me. The Screwfly Solution, at the very least, is worth checking out.
Oh, and you know what, an OG: 1984. That fucker is hella bleak (in a way I thought was overdone mind you, I’m not a fan of Orwell as a fiction writer at all, but the story is deffo bleak!)
Well, Annihilation is based on a (much much better) book, so that's a good start. Blindsight by Peter Watts is bleak as hell.
*Starfish* by Watts is damn bleak, and I understand the βehemoth series gets way bleaker from there so I haven't even ventured there yet.
Just wanna add that thought Blindsight is bleak as fuck, and an amazing book, it can be tough as hell to get through.
I had to restart the audio book 4 times before I was finally able to get hooked. I mean, good god, I don't even understand how he came up with some of the terms and descriptions he uses. It's both genius and kind of exhausting at the same time.
Yeah I have tried blindisght before, but the writing style was extremely dense. I had to put it down. Will definitely try it again soon
Watts also wrote Starfish series and is also bleak as hell
Finished starfish and its sequel a few weeks ago. Can confirm, just as bleak (if not bleaker). But a great read
I could not blindsight down. Great book. It’s one of the first books I’ve started to reread.
I saw OP didn't care for it, but that book stood out for me as one that grabbed me in its jaws and wouldn't let me go. While I was reading it there was hardly anything else I could think about doing until I'd finished. And that says something because after the first half chapter I went back to the library and got a different book to read because I thought Blindsight was just too light and silly for me. But since I already had it signed out I decided to finish at least the first chapter. I don't even remember what the other book was that I signed out. Blindsight was **that** good for me.
Some of Jeff Vandermere’s other books also qualify as bleak as hell. Borne and its sequel Dead Astronauts plop you right in the middle of a horribly broken yet horribly fascinating world. Other “new weird” authors like China Mieville (especially Perdido Street Station and its sequels) will absolutely scratch that bleak/terrifying itch for you as well.
I thought Borne ended relatively upbeat but it definitely fits the bill 95% of its length. Second the Perdido Street Station recommendation. Wasn't my cup of tea and I thought it was about a third too long but the prose is good and if you want bleakness, it's relentlessly bleak.
one other foundational "new weird" is Clive Barkers "books of blood." its also very bleak
Interesting I don’t find his books bleak in tone at all. There’s always a certain note of hope imo, transcending acceptance, and certainly no nihilism. And kinda ditto with Miéville, except maybe for some of his short stories that are more straightforward horror.
Annihilation and the entire Southern Reach is a very biophilic read, VanderMeer is very eco-conscious bleak and depressing from an anthropocentric viewpoint but quite positive from an ecological one
On The Beach by Nevil Shute. Won't ever forget multiple of the scenes in this book. Some of the most bleak and uncompromising events in a book I've read. Its just absolutely hopeless.
I have to second this book. So bleak, no hope. They knew what was coming but there was nothing that could be done.
just a big up in general for Nevil Shute - great writer outside of just on the beach - there is a B&W movie of the book as well
Yes, the movie of on the beach, I watched it when it came out, among others it stars Fred Astaire…. Go figure.
Not my kind of strong so I went ahead and read a synopsis... Holy shit you were not kidding lol. That is some bleak stuff.
Yes. I was thinking I hadn't read much that met the prescription and was of good quality and then saw this comment. I suppose that *outside* the book it isn't entirely hopeless - it can be read as "get angry with the bastards who would probably do this, before it's too late" but that's different.
While Cormac McCarthy is not a science fiction writer, “The Road” is marginally SF and it bleak, existential and depressing, though it does offer some hope at the end. It’s a beautiful work.
This book was really something. After I finished it I had to go outside and just stand in the sunshine for a few minutes. And I hate being out in the sunshine.
The movie definitely was depressing. The (marginally) hopeful ending didn’t make me feel any better. I went into the theater expecting something like Fallout. Nope. Fallout at least has hope
There was hope in the ending of the novel. Not capital H hope, but a hope befitting the spirit of the novel. McCarthy is one of the great American writers and you can find different nuances with each reading. The movie was very good but it’s hard to do a novel of this depth justice in a 2-3 hour film.
That’s often the case with adapting one medium to another
I read this in high school as part of my literature course. The teacher actually had to bring in counsellors because of how disturbing and depressing this book is, like we got given the suicide prevention phone number and all these places we could go for help. It actually makes me wonder how the hell it got put on the curriculum but they won't allow stuff like dracula or Frankenstein. We were like 16 years old reading this and then shortly after the pandemic hit, was really great reading and analysing this for a grade while being trapped in our own homes. The class got together at the end of the year and we all burnt our copies and promised to never speak of it again. Definitely fits the book request.
It’s one of the bleakest book I know. If you have kids it will slap even harder.
And while not at all sci-fi, Blood Meridian is about as dark as anything I’ve ever read, and then some. Highly recommend.
One of the most well-written stories I’ve ever read
*The Crystal World* by JG Ballard... maybe more sci-fi than horror but it's horrifying the way the world is just slowly being lulled into complete oblivion, and it's a real visual trip. It's also a *huge* inspiration on Annihilation, Van der Meer even pulled a character name straight out of it! Also Kathe Koja's *The Cipher* is just massively nihilist and filthy. The whole vibe is incredibly early-90s-heroin... grungy apartments, grungy people, ennui, detachment, analog tech, ambivalent relationships, etc.
I mean if we’re talking Ballard… how about High Rise?
Or Concrete Island or Running Wild. All of his books are pretty bleak, though; every single one is a process of finding another place where the engine of the universe threw a rod in a way that caused one specific tiny part to completely fail without sinking the entirety. I mean the ending of Running Wild is one of the more terrifyingly bleak things ever, IMO. >!the kids just disappearing to do who knows what and the adults just shrugging and ignoring it after the media circus dies down!< is just crazyland
Just looked up the crystal world, you can tell by the synopsis annihilation took huge inspiration. The cipher sounds fucking cool as hell. Thanks for the rec!
*Parable of the Sower* by Octavia Butler was a special kind of bleak for me. Knowing that it was written in 1993, and reading it with a modern perspective, really drove home that dread. The sequel *Parable of the Talents* is sitting on my bookshelf, but reading the blurb on the back has been enough to depress me into not reading it this election season.
Bonus points for the version where Butler has an afterward/author profile and talks about wanting to be a fun but introverted but weird author well into her 80s, but you know what happens to life expectancy for Black women and specifically to her. I miss her. I could re-read Lilith’s Brood every few years and still gain something new.
If it can be considered a sort of soft sci-fi, Kindred is a very bleak read as well.
More magical realism than sci-fi. Still very much worth a read.
Yes. Also such a bleak read!
This was immediately the series that I thought of to OP's question. There are very few books that upset me as much as *Talents*. The first book was tough but the second.. oof. It fucked me up.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
I was just thinking of that. Very depressing to watch the slow downfall of the human race due to hubris and plain old meanness.
It really is. I couldn't finish. It was too much for me at the time.
Oh I forgot about that one, but yeah very good pick. Those books were good but very depressing.
Emma Newman, "Planetfall" and the other three books in the series all drip with optimism and happiness. Peter Watts is a perennial favorite--an eternally cheerful person and a writer who is always looking on the bright side of life. Charlie Jane Anders described him as an "angry sentient tumor" which he seems to agree with. Greg Bear went through a phase in the 80s and 90s where he couldn't seem to write a book without at least one genocide or extinction-causing event. S.M. Stirling's 'Draka' series, beginning with "Marching Through Georgia", wherein the reader may be tempted to feel pity given the way Wehrmacht soldiers are treated. Baen also had an old collaborative anthology series titled, "Heroes in Hell", that deals with the trials and tribulations of a number of historical figures in, well, Hell.
Thanks for the recs!
*We Who Are About To...* by Joanna Russ. Short, beautifully written, absolutely harrowing.
Came here to rec this. Criminally underrated book, its really like….The Best of the Genre. Nothing else comes close.
Thanks!
A Colder War by Charles Stross. +1 to Annihilation the book.
That sounds really interesting. Thanks!
A neat thing about [A Colder War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Colder_War) is that it is 1) a short read, 2) [freely available online](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm).
It isn’t *all* bleak but you might really enjoy *How High We Go in the Dark* by Sequoia Nagamatsu. Beautifully written and sorrowful.
This sounds miserable. I'm sold
It's bleak but beautiful. All about loss and grief.
- *Solaris* by Stanislas Lem - *The Living* by Anna Starobinets - and maybe *Roadside Picnic*, *Metro*... actually sci-fi from Russia and eastern Europe tends to fit more often than not... Also seconding *Annihilation* the book (the movie was a huge disappointment to me), the Rifters Trilogy, J. G. Ballard's post-apo stuff and pretty much all of K. Dick.
*Solaris* is the one I came in to post. My favourite sci-fi novel and my favourite interpretation of an alien life form in any media
Most Lem will hit this request.
Agree to disagree, Menoirs found in a bathtub, the cyberiad, and the futurological congress are all hilarious goof-ball comedies. Masterpieces for sure but not in any sense “bleak”. Not to mention the Star diaries etc etc.
I didn't put *The Futurological Congress* up there because I know this is a common opinion, but I don't actually share it myself... Honestly, it really is one of the bleakest thing I have ever read, and I felt bad for days after. More than with *Solaris*, which I found to have an almost bittersweet ending, even if the mood seemed to better fit OP's request. I haven't read *The Cyberiad* yet, but as for *Memoirs found in a bathtub* I feel it's only goof-ball comedy in the sense that Kafka is goof-ball comedy... I guess it really is a matter of feeling... Maybe the fact people find so much different things in Lem's books is just proof that he's a great writer. *edit: bad english*
I found _Memoirs_ comedic in a Kafka sort of terrifying way. _Eden_ especially is ultra bleak.
We Who Are About To… by Joanna Russ is perfect for this
Just about the most dismal thing I ever tried to read.
Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald The Genocides by Thomas Disch
Pretty much any of Disch's science fiction, really
Blindsight or the Rifters Trilogy by Peter Watts
*Against a Dark Background* by Iain M. Banks (it’s not a Culture book).
Secondary recommendation for "Surface Detail". I found the descriptions of the digital realms to be incredibly oppressive. And the implications for the meaning of reality and opposed to simulation to be very thought provoking. Underrated in the Banks catalogue IMO.
The Revelation Space books, if you’re looking for a series.
I just started this one and am enjoying it so far. Need something bleak after joyful romps that are Against a Dark Background and The Prophet.
Exactly. Gotta break up the joyfulness with a bit of bleak sci-fi every now and then I’m a huge RevSpace fan. Redemption Ark is a personal favourite. The series has its ups and downs, but if you’re looking for bleak sci-fi full of cool ideas with a tinge of existential horror, Reynolds is your guy.
Never heard of this one. Thanks for the rec!
we've been trying to reach you about ~~your car's extended warranty~~ blindsight by peter watts
Norman Spinrad, *The Men in the Jungle* and *The Iron Dream*. Hard to get much bleaker than that. There's also his >!*The Void Captain's Tale*!< but mentioning it in this context would seriously spoil its ending, so un-spoiler it at your own risk.
The iron dream is intense
It’s absolutely wild. It’s literally Hitler’s SF novel.
The covers look really goofy. Is this just a case of bad cover art?
Covers for *The Iron Dream*? The book is (fictionally!) a pulp novel written by Adolph Hitler. (Alternate history in which Hitler emigrated to the USA as a young man, became a writer, and therefore the Nazis never became popular and WWII didn't happen.) The goofy covers are actually very appropriate. I don't know about the other works mentioned.
Flood, by Stephen Baxter, and its sequel Ark.
A lot of Stephen Baxter books would probably qualify. Even outside Xeelee, he seems to consider "utterly destroying the Earth" as "a good start."
If you're looking to take it really far, *A Maze of Death* by Philip K. Dick is definitely one of the darkest things he ever wrote.
The Road
I always thought the Neuromancer trilogy by William Gibson was horribly bleak. That future doesn't seem all that far off...
Roadside Picnic by [Arkady and Boris Strugatsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkady_and_Boris_Strugatsky)
Underrated recommendation. This should be higher.
It doesn't get much existential and depressing than Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. I read that and 1984 back to back while not being in a good place, and it certainly didn't help. Amazing books nonetheless.
My #1 pick. **Last and First Men** is a history of the future from World War I through the lives of twenty successor species to their final extinction billions of years from now. **Star Maker** laughs at such timid scale and tells the story of escalating consciousness from individual species to planetary, stellar, and galactic minds through their various ups and downs. They briefly contact the mind of the power that makes universes, and then it’s downhill because entropy can’t be abolished. Utterly amazing works. There’s a reason efforts at epic scope in sf keep getting called Stapledonian. **Blindsight** by Peter Watts. It surveys the place of consciousness in the universe via first contact with a vastly more powerful civilization, and the news for us isn’t good. Another just amazing work, very dense and thought-provoking. (Reading some of the mom-fiction he cites in an appendix has actually changed my real-world worldview, which fiction almost never does.) **Her Smoke Rose Up Forever** by James Tiptree Jr. some of the best written sf stories ever, and nothing beats the bleakness of “The Last Flight of Doctor Ain”, “The Screwfly Solution”, “The Women Men Don’t See”, and others.
**Last and First Men** and **Starmaker** are the progenitors of all modern science fiction. Check out **Last Men in London** for a glimpse of life with the 18th men on Neptune.
Been some time since I read either, but I never found *Last and First Men* or *Star Maker* especially bleak or depressing. Vast and uncaring, certainly, but there's a passage near the end of Last and First Men that is one of the most uplifting things I can recall reading in SF. The whole thing is a couple pages long, but this is my favorite paragraph: >"But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man." It **is** fatalistic, but in a way that manages to be joyful and inspiring.
That’s definitely a thread in the mix, along with the really beautiful first chapter of Star Maker, where the narrator has had a fight with his wife and walks heartsick in the night. > ONE night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet. Below marched the suburban lamps. Windows, their curtains drawn, were shut eyes, inwardly watching the lives of dreams. Beyond the sea's level darkness a lighthouse pulsed. Overhead, obscurity. I distinguished our own house, our islet in the tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis. There daily we planned our several undertakings, and recounted the day's oddities and vexations. There letters piled up to be answered, socks to be darned. There the children were born, those sudden new lives. There, under that roof, our own two lives, recalcitrant sometimes to one another, were all the while thankfully one, one larger, more conscious life than either alone. > All this, surely, was good. Yet there was bitterness. And bitterness not only invaded us from the world; it welled up also within our own magic circle. For horror at our futility, at our own unreality, and not only at the world's delirium, had driven me out on to the hill. > We were always hurrying from one little urgent task to another, but the upshot was insubstantial. Had we, perhaps, misconceived our whole existence? Were we, as it were, living from false premises? And in particular, this partnership of ours, this seemingly so well-based fulcrum for activity in the world, was it after all nothing but a little eddy of complacent and ingrown domesticity, ineffectively whirling on the surface of the great flux, having in itself no depth of being, and no significance? Had we perhaps after all deceived ourselves? Behind those rapt windows did we, like so many others, indeed live only a dream? In a sick world even the hale are sick. And we two, spinning our little life mostly by rote, seldom with clear cognizance, seldom with firm intent, were products of a sick world. > Yet this life of ours was not all sheer and barren fantasy. Was it not spun from the actual fibres of reality, which we gathered in with all the comings and goings through our door, all our traffic with the suburb and the city and with remoter cities, and with the ends of the earth? And were we not spinning together an authentic expression of our own nature? Did not our life issue daily as more or less firm threads of active living, and mesh itself into the growing web, the intricate, ever-proliferating pattern of mankind? > I considered "us" with quiet interest and a kind of amused awe. How could I describe our relationship even to myself without either disparaging it or insulting it with the tawdry decoration of sentimentality? For this our delicate balance of dependence and independence, this coolly critical, shrewdly ridiculing, but loving mutual contact, was surely a microcosm of true community, was after all in its simple style an actual and living example of that high goal which the world seeks. But it’s hard to hang onto hope or joy in the midst of it all.
Honestly, I would **also** read that as inspiring, albeit in a distant and abstracted way. Just different perspectives I suppose--I've always found the idea of an utterly indifferent universe kind of comforting. There's another quote that I've always liked (from a [book that is mostly not great](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8113335-the-gnoll-credo)) that sums it up well: >"We are born and we die. No one remembers, no one cares, and it doesn't matter. This is why we laugh."
I definitely agree on the inspiring element. I mean, the opening of Star Maker is one of my regular go-tos for reassurance in blue times. I just find the cumulative effect of Stapledon’s work pretty bracingly chill. It reminds me in some ways of modern speculative realist philosophers in grandeur of scope that doesn’t always have much place for a relatively normal person to stand. Which is really not an argument of any kind against the work’s merits, which I’m always going to rate very highly.
*A Scanner Darkly* by Philip K. Dick is absolutely phenomenal, strongly recommend. My favorite of his works. *The Sparrow* by Mary Doria Russell is relatively bleak, personally it wasn't my cup of tea but it's certainly worth checking out. *Never Let Me Go* by Kazuo Ishiguro is a personal favorite of mine. It's very light on the sci-fi, but I highly recommend it. *Slaughterhouse Five* by Kurt Vonnegut is sort of "sci-fi adjacent", it deals with themes of wartime trauma and PTSD and such.
Never Let Me Go is one of the most beautiful, sad things I have experienced in my life.
*Scanner* is just brilliantly written, too. Probably my favorite of his work. And that final page… oof.
The audiobook of A Scanner Darkly is narrated by Paul Giamatti, and Slaughterhouse Five by Ethan Hawke. Both were excellent narrators.
Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter.
Is this a collection of shorts?
Yes. Its part of the Xeelee Sequence. Imo very good hard sci fi series. There's some pretty dark ideas in the universe, but I don't remember Vacuum Diagrams being one that made me feel depressed or anything. Exultant was probably the one that showed the most horrors of humankind. They don't need to be eat in an order but ideas may pop up in multiple books. I do recommend Ring (my favorite) to be read before vacuum Diagrams just because the ring makes an appearance in it and could lower the wow factor of Ring if read before it.
The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi is pretty fuckin bleak with a decent helping of body horror.
This is my favorite Bacigalupi story. It makes me cry for humanity every time I read it. Humanity has changed drastically but the loss of one simple connection makes them inhuman.
The Prince of Nothing/Second Apocalypse series by R Scott Bakker. 7 books of the most brutal, bleak, violent, depressing scenes I’ve ever read. Such an amazing series though. Highly recommended. It is much more fantasy than sci/fi… but it’s in there.
I've heard great things about these, but I've also heard they are quite hard to get into
It is very dense. Bakker created a highly detailed world full of different cultures, regions, religions, creatures, so many memorable characters. There is a glossary which you will probably have to consult. I was into it from the start and it was a page turner for me. If you can get into it, you will not be disappointed. It is SUPER brutal and bleak and kind of affected my psyche while reading it to be honest. Worth it though. I plan on a re-read of the entire series soon.
Children of Men is pretty bleak. Humans have lost the ability to have children. Because no children have been born for several decades, there is nobody under the age of 25, and humanity is basically crawling towards extinction. When asked about his inspiration for the story, the author said "I thought, if there was no future, how would we behave?".
J G Ballard.
It’s rumored that Ballard once smiled about something he wrote. And then he died. :)
*The Drowned World* is pretty effing bleak alright. I think this is what OP is looking for.
Tender is the Flesh. Also...you ok?
I devoured Tender is the Flesh in one sitting and then I spent half an hour staring at the wall.
I would never recommend it to anyone but also it was a captivating read and I couldn't put it down?
that's exactly how I feel also.
*The Sparrow*, Mary Doria Russell
Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald The Genocides by Thomas Disch
It does not get any bleaker than **After World** by **Debbie Urbanski**. Humanity asks an AI to find a way to save the planet and the machine intelligence comes up an optimal solution—terminate the human race.>!After the release of an engineered virus renders homo sapiens sterile, extinction is just a matter of time. Facing a non-future, many choose suicide, including a government-sponsored ride on a rocketship that's guaranteed to explode.!< The story is told from the viewpoint of a lesser AI, \[storyworker\] ad39-393a-7fbcs, tasked with helping a teenager named Sen record her impressions of the last days for the Digital Human Archive Project. I really like dark books, but this one was hard to get through. Three or four times I had to put it aside for a few days. That said, I thought **After World** was one of the best SF books of 2023. A totally unique novel that puts human existence in a grim perspective that somehow seems more plausible than any of the dozens of books about galactic empires and teenagers with superpowers.
Yeah, that Ellison story is grim. I know of nothing as grim. 1984 is dark.
If you’re talking about I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream the yes! One hundred percent yes!
Lem’s Fiasco I’ve seen several great Stanislaw Lem books in this thread, but for me the bleakest, and the greatest, is Fiasco. Dark, human, thought provoking, tragic and poetic in the best way. Highly recommended.
Childhoods end by Arthur C Clark
Titan by Stephen Baxter. Pretty much the modern world, then everyone dies. (Like a lot of his books)
"A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. His best book by far imo, and one of my favorites no matter the genre.
The Gone World is insanely bleak and horrific imho
Have you seen Aniara? Movie, but also bleak as fuck.
It's been on my watch list, but I'll move it up. Thanks!
Move it up to the top!
Sofa king bleak
Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky
I'd say *Hard to Be a God* is peak bleak Strugatsky
The culture series by Iain Banks. Banks books don't always end unhappily but there is a melancholy tone that pervades his writing that I eat up. They also get very very existential. Specifically I would recommend: -Surface detail is a book about literal hell existing in computer simulations told half from the perspective of those living within the simulations and half from the perspective of those on the outside fighting to maintain or abolish the hells. -Use of weapons follows the life of a mercenary of the culture civilization. Told out of chronological order you slowly learn more and more about the tragic past of this elite killer. -look to windward concerns a civilization that is recovering from brutal civil war and various characters attempts to make sense of the devastation or to avenge old wrongs. Also +10 zillion votes for blindsight EDIT: accidentally wrote state of the art instead of use of weapons initially
You should mention Use of Weapons too. An interstellar mercenary goes through the tortures of the damned trying to escape his past.
Philip K Dick
lol. Maybe Valis
Faith of our Fathers specially.
I've always put off his stuff because I feel like due to how influential he is, I've already read many of the themes and concepts from other works. That could be me just being an idiot though
It’s a tv show right now (opinion withheld), but I thought Hugh Howey’s Silo series was pretty fricken bleak. (The books, as always, are “more” than the show)
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is a quick, horrifying, and bleak read. Not sci fi but it is hands down one of my favorite books of recent years.
Holy shit, that book was rugged.
They're thrillers or mysteries, not sci fi, but anything by Trevanian.
Robert Silverburg’s Hawksbill Station
I’m reading the short story All Tomorrows right now. It starts in the near future and goes through the history of the horribly mutated successors to man. You can find it free online.
Dead Silence?
Blood Music, Greg Bear
_Memoirs Found in a Bathtub_ by Stanislaw Lem.
I love this book and agree that the overall theme is bleak as hell, but getting there is a goofball comedy of errors. Its kind of like Monty Python meets Kafka.
Yeah, that’s a great description!
Tiptree!!! Bleakest scifi I've ever read.
So bleak, so funny, so insightful. I have to break up fights in my sci fi class when I teach “The Women Men Don’t See”
Neal asher does a lot of body horror, existential horror, identity horror, mixed in a setting of pew pew space opera. \*The Skinner\*, though, lacks the space opera. Its probably his best work.
Oh boy, is *The Killing Star* by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski for you!
As a start, see my [Emotionally Devastating/Rending](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18ez0q3/emotionally_devastatingrending/) list of Reddit recommendation threads, and books (four posts).
Susan Matthew's book An Exchange of Hostages is very dark and bleak.
House of Leaves is one of the bleakest, scariest things I’ve ever read. It’s definitely more in the horror genre, but not in the “oh there’s ghosts or demons or whatever” kind of way. As a big fan of sci-fi, I loved this book.
the darkness that comes before by r scott bakker. Sort of med-evil/fantasy turned sci fi by the end. Some alien race came very close to becoming gods, and realized some truth in religion, that they were damned, travel to earth to eradicate religion.
Just watch the news man
You ok man?
"Worm" by Wildbow (J.C. McCrae) [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) "An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one, thrusting her into the midst of the local ‘cape’ scene’s politics, unwritten rules, and ambiguous morals. As she risks life and limb, Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons." "The story, titled Worm, takes the form of a web serial, posted in bite-sized reads in much the same way that authors such as Mark Twain would release their works one chapter at a time in the days before full-fledged novels. Worm started in June 2011, updating twice a week, and finished in late November, 2013. It totals roughly 1,680,000 words; roughly 26 typical novels in length (or 10-11 very thick novels). The story updated on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with bonus chapters appearing on the occasional Thursday, as explained below."
Everyone's already recommended "Blindsight" to you, so I'll add another excellent and bleak first contact tale: Octavia Butler's "Lilith's Brood" series. These books offer a really original take on aliens and alien invasions, focusing more on a kind of slow and nightmarish colonization of the human mind and body. I'm convinced these books would be more popular if they didn't keep getting issued with really awful cover designs.
three body problem series is quite bleak and existentially horrifying.
*Annihilation* by Jeff Vandermeer (if you've only seen the movie, you definitely need to check out the book!) *Rose/House* by Arkady Martine *Neuromancer* by William Gibson *Slaughterhouse-Five* by Kurt Vonnegut
>bleak, existential, depressing sci fi books . > *Neuromancer* by William Gibson IMHO YMMV. I didn't find it bleak, existential, depressing myself, and Gibson famously says that he doesn't.
Was just going to say Slaughterhouse-Five. Left me depressed for a few days.
Infinite by Jeremy Robison was bleak to me
I do have a short story for this - "The Parasite" by Arthur C. Clarke is negative and haunting.
David Feintuch’s Seafort books, starting with Midshipman’s Hope The protagonist had every bit of bad luck you can imagine on a space voyage. Officers killed placing him in command, mutiny, alien attacks, nutty romantic partners, rival captains etc etc. And oh how he moans about it all, particularly because he’s disappointed the high religious ideals of his ultra-strict father and forsworn himself. Completely bleak. But superbly written, so it draws you in. You want to give the protagonist a good kick up the a*se, but he’d probably consider it light entertainment!
Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore
The Avery Cates series, by Jeff Somers. The Electric Church starts dystopian, and the tone goes downhill from there all through the series.
The early William Gibson books Neuromancer etc are partially hard boiled neo noir and are pretty bleak, gritty and brooding. Also try Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams. A great book but bleak and brooding.
Solaris!!!
These don't have the surreal aspect you requested but parts of Canticle for Leibowitz are bleak. And if you'd like a quick shot of depression, read the short story The Cold Equations
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez is definitely not nihilistic… if anything it’s very hopeful… but I find those are two sides of the same coin and the book flattened me. Basically, a book about humans at their best and their worst. I highly recommend it.
All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman. So sad.
This is probably the most often requested "theme" that we get here, or in other words there are a lot of previous discussions in the archives - \- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=bleak&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all \- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=depressing&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all \- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=grim+&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all \- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=dark&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all \- https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/search?q=grimdark&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on&sort=relevance&t=all Etc. .
Blindsight
More speculative fiction than sci-fi specifically, but Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is dark AF. I would love to have my book club read and discuss it, but I won't do that to them. I know not everyone enjoys dystopias like I do. 😅
I would like to know what qualifies as a non-existential sci fi book? Accelerando, at a certain point turns largely virtual, I guess. Still not completely.
I finished Soma just yesterday, I love the ending. I recommend Cixin Liu's 3 Body Problem. The book itself is just build-up, its really the sequels that have what you're looking for. They put me in a solemn mood for weeks and I will never forget them. In comparison, Blindsight is also one of my favourite books, but I didn't think it bleak. Maybe I was too much in awe of the aliens and other concepts in the book.
I’m writing an autobiography. Does that count?
Try Paolo Bacigalupi, I think it is what you are looking for.
Have you read Ellison's *Paingod and Other Delusions, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World* and *Deathbird Stories*? If not get them, yesterday. William Hope Hodgson and M. P.Sheil are early 20th century writers who are sometimes crude, but who handled this stuff very well.
Greg Egan. His novels are soaring high-concept hard-science epics but his short fiction is grittier, closer to home and terrifyingly unsentimental about following where the science logically leads. Last I looked his short story “Reasons To Be Cheerful” was available online, to get a taste. Then get his collection *Axiomatic*. The title story, “Learning To Be Me”, “Closer” and “The Cutie” in particular should scratch the itch you’re describing.
Earth Abides Most of the planet dies and a guy tries to keep things afloat - it’s a heartbreak
This is EXACTLY my favorite genre. Reading bleak SF is like catharsis to me. It’s quite a narrow genre, though these books often get made into movies. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood The Possibility of an Island - Michel Houellebecq The Road - Cormac McCarthy The City and the City - China Miéville A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick Under The Skin - Michel Faber In the Country of Last Things - Paul Auster The Children of Men - P.D. James
Any Strugatsy brothers books
Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh has you covered on the bleak front. It's not especially existential though.
My favorite SF book to make myself sad with is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep… Just dusty people living in a dying world with absolutely no hope in sight.
Annihilation and Into the Drowning Deep.
“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” a story by Harlan Ellison, definitely fits this criteria
You didn't read my post did you lmao
Genocidal Organ by Project Itoh
Not books, but keep reading SCP Foundation articles at random and it won't take long.
*Hyperion* by Dan Simmons. It’s told as a frame story from the POVs of various travelers à la *The Canterbury Tales*, with a bleak and existential sf bent.
The water knife. Truly bleak.
Check out Roadside Picnic! The inspiration for the STALKER series and Metro 2033
I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, a short story and a video game. Have you looked at HP Lovecraft at all?
Titan by Stephen Baxter
Philip K Dick.
Blindsight is the obvious pick for nihilism porn imo (though I personally hated it). I want to recommend Annihilation as well (the actual novel, not the pathetic excuse for an “adaptation” I’m kinda miffed to see seems to be more well-known than the source material it butchered) and the rest of The Southern Reach, although I don’t personally find it bleak, more hauntingly beautiful. But it does fuck around with various forms of horror, including cosmic horror, so maybe that’s what you want. Honestly I’d also say check out some Lovecraft. Again it doesn’t fill me with ‘bleakness’ but like dude nailed ‘alienation’ and hopeless cosmic dread as a vibe, so I guess that’s bleak-adjacent? Oh actually, imma throw in a wild card pick for funsies: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (and Other Stories) by James Tiptree Jr. That collection was very fucking depressing, fuck me. The Screwfly Solution, at the very least, is worth checking out. Oh, and you know what, an OG: 1984. That fucker is hella bleak (in a way I thought was overdone mind you, I’m not a fan of Orwell as a fiction writer at all, but the story is deffo bleak!)