Others: Mixed A near-future tech nightmare that is as bitingly funny as it is horrifically believable from the New York Times bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World. Meet Julia Flang, a twenty-something former professional gamer, living with her retired uncle, and working two jobs she doesn't like. Out of the blue, her estranged mother, a CFO for one of the world's largest tech companies, offers her a temp job with a payday Julia can't refuse. One sham interview later, she's offered the job: to chaperone a man in a vegetative state from California to the East Coast. But he's not dead dead: he has an AI mind implanted in his head... Meet a middle-aged man who wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. Worse than the fluid, morphing reality in which he's trapped, he has no memory of who he is. He certainly doesn't remember getting the rabbit tattoo on his arm. He only knows that he must find a certain person. Who? He can't remember. Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep is a heady, terrifying genre-bender from one of the most groundbreaking voices in fiction today, exploring the 'I' in AI.
Genres: science fiction, horror
Lists: …
Stephen Graham Jones
2013 · 170 pages · 1 review
Others: NegativeThe New York Times–bestselling author “has created the tales here with experimental glee, yielding an astonishing assortment of mutated manuscripts” (Jeremy Robert Johnson, author of The Loop). Take a deep dive into the delightfully twisted mind of bestselling horror author Stephen Graham Jones with the more than twenty short stories in Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth. Experience a day in the life of superhero Vigilante Man and his alter ego, an ace accountant, in “My Hero.” In “Little Monsters,” it’s one compromise after another when a couple tries to design a nightmare creature to foist upon the world. A man writes to Dear Abby for advice on whether or not to tell his wife of thirty-eight years that she transforms into a wolf at night, signing off as “Old Meat.” “I Was a Teenage Slasher Victim” explores the generational trauma of summer camp serial killer survivors—the sequel you can’t miss!Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth is the perfect summer beach read—or for any time you want to cool things down with chilling short fiction from one of our finest horror authors.“This collection of short horror fiction feels altogether more shark-like than even straight-up shark books. Except here it’s the teeth of Jones’ unforgiving imagination, and the fear of the sea can be easily equated with the fear of the cosmos in these stories.” —LitReactor“The writing, people. The writing is phenomenal. . . . Jones is like a mad scientist, rolling up his sleeves to play elbow-deep with his creations.” —The Next Best Book Blog
What made the match, strongest first
Meg Smitherman
2024 · 176 pages · 2 reviews
Others: MixedAmi awakes from years in stasis to find she’s at the edges of deep space, and the only surviving member of her crew. Utterly alone and unable to contact Earth, she sends out a distress beacon, not expecting a response. When she gets one from a being who calls himself Dorian, she’s welcomed onto his ship as he offers his assistance in any way he can. But nothing on Dorian’s ship is as it seems. And as Ami tries to navigate the maze of hallways and first contact with this alien being, a deep hum begins to resonate, haunting her, as if the ship itself is whispering to her.
What made the match, strongest first
Stephen King
2006 · 480 pages · 2 reviews
Others: Mostly negativeCell is a 2006 apocalyptic horror novel by American author Stephen King. The story follows a New England artist struggling to reunite with his young son after a mysterious signal broadcast over the global cell phone network turns the majority of his fellow humans into mindless vicious animals.
What made the match, strongest first
Brian Evenson
2016 · 95 pages · 1 review
Others: Neutral"The Warren is a tense, thoughtful exploration of a battle for survival between two beings with competing claims to humanity."--Publisher's website.
What made the match, strongest first
Ray Bradbury
1953 · 179 pages · 11 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveFahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often regarded as one of his best works, the novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The book's tagline explains the title as "'the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns": the autoignition temperature of paper. The lead character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings. The novel has been the subject of interpretations focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas for change. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 because of his concerns at the time (during the McCarthy era) about the threat of book burning in the United States. In later years, he described the book as a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal. It later won the Prometheus "Hall of Fame" Award in 1984 and a "Retro" Hugo Award, one of a limited number of Best Novel Retro Hugos ever given, in 2004. Bradbury was honored with a Spoken Word Grammy nomination for his 1976 audiobook version.
What made the match, strongest first
Dan Simmons
1995 · 503 pages · 4 reviews
Others: Leaning positiveDan Simmons's Hyperion was an immediate sensation on its first publication in 1989. This staggering multifaceted tale of the far future heralded the conquest of the science fiction field by a man who had already won the World Fantasy Award for his first novel (Song of Kali) and had also published one of the most well-received horror novels in the field, Carrion Comfort. Hyperion went on to win the Hugo Award as Best Novel, and it and its companion volume, The Fall of Hyperion, took their rightful places in the science fiction pantheon of new classics. Now, six years later, Simmons returns to this richly imagined world of technological achievement, excitement, wonder and fear. Endymion is a story about love and memory, triumph and terror--an instant candidate for the field's highest honors.
What made the match, strongest first
MixedI was let down by where I thought the book was going and the reason that I was left in the dark about so many things and it just kind of ended and I was quite unsatisfied, but not in a in a hate kind of way that would put this anything under the under a three.
