First Contact Horror

You take out one annoying vampire in revenge, and now you have to clean up the mess? What a pain in the...something. Bethany Anne and crew are back! They need to grab a ship, figure out who is trying to dig into her businesses, get their hands around the potential for creating an AI and the ongoing mess with Anton and South America.

In the deepest, darkest depths of space, the stars are cold, malevolent eyes looking across a vast graveyard of the unknown, the unnameable, and the undead. Here the planets are tombs and the moons haunted catacombs. And here are extraterrestrial nightmares beyond imagining. There is no benevolent first contact. No utopian worlds. Only alien horrors.

For Flight Engineer Cynthia Han and her fellow astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 81 has proved as mundane as space travel ever gets. Yes, this would be Cynthia’s final NASA mission, for reasons she has so far kept from the rest of the crew; and yes, the latest billionaire “space tourist” has managed to irritate everyone on board. Still, none of them could have asked for a smoother experience. Until the morning they wake up to silence. All communication with Earth, gone.

"The Sleeper Awakens" is a thrilling science fiction epic that takes readers on a journey from the red sands of Mars to the very edge of reality itself. When Dr. John Cartwright and his team embark on a mission to explore Mars, they never imagined they would uncover secrets that would shake the foundations of human understanding. As they delve deeper into the mysteries of the Red Planet, they discover an ancient alien civilization with technology beyond their wildest dreams. But their groundbreaking find quickly turns into a fight for survival as they awaken cosmic entities known as the ...

We’ve recorded some 400+ stories since 2015 here at HorrorBabble. This collection comprises some of our very favorites. From Blackwood's evocative "The Transfer", through to Smith's terrifying visit to the vaults of Yoh-Vombis, there’s something here to strike fear into the heart of any horror enthusiast....

An alien invasion comes to one man’s doorstep in the form of a story-creature, followed by death and rebirth in a transformed Earth, in this Tor.com Original science fiction tale from Jeff VanderMeer, the New York Times best-selling author of the Southern Reach trilogy.

Zilfaquir is having a bad day. Shin-Sho Corporation dispatched his emergency engineering team (EET) to the remote ice planet, Xiao 2, to investigate a communications blackout. The Xiao 2 facility, composed of three subsurface ocean stations, awaits his team below hundreds of meters of ice and kilometers underwater. Upon arrival, he discovers the Xiao 2 facility has experienced an epidemic, leaving most of the station’s personnel either dead or dying. Or transforming. Worse, the stations are in danger of imploding due to sabotage.

Nothing much ever happens in Millville, a small, secluded middle-American community - until the day Brad Carter discovers he is unable to leave. It's not just the nearly bankrupt real estate agent who's being held prisoner; every other resident is also being confined within the town's boundaries by an invisible force field that cannot be breached. As local tensions rapidly reach a breaking point, a set of bizarre circumstances leads Brad to the source of their captivity.

Logline: In this series not just about "How the West was Won", but also about "The Things" The West Was Won From", Marshall Carleton & his family recount their days in The Old West - Pelesit, Wyoming - from 1851 through the turn of the 20th century and their struggles. Men, Women & Children, armed only with the weapons of their time, the greatest of these their heart, soul, wit, and will, tamed "The West" amidst the horrors of Wars and their aftermaths — Indian, Mexican-American, Civil; . . . harsh environments; outlaws; . . . ; Ghosts; Demons; Things That Seeped From The Stars; . . . ...

X doesn’t have a name. He thought he had one—or many—but that might be the result of the failing memories of the personalities imprinted within him. Or maybe he really is called X. He’s also not as human as he believes himself to be. But when he discovers the existence of another—above ground, outside the protection of the Warren—X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species.

In the depths of the Arctic, where the ice never melts and silence reigns supreme, lies Station Nine—a place forgotten by time, yet haunted by secrets too vast to contain. It was here that humanity’s reach exceeded its grasp, where ambition and curiosity collided with forces older than the stars themselves. This is the story of Subject Zero—once a man named Eli, now a vessel for an alien intelligence that defies comprehension. It is a tale of creation and destruction, of the thin line between life and something far stranger, and of the price paid when we attempt to play god with the ...

🌌 In the dark, we whispered. In the silence, we were judged. The universe is a graveyard — ancient, watchful, and merciless. When humanity made its presence known to the stars, it broke the sacred law of survival: stay silent, or perish. Silent Requiem marks the beginning of the saga: Dr. Nia Raine and Commander Ellis Vorn lead the Artemis Ascendant into the mythic Orion Expanse, awakening an ancient intelligence within the Dark Forest. A fragile peace is forged... but at a terrible cost. In War Without Stars, centuries later, new explorers stumble upon the forest once again — and ...

For the alien towani, Earth is a holy site where their Last Prophecy will be fulfilled. They will do anything to protect the planet. Protecting humanity is an optional extra.

Jenna is stalked by a sinister man in a mask on the eve of her eighteenth birthday in The Man in the Window. What does he want, and is he even real? Two astronomers make first contact with another life form, forever changing both of their lives in The Andromeda Girl. In Jade, a writer at a comic book convention buys an illustration of a beautiful woman he has seen in real life. He becomes obsessed with finding out who this mysterious woman is. Sixteen-year-old babysitter Gina Zeneski takes the kids for a day at the amusement park and gets more than she bargained for in Rollercoaster, a ...

Dak Korasa believed he was a galaxy-exploring archaeologist and expert in alien antiquities. But his body is merely a vessel, grown in a laboratory to find and play host to an alien parasite species known as the chok’tal. Possessed by this entity, Dak was granted superhuman abilities as well as the consciousness of the chok’tal’s previous host: special forces soldier Jekra Modri. Now, he’s a Purifier, one of the deadliest predators in the universe. But to survive, Dak must earn “kill points” in combat—or the chok’tal within his body will kill him.

Scott, Warren, and Missy Walsh did not understand what their roles were to be when the omnipresent light first blinked on. They believed their only obligation was to find a safe place for their small family to escape what was happening all around them. But fate would not allow them to hide away in the North Carolina cabin for long. Now, with their number hovering near a dozen survivors, they must work together - along with Koku, the flawed, self-aware goddess with a long-term memory problem - to preserve Earth for humanity's occupation.

In 1988, Lydia Conner was taken from her cabin near Specter Lake, Minnesota, while her husband lay in bed, temporarily paralyzed. She screamed at him for help as she floated up to the ceiling in a blinding flash of light...and then she was gone. In 2009, four film school students journeyed to the Specter Lake cabin where the abduction of Lydia Conner took place. They hoped to capture proof of an alien visitation on film; they hoped to re-create events from the abduction; they hoped to use themselves as bait...but they encountered much more than they ever could've imagined.

A dilemma in the Nebula! Two spaceships meet in deep space. How do they establish trust, not only between their two crews, but also between their home worlds? A classic puzzle. The only way to warn home would be to return, and how do you know you were not being followed? Trade would be desirable, but how can you base an exchange of knowledge on unfounded trust?

Sloane Osborne is a paranormal real estate agent in the business of selling haunted houses, but, in truth, she’s only searching for one ghost. And her time is running out. It’s the 366th day after her fiancé’s death. Michael used to like putting things off for “a year and a day” - so tonight’s the night. Sloane will do anything to make contact with him before the clock strikes midnight.

Twenty ships have left the gravitational field of the Earth with the intention of colonizing Mars. Each is independent of the other and set to become domed cities upon landing. The mission is simple: go forth to develop the new planet, make it an extension of our home. Well, it sounded simple. No one expected life on Mars to be easy, they are pioneers and that is a type of life that comes with dangers. What they didn't expect was for the settings of one of the ships to be off enough to miss their landing, to miss the very planet they were meant to settle.