Books
People On Reddit Are Recommending Horror Novels Set In The Ocean & They All Sound Terrifying
Even if summer seems like the most inappropriate time to read horror novels, fans of scary books know that there's no bad time to send chills down your own spin. Responding to a reader request, redditors have suggested some deep-sea horror novels for all your scary summer needs, so be sure to pack one of the nine books below for your next boating outing.
I have to say that, although the good folks at the Suggest Me a Book subreddit have plenty of fantastic suggestions for readers looking for a little summer horror fun, they've left out a few of my favorite deep-sea horror novels. Two books I would highly recommend are both based on video games, but will thrill and chill you even if you don't play. The first is Dead Space: Martyr by B.K. Evenson, which focuses on a team of researchers who experience vivid hallucinations of their dead loved ones after they are sent to study a signal coming from Mexico's Chicxulub crater. The second, John Shirley's BioShock: Rapture, explores the creation and downfall of an underwater, libertarian paradise where everything is permitted — including gene-splicing experiments to provoke the next stage in human evolution. If you're looking for more deep-sea horror, check out what redditors suggested below:
'Into the Drowning Deep' by Mira Grant
In this novel, a horror movie crew ventures into the Marianas Trench in search of mermaids, only to find something more horrifying than they bargained for.
'The Swarm' by Frank Schatzing
This 2004 German eco-horror novel focuses on a variety of global catastrophes, including the collapse of the North Sea shelf, caused by the Yrr: an intelligence that takes the form of sea creatures in order to exact revenge on humanity for pollution.
'Starfish' by Peter Watts
In this deep-sea horror novel, a power-generating system placed in the Juan de Fuca rift is manned by the country's worst criminals, including murderers and sex offenders. But living on the ocean floor begins to change the power station workers, known as Rifters, and they refuse to return to the lives they once lived on the surface.
'Sphere' by Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton's novel about an alien artifact found in the Pacific, Sphere follows a crew of scientists and mathematicians sent in to unravel the mysteries of its titular object, which begins to communicate with the team's onboard computer.
'The Scar' by China Miéville
The sequel to China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, The Scar works as a standalone novel, per the redditors who recommend it. The novel centers on the inner workings of Armada, a floating city comprised of ships' hulls, whose rulers want to capture and control a formidable, deep-sea creature.
'Sub-Mariner: The Depths' by Peter Milligan and Esad Ribic
Collecting the first five issues of Sub-Mariner: The Depths, this trade paperback follows Randolph Stein into the Marianas Trench, where he finds the lost city of Atlantis and its fearsome guardian: Namor, the Sub-Mariner.
'Gyo' by Junji Ito
This horror manga centers on Tadashi and Kaori, who encounter a strange, legged fish on their Okinawan beach vacation, only to learn that it is the result of Japanese wartime experiments.
'Meg' by Steve Alten
The basis for the 2018 movie of the same name, Meg focuses on Jonas Taylor, a Navy diver, who discovers a megalodon — the surviving member of an ancient shark species believed to be extinct — living in the Marianas Trench.
