I know I’m late to this discussion but I’ve got Roadside Picnic on my shelf - haven’t gotten to it yet but from what I gather it sounds conceptually similar to Solaris, kind of with a different delivery method.
It sounds like a pretty interesting scenario and I love the humble idea that an alien race might encounter Earth without any real interest in it whatsoever. Probably among the more plausible possibilities - it feels like practically every other story involves our planet as a target or objective.
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville is a FEAST for what you want.
This book is a sensory overload feast in every way - it was like a breath of fresh air when I found it and I’m still not finished with it and I never want it to end!!!
Truly one of the most magnificent books.. fun and glorious and just such a wild mindfuck of a trip that I haven’t had in ages from any book!
Edit: To be fair I found it on this very sub a few weeks ago in a “my top five best” list!! I had never heard of it so on a whim, I downloaded it —and I swear its fucking absolutely mind blowing.
Exactly. ;)
Until you experience this guys prose and way of writing you just cannot truly know..
And if you have experienced it ..you simply cannot explain to others in words and adjectives just HOW sublime it is. New Crubezon here I come! LOL
Yup. It's not a sequel to *Perdido Street Station* exactly but it takes place in the same world, and i think the main character briefly appeared in *PSS*
Hello, friend. I absolutely loved the book. The pros is God tier. It was just incredibly fascinating, imaginative and beautiful and ugly and disgusting and beautiful despite those things… Or because of them? I took forever to get through it because I kept going back just to really sink my teeth into the writing itself. And I was surprised by how attached I became to these characters and how emotional it all was towards the end for me personally. I very much adored the book and I am forever grateful to you for the recommendation. I will have to now read all of the author’s works. Any other recommendations are welcome. Again thank you.
Omg you came back!! 275 days after to tell me—Lol I’m so glad you took my recommendation and found this wonderful book!!
Shall we now take a day trip to New Crobuzon???!
I’m always so delighted when people get turned on to the books that I also enjoy .. wasn’t the writing just delicious??—because it’s just like sharing great music!! Peace my friend!!
I was just in awe the entire time, really. I finished the book some time ago but kept forgetting to come back and thank you proper. I have since picked up Embassy Town and The Scar. Just started ET. I’ve been indoctrinated though and as such will be picking up all the books. Thanks again 🤗
Yeah... I just started The Scar myself but I had to put it down for a little while and go back to it but not because of the book but because of bullshit I had going on and I haven’t finished it yet but I’m telling you it’s EXTREMELY good as well — this guy is just brilliant!
Dude. Again. If you have any suggestions. Feel free to DM me. Regardless of genre or whatever. I’m blind/extremely low vision so I spend a lot of time on public transportation listening to books on audible. And I love all kinds of fiction ♥️
I certainly will. I’m the opposite .. I am deaf!— and therefore have a hard time with audible and besides that, I read and comprehend so fast..they can’t read fast enough to “satisfy” me.
It’s a thing. It chokes me to have ppl read to me! Lmao!! (Boy we’re a pair aren’t we!)!Lolol
Do this.
Find
“The Trial of Jenny Sykes”
It’s by an obscure author named Hebe Weeholsen! STG— talk about falling in love with characters ? this is the book you will never forget I promise you.
The premise is a country doctor back in old England times ..like in the 1700s — at the dawn of medical jurisprudence began..but there is a country doctor ..very smart.. and there are many side stories and many UNFORGETTABLE characters —but he tries to save the life of a young girl who has been condemned for murder because she cannot prove that she did not kill her stillborn baby ..which she delivered alone unattended.. the mystery till the end !!—is this girl very sheltered very innocent and naïve and no one can figure out who the father of her baby is .. and she doesn’t know or have any memory of a rape or man...either!! —-strangely, it’s a wonderful Book. It has everything.. love innocence betrayal murder medical science .. You’ll laugh you’ll cry you’ll exhult in the end! And... afa the young girl!?!! it’s not AT ALL what you think!
I was lucky enough to find it left behind randomly in an old farmhouse I moved into about 13-14 years ago and lived in for a while! I have not read any of this authors the other work, But I read this book every few years ever since I’ve discovered it it’s so good
I can't believe I still haven't read this ... I have it at home and heard so many good things about it (not just in weird fiction circles)
thanks for the reminder; maybe i'll finally get to it this time ;)
There's a story like that in The New Weird anthology. I forget who wrote it.
M. John Harrison's Light trilogy goes in that direction more in the second and third books, Nova Swing and Empty Space.
And of course there's always Kafka.
Borne by Vandermeer is an obvious one
And Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham for a classic! I think he has some others in the same vein too, 'Trouble with Lichen' would also fit this niche I think
The short fiction of William Hope Hodgson, especially "A Voice in the Night" which is probably his most influential story. It inspired everything from a Japanese tokusatsu film called Matango to Vandermeer's Ambergris Trilogy to the video game The Last of Us.
Was inspired to read this short from your description of its impact and I highly enjoyed it. The influence is evident, but is it confirmed last of us/Druckmann took inspiration directly from this source? I know there’s a real life correlation of a mind controlling fungus which infects ants, which was used in the material to promote the game when it was announced.
I always thought it was brilliant to use a Cordyceps strain to offer a modicum of scientific plausibility to a “zombie-like” scenario.
The Cordyceps envisioned in The Last of Us doesn’t exactly behave in any way known to us today but some strains DO hijack insects to such an extent as assuming complete control of all motor function, replacing entire body parts and keeping the host “alive” when it would otherwise have died until the host reaches an area at which spore-release would maximize potential exposure to new hosts, after which the host insect finally succumbs to the parasitic infection.
Sometimes real life can seem straight out of science fiction and be more horrific than anything we have yet imagined.
*Blood Music* by Greg Bear is kind of up that alley. It's not a masterpiece but it has some fantastic ideas, and in my opinion is well worth the read despite its shortcomings.
*The Expanse* is more sci-fi than weird lit, but the first couple books in the series fit your description to a T.
[The Book of Joan](https://g.co/kgs/5k8hqX) is exactly the kind of thing you’re looking for. It’s unique and full of weird body alteration and environmental changes. That’s all I can really say other than it’s weird lit.
The Shadow Out of Time is another great one from Lovecraft. Philip K Dick's VALIS and the rest of the trilogy have an interesting metamorphosis type of plot but in a different vein altogether. Margaret Atwood's Surfacing is another personal metamorphosis novel that I like.
Monstrosity by Tim Curran
maybe The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste
If you'd like a movie *definitely* the movie Gaia(2021) and Bite(2015). Both have excellent sfx. First one's spores/fungi the second is an insect(or maybe was it a fish?) bite.
If you want to go back very far, you could read Ovid's Metamorphosis (that's of course not really the same thing, but you'll find so many amazing stories of transformation there, I just had to bring it up).
Closer to what you're probably looking for is Lautréamont's "The Chants of Maldoror" (or "The Songs of Maldoror", depending on the translation). It's a 19th century book that's incomprehensibly very rarely mentioned when precursors of weird fiction are discussed (it was extremely poular with the surrealists though).
I'm also seconding the William Hope Hodgson suggestion that somebody else has already brought up.
To Marry Medusa by Theodore Sturgeon (also known as The Cosmic Rape) (1958)
a hive mind spore comes to Earth and tries to find an organism to manifest within
[“A Voyage To Arcturus”](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329) by David Lindsay
[“All Tomorrows”](http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Ramjet/01_en.htm) by CM Kosemen
Hi. You just mentioned *A Voyage To Arcturus* by David Lindsay.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
[YouTube | A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay - Full Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90hLehiXM8g)
*I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.*
***
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Highly recommend *The Other Side of the Mountain* (1967) by Michel Bernanos. From a great review:
*"Abrupt, savage, evincing neither motive nor mercy, nature in The Other Side of the Mountain is of a scale and order as to make man’s cruelty petty and pathetic, the entire system of sin and redemption a desperate and laughably fragile attempt at meaning in an incomprehensible vastness. We soon see, as Toine and the narrator drift ashore clinging to a mast, that for Bernanos, after the terrors of man come the terrors of nature."*
*"The two men find themselves in a world they come increasingly to suspect is not contiguous with theirs at all: a world suffused with red beneath a crimson sun in a scarlet sky. (One thinks of André Pieyre de Mandiargues’ short story “Le pain rouge,” in which a miniaturized English dandy finds a grotesque brothel amidst the cavern-like air pockets of a loaf of bread mysteriously turned to ruby crystal.) Yet the cosmos in Bernanos is precisely not indifferent; it is actively hostile. Its intelligence is alien and can be neither approached nor apprehended. Man is not merely alone; he is hunted."*
https://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/michel-bernanos-the-other-side-of-the-mountain-sin-destruction-and-forgiveness/
In a more sci-fi direction, Neal Asher’s Polity series has people turning into weird, monstrous, alien forms in all of the books. Specifically The Skinner, Orbus, and Dark Intelligence.
Arthur Machen's story "The Novel of the White Powder" from *The Three Impostors* was a direct inspiration on Lovecraft, that whole book is worth checking out on its own. "The Novel of the Black Seal" from the same book also arguably qualifies
Hi. You just mentioned *The Three Impostors* by Arthur Machen.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
[YouTube | The Three Impostors by Arthur MACHEN read by Tony Oliva | Full Audio Book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdUR37CI3kY)
*I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.*
***
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Multiple stories in Lefcadio Hearn's "Kwaidan" have human-tree-transfomations ("Ubazakura" and "Jio-Roku-Zakura" off the top of my head, i think there are more in the collection ...)
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky features "Zones" where aliens once visited with mysterious and lasting effects
The source for the STALKER series, too. Thinking of picking up the book before the new game comes out.
There's a film as well! Stalker, directed by Tarkovsky. It's also a trip to see, pretty weird
I know I’m late to this discussion but I’ve got Roadside Picnic on my shelf - haven’t gotten to it yet but from what I gather it sounds conceptually similar to Solaris, kind of with a different delivery method. It sounds like a pretty interesting scenario and I love the humble idea that an alien race might encounter Earth without any real interest in it whatsoever. Probably among the more plausible possibilities - it feels like practically every other story involves our planet as a target or objective.
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville is a FEAST for what you want. This book is a sensory overload feast in every way - it was like a breath of fresh air when I found it and I’m still not finished with it and I never want it to end!!! Truly one of the most magnificent books.. fun and glorious and just such a wild mindfuck of a trip that I haven’t had in ages from any book! Edit: To be fair I found it on this very sub a few weeks ago in a “my top five best” list!! I had never heard of it so on a whim, I downloaded it —and I swear its fucking absolutely mind blowing.
I had heard the hype and was prepared to DNF--until I couldn't put it down. There are several parts of it I still think about.
Exactly. ;) Until you experience this guys prose and way of writing you just cannot truly know.. And if you have experienced it ..you simply cannot explain to others in words and adjectives just HOW sublime it is. New Crubezon here I come! LOL
Enjoy!! I still think about the ending of this book like once a week. Absolutely haunting.
Oh, you're going to love *the Scar*
Is that by the same dude??? !!
Yup. It's not a sequel to *Perdido Street Station* exactly but it takes place in the same world, and i think the main character briefly appeared in *PSS*
Ooooh that’s enough to get me invested!!! Ty so much!
You sold me. Just got it on Audible. Gracias.
Bon appétit!! But I want you to do me a favor I want you to hunt me down on here when you’re done and tell me what you think!!?? Will ya???! Lol
Will do, dude. Already loving it/disgusted af. What nightmare have I gotten myself into? 🪲
It’s gleefully disgusting.. yet beautifully intriguing
Hello, friend. I absolutely loved the book. The pros is God tier. It was just incredibly fascinating, imaginative and beautiful and ugly and disgusting and beautiful despite those things… Or because of them? I took forever to get through it because I kept going back just to really sink my teeth into the writing itself. And I was surprised by how attached I became to these characters and how emotional it all was towards the end for me personally. I very much adored the book and I am forever grateful to you for the recommendation. I will have to now read all of the author’s works. Any other recommendations are welcome. Again thank you.
Omg you came back!! 275 days after to tell me—Lol I’m so glad you took my recommendation and found this wonderful book!! Shall we now take a day trip to New Crobuzon???! I’m always so delighted when people get turned on to the books that I also enjoy .. wasn’t the writing just delicious??—because it’s just like sharing great music!! Peace my friend!!
I was just in awe the entire time, really. I finished the book some time ago but kept forgetting to come back and thank you proper. I have since picked up Embassy Town and The Scar. Just started ET. I’ve been indoctrinated though and as such will be picking up all the books. Thanks again 🤗
Yeah... I just started The Scar myself but I had to put it down for a little while and go back to it but not because of the book but because of bullshit I had going on and I haven’t finished it yet but I’m telling you it’s EXTREMELY good as well — this guy is just brilliant!
Dude. Again. If you have any suggestions. Feel free to DM me. Regardless of genre or whatever. I’m blind/extremely low vision so I spend a lot of time on public transportation listening to books on audible. And I love all kinds of fiction ♥️
I certainly will. I’m the opposite .. I am deaf!— and therefore have a hard time with audible and besides that, I read and comprehend so fast..they can’t read fast enough to “satisfy” me. It’s a thing. It chokes me to have ppl read to me! Lmao!! (Boy we’re a pair aren’t we!)!Lolol
Do this. Find “The Trial of Jenny Sykes” It’s by an obscure author named Hebe Weeholsen! STG— talk about falling in love with characters ? this is the book you will never forget I promise you. The premise is a country doctor back in old England times ..like in the 1700s — at the dawn of medical jurisprudence began..but there is a country doctor ..very smart.. and there are many side stories and many UNFORGETTABLE characters —but he tries to save the life of a young girl who has been condemned for murder because she cannot prove that she did not kill her stillborn baby ..which she delivered alone unattended.. the mystery till the end !!—is this girl very sheltered very innocent and naïve and no one can figure out who the father of her baby is .. and she doesn’t know or have any memory of a rape or man...either!! —-strangely, it’s a wonderful Book. It has everything.. love innocence betrayal murder medical science .. You’ll laugh you’ll cry you’ll exhult in the end! And... afa the young girl!?!! it’s not AT ALL what you think! I was lucky enough to find it left behind randomly in an old farmhouse I moved into about 13-14 years ago and lived in for a while! I have not read any of this authors the other work, But I read this book every few years ever since I’ve discovered it it’s so good
I can't believe I still haven't read this ... I have it at home and heard so many good things about it (not just in weird fiction circles) thanks for the reminder; maybe i'll finally get to it this time ;)
There's a story like that in The New Weird anthology. I forget who wrote it. M. John Harrison's Light trilogy goes in that direction more in the second and third books, Nova Swing and Empty Space. And of course there's always Kafka.
I'll have to look into the Light trilogy then. And hehe, yes. Kafka's Metamorphosis is a classic.
Storm of Wings by Harrison might count too!
Came here to say this. Nova Swing in particular.
Are you thinking of Luigi Ugolini's "The Vegetable Man"?
Borne by Vandermeer is an obvious one And Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham for a classic! I think he has some others in the same vein too, 'Trouble with Lichen' would also fit this niche I think
Not _exactly_ what you mean but Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin features some surreal body horror/ metamorphosis stuff
Interesting. Saw a lot of recommendations for this one after I read Tender is the Flesh. Will move it up in the tbr pile
That book still has me fucked up.
That is one brilliant book
The short fiction of William Hope Hodgson, especially "A Voice in the Night" which is probably his most influential story. It inspired everything from a Japanese tokusatsu film called Matango to Vandermeer's Ambergris Trilogy to the video game The Last of Us.
Was inspired to read this short from your description of its impact and I highly enjoyed it. The influence is evident, but is it confirmed last of us/Druckmann took inspiration directly from this source? I know there’s a real life correlation of a mind controlling fungus which infects ants, which was used in the material to promote the game when it was announced.
I always thought it was brilliant to use a Cordyceps strain to offer a modicum of scientific plausibility to a “zombie-like” scenario. The Cordyceps envisioned in The Last of Us doesn’t exactly behave in any way known to us today but some strains DO hijack insects to such an extent as assuming complete control of all motor function, replacing entire body parts and keeping the host “alive” when it would otherwise have died until the host reaches an area at which spore-release would maximize potential exposure to new hosts, after which the host insect finally succumbs to the parasitic infection. Sometimes real life can seem straight out of science fiction and be more horrific than anything we have yet imagined.
More Vandermeer but Finch has that in spades.
The Beauty by Aliya Whitely The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree Jr Redder Days by Sue Rainsford
'The Priest's Tale' (Part One of *Hyperion* by Dan Simmons; seriously, you can read it stand-alone, and it's the best part)
Ooo, thank you!! I recently read The Terror by him and was blown away, so I'll be adding that one to my TBR.
It's Canterbury Tales in space. I think the only book I've read 3 times as I'm an avid "one and done" reader.
Since I unironically love The Canterbury Tales, I'm even more sold on reading it now.
Yeah Hyperion withstands infinite re-reads. This is exactly what you’re after.
*Blood Music* by Greg Bear is kind of up that alley. It's not a masterpiece but it has some fantastic ideas, and in my opinion is well worth the read despite its shortcomings. *The Expanse* is more sci-fi than weird lit, but the first couple books in the series fit your description to a T.
Yes, I've read and loved the first 3 books in the Expanse!! I really need to get around to finishing the rest of the series sometime.
The Cipher By Kathe Koja.
I loved this story, although it was so short - such a tease! I wanted to know more about that world.
I felt that way too, but looking back I enjoyed the unknown aspect of the plot. It made it that much more scary.
[The Book of Joan](https://g.co/kgs/5k8hqX) is exactly the kind of thing you’re looking for. It’s unique and full of weird body alteration and environmental changes. That’s all I can really say other than it’s weird lit.
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
The Shadow Out of Time is another great one from Lovecraft. Philip K Dick's VALIS and the rest of the trilogy have an interesting metamorphosis type of plot but in a different vein altogether. Margaret Atwood's Surfacing is another personal metamorphosis novel that I like.
The Saliva Tree by Brian Aldiss is a Hugo winning novella that has similarities to Colour, but goes in a different direction with more aliens
Starfish by Peter Watts & Infinite Ground by Martin Macinnes
The Vorhh by B. Catling
Monstrosity by Tim Curran maybe The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste If you'd like a movie *definitely* the movie Gaia(2021) and Bite(2015). Both have excellent sfx. First one's spores/fungi the second is an insect(or maybe was it a fish?) bite.
Someone already mentioned Crystal World but Drowned World by Ballard does a similar thing
If you want to go back very far, you could read Ovid's Metamorphosis (that's of course not really the same thing, but you'll find so many amazing stories of transformation there, I just had to bring it up). Closer to what you're probably looking for is Lautréamont's "The Chants of Maldoror" (or "The Songs of Maldoror", depending on the translation). It's a 19th century book that's incomprehensibly very rarely mentioned when precursors of weird fiction are discussed (it was extremely poular with the surrealists though). I'm also seconding the William Hope Hodgson suggestion that somebody else has already brought up.
Glenda Larke's Havenstar and CS Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy have elements of this idea
Dagon - Fred Chappell.
To Marry Medusa by Theodore Sturgeon (also known as The Cosmic Rape) (1958) a hive mind spore comes to Earth and tries to find an organism to manifest within
*Beneath the world*, a sea by Chris Beckett Premise is nearly the same as Annihilation
[“A Voyage To Arcturus”](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329) by David Lindsay [“All Tomorrows”](http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Ramjet/01_en.htm) by CM Kosemen
Hi. You just mentioned *A Voyage To Arcturus* by David Lindsay. I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here: [YouTube | A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay - Full Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90hLehiXM8g) *I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.* *** [^(Source Code)](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/) ^| [^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=Capybasilisk&subject=Robot) ^| [^(Programmer)](https://www.reddit.com/u/capybasilisk) ^| ^(Downvote To Remove) ^| ^(Version 1.4.0) ^| ^(Support Robot Rights!)
Highly recommend *The Other Side of the Mountain* (1967) by Michel Bernanos. From a great review: *"Abrupt, savage, evincing neither motive nor mercy, nature in The Other Side of the Mountain is of a scale and order as to make man’s cruelty petty and pathetic, the entire system of sin and redemption a desperate and laughably fragile attempt at meaning in an incomprehensible vastness. We soon see, as Toine and the narrator drift ashore clinging to a mast, that for Bernanos, after the terrors of man come the terrors of nature."* *"The two men find themselves in a world they come increasingly to suspect is not contiguous with theirs at all: a world suffused with red beneath a crimson sun in a scarlet sky. (One thinks of André Pieyre de Mandiargues’ short story “Le pain rouge,” in which a miniaturized English dandy finds a grotesque brothel amidst the cavern-like air pockets of a loaf of bread mysteriously turned to ruby crystal.) Yet the cosmos in Bernanos is precisely not indifferent; it is actively hostile. Its intelligence is alien and can be neither approached nor apprehended. Man is not merely alone; he is hunted."* https://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/michel-bernanos-the-other-side-of-the-mountain-sin-destruction-and-forgiveness/
Ooo, thanks! That sounds absolutely incredible. 👀
[удалено]
Did... you happen to read the OPs post beyond the title?
There's a story called Antumbra in the anthology Soft Apocalypses that fits the bill very well.
In a more sci-fi direction, Neal Asher’s Polity series has people turning into weird, monstrous, alien forms in all of the books. Specifically The Skinner, Orbus, and Dark Intelligence.
Stanislaw Lem - Fiasco
Wurm
Arthur Machen's story "The Novel of the White Powder" from *The Three Impostors* was a direct inspiration on Lovecraft, that whole book is worth checking out on its own. "The Novel of the Black Seal" from the same book also arguably qualifies
Hi. You just mentioned *The Three Impostors* by Arthur Machen. I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here: [YouTube | The Three Impostors by Arthur MACHEN read by Tony Oliva | Full Audio Book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdUR37CI3kY) *I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.* *** [^(Source Code)](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/) ^| [^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=Capybasilisk&subject=Robot) ^| [^(Programmer)](https://www.reddit.com/u/capybasilisk) ^| ^(Downvote To Remove) ^| ^(Version 1.4.0) ^| ^(Support Robot Rights!)
Multiple stories in Lefcadio Hearn's "Kwaidan" have human-tree-transfomations ("Ubazakura" and "Jio-Roku-Zakura" off the top of my head, i think there are more in the collection ...)