Space is terrifying. It’s vast, silent, and utterly indifferent to human survival. Now, add in alien horrors, haunted spaceships, and cosmic nightmares beyond comprehension, and you have the perfect recipe for space horror, a genre that blends the isolation of deep space with the sheer terror of the unknown.
In this list, we’ve gathered the best space horror books that will leave you questioning what lurks beyond the stars. Whether you love sci-fi horror, terrifying first-contact stories, or chilling space station thrillers, these books deliver the perfect mix of suspense and dread.
So, if you’re ready for stories that prove space is far scarier than any haunted house, let’s dive in—before something finds us first.
Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo
Home to generations of humans, the starship Argonos has wandered aimlessly throughout the galaxy for hundreds of years, desperately searching for other signs of life. Now an unidentified transmission lures them toward a nearby planet-and into the dark heart of an alien mystery.
How Long Does It Take to Read Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 12 hours and 20 minutes to finish Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo.
The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown
Ness Brown’s The Scourge Between Stars is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls.
As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears’ failed colony on a distant planet.
Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn’s crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship’s Wards, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion.
Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship’s unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.
How Long Does It Take to Read The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 5 hours and 30 minutes to finish The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown.
Salvation Day by Kali Wallace
A lethal virus is awoken on an abandoned spaceship in this incredibly fast-paced, claustrophobic thriller.
They thought the ship would be their salvation.
Zahra knew every detail of the plan. House of Wisdom, a massive exploration vessel, had been abandoned by the government of Earth a decade earlier, when a deadly virus broke out and killed everyone on board in a matter of hours. But now it could belong to her people if they were bold enough to take it. All they needed to do was kidnap Jaswinder Bhattacharya—the sole survivor of the tragedy, and the last person whose genetic signature would allow entry to the spaceship.
But what Zahra and her crew could not know was what waited for them on the ship—a terrifying secret buried by the government. A threat to all of humanity that lay sleeping alongside the orbiting dead.
And then they woke it up.
How Long Does It Take to Read Salvation Day by Kali Wallace
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 10 hours and 40 minutes to finish Salvation Day by Kali Wallace.
Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes
Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.
Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she’s assigned to a small exploration crew, she’s eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.
While Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizer’s hasty departure than opening up to her.
That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?
Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by… and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.
How Long Does It Take to Read Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 12 hours and 34 minutes to finish Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes.
Contagion by Erin Bowman
It got in us
After receiving an urgent SOS from a work detail on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is dispatched to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission.
Most are dead.
But when the crew arrives, they find an abandoned site, littered with rotten food, discarded weapons…and dead bodies.
Don’t set foot here again.
As they try to piece together who—or what—could have decimated an entire operation, they discover that some things are best left buried—and some monsters are only too ready to awaken.
How Long Does It Take to Read Contagion by Erin Bowman
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 14 hours and 24 minutes to finish Contagion by Erin Bowman.
Dead Space by Kali Wallace
Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She’s surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life—and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind.
Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend’s death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester’s worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.
How Long Does It Take to Read Dead Space by Kali Wallace
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 10 hours and 44 minutes to finish Dead Space by Kali Wallace.
Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes
A GHOST SHIP.
A SALVAGE CREW.
UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.
Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.
What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.
Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.
How Long Does It Take to Read Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 11 hours and 26 minutes to finish Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes .
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery.
Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.
All he has are questions– Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?
All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.
HULL ZERO THREE is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride through the darkest reaches of space.
How Long Does It Take to Read Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 10 hours and 14 minutes to finish Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear.
2389 by Iain Rob Wright
Grand Galaxies is the most expensive amusement park ever created, built on the surface of the moon. For a decade now, rich families and honeymooning couples have gone there to have the time of their lives, and no one has ever returned disappointed. But communication with the moon has been lost. Someone needs to go up there and see what’s wrong.
Commander ‘Boss’ Sharman is the man for the job, SABA’s most respected leader, but he might end up regretting his decision to bring along his daughter, Lexi, for the mission. Something has gone very wrong at Grand Galaxies, and once Boss and his team travel the 238,900 miles to the moon, they might find that there’s no way of getting back home again.
GETTING THERE IS THE EASY PART…
How Long Does It Take to Read 2389 by Iain Rob Wright
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 5 hours and 16 minutes to finish 2389 by Iain Rob Wright.
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Two months since the stars fell…
Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.
Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,” recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist – an informational topologist with half his mind gone – as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.
You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.
But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…
How Long Does It Take to Read Blindsight by Peter Watts
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 12 hours and 48 minutes to finish Blindsight by Peter Watts.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
A thrilling, atmospheric debut with the intensive drive of The Martian and Gravity and the creeping dread of Annihilation, in which a caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival.
When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.
Instead, she got Em.
Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . .
As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies—missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations—drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive—she must confront the ghosts in her own head.
But how come she can’t shake the feeling she’s being followed?
How Long Does It Take to Read The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 14 hours and 24 minutes to finish The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A race for survival among the stars… Humanity’s last survivors escaped earth’s ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
How Long Does It Take to Read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 20 hours and 16 minutes to finish Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
Mission Commander Sally Jansen is Earth’s last astronaut–and last hope–in this gripping near-future thriller where a mission to make first contact becomes a terrifying struggle for survival in the depths of space.
Sally Jansen was NASA’s leading astronaut, until a mission to Mars ended in disaster. Haunted by her failure, she lives in quiet anonymity, convinced her days in space are over.
She’s wrong.
A large alien object has entered the solar system on a straight course toward Earth. It has made no attempt to communicate and is ignoring all incoming transmissions.
Out of time and out of options, NASA turns to Jansen. For all the dangers of the mission, it’s the shot at redemption she always longed for.
But as the object slowly begins to reveal its secrets, one thing becomes horribly clear: the future of humanity lies in Jansen’s hands.
How Long Does It Take to Read The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 12 hours and 8 minutes to finish The Last Astronaut by David Wellington.
All the Fiends of Hell by Adam L.G. Nevill
The red night of bells heralds global catastrophe. Annihilation on a biblical scale. Seeing the morning is no blessing. The handful of scattered survivors are confronted by blood-red skies and an infestation of predatory horrors that never originated on earth. An occupying force intent on erasing the remnants of animal life from the planet. Across the deserted landscapes of England, bereft of infrastructure and society, the overlooked can either hide or try to outrun the infernal hunting terrors. Until a rumour emerges claiming that the sea may offer an escape.
Ordinary, unexceptional, directionless Karl, is one of the few who made it through the first night. In the company of two orphans, he flees south. But only into horrifying revelations and greater peril, where a transformed world and expanding race of ravening creatures await. Driven to the end of the country and himself, he must overcome alien and human malevolence and act in ways that were unthinkable mere days before.
How Long Does It Take to Read All the Fiends of Hell by Adam L.G. Nevill
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 13 hours and 6 minutes to finish All the Fiends of Hell by Adam L.G. Nevill.
Black Tide by K.C. Jones
A story with a cinematic feel, Black Tide is Cujo meets A Quiet Place.
It was just another day at the beach. And then the world ended.
Mike and Beth didn’t know each other existed before the night of the meteor shower. A melancholy film producer and a house sitter barely scraping by, chance made them neighbors, a bottle of champagne brought them together, and a shared need for human connection sparked something more.
After a drunken and desperate one-night-stand, the two strangers awake to discover a surprise astronomical event has left widespread destruction in its wake. But the cosmic lightshow was only a part of something much bigger, and far more terrifying. When a set of lost car keys leaves them stranded on an empty stretch of Oregon coast, when their emergency calls go unanswered and inhuman screams echo from the dunes, when the rising tide reaches for the car and unspeakable horrors close in around them, these two self-destructive souls must find in each other the strength to overcome past pain and the fight to survive a nightmare of apocalyptic scale.
How Long Does It Take to Read Black Tide by K.C. Jones
If you read at a standard rate, say 30 pages per hour, it will take you 8 hours and 10 minutes to finish Black Tide by K.C. Jones.
Conclusion
And that’s our list of space horror books—perfect for when you want a story that reminds you just how small (and vulnerable) we really are in the universe. There’s something about the cold emptiness of space that makes horror hit even harder, don’t you think?
Do you have a favorite sci-fi horror novel or deep-space thriller we should check out? Let us know 🙂