“I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream”.
I realize most might just see it as unsettling, but I’ve known someone like AM. Obviously not a giant supercomputer, but with that much hate. With that much blind rage, that everyone around him must suffer for daring to exist. That would happily keep someone alive just to bring them more pain.
As much as I love that story, every time I read it leaves me a little more terrified, looking over my shoulder, waiting until I’m put in my cage because I dared break free, even almost 20 years later.
Ever play the game? It’s a 90s-era click-adventure, and Harlan Ellison himself plays the voice of AM! (It’s quite good!)
It’s currently available on GOG
I actually finally got around to playing it for myself fairly recently! I was actually surprised at just how well they got the discomfort across, it took some genuine talent to bring those scenes to life.
Ugh, when it got to the sarcophagus/elevator segment, it really made my skin crawl! And the “camp”…
That game was really well done!
I’ve read it this year for the first time. It’s fantastic. So short and so powerful.
There was this short sci fi story I think about a lot. I forgot what it’s called but it’s essentially about some kind of particle (it’s physics related) that floats around the universe and has the ability to engulf everything in it’s path or something? The story is about the last few hours on earth when one such particle happens to stumble into our solar system. Ill have to dig it up.
Edit: Found it! It’s called “the blue afternoon that lasts forever”
Great story, thanks for sharing!
Sounds like a rogue black hole
Yes, I just reread it. You’re correct. Can detect them now?
The story I am calling out referenced rogue black holes. But this is very interesting!
Playing Alien Isolation in VR. I couldn’t get past the medical bay level level due to actual fear of death by heart attack.
Played it without VR. Felt the same. Maybe because I intentionally waited until late at night so it would be dark enough with the lights off. Awesome game.
The fucking needle-in-the-eye part from Dead Space.
Also, Scorn is kinda unsettling.
Scorn is extremely unsettling.
The short-story Dread by Clive Barker.
Go in cold, no spoilers.
Contingency, from Local58
Emergency broadcasts of any sort, fictitious or no, already put me on edge, but the idea of the US government having one ready to go, specifically to order people to commit suicide to spite some kind of existential threat, is especially chilling.
Of course it’s Straub.
I love horror and fiction since I was very young so it’s very hard to make me feel uncomfortable but this short did it. I kept having nightmares about this for a week
It’s like you know you’re gonna die and there is nothing you can do but YOU have to give up.
That’s brutal.
Event Horizon is still mildly terrifying 25y later. Sunshine was pretty bananas too. Shout out to Alastair Reynolds Inhibitor series of books as well.
The Road, the book, is the only book I’ve ever read that haunted me for a while after. Movie was a decent adaptation, but left some stuff out.
The segment in the original Creepshow where Stephen King is transformed into a plant.
Also The Fly.
That monkey in the teleporter…
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The deadlights in Stephen King’s IT. ::: spoiler The scene where the turtle is dead hits me right in the existential dread. spoiler :::
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SOMA. There were sections in the game that were scary, but the entire concept is really a mind melt. It’s not like it’s not a common theoretical question, but going through it step by step is another thing. And if you go to the home page of it and read some of the short stories, it really adds to the whole experience.
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The Suffering on the original Xbox.
I know it’s mainly because I played it way too young but it still gives me creeps playing it as an adult.
The bathrooms… beware the bathrooms…
Yes! Loved that game so much.
Supersize Me
Warning! Spoilers! I’d use the spoiler tag, but no matter how I do it (correct or incorrect), it doesn’t show up for me.
Perfect Blue.
Not for the conventional murder or bad things happening, but the whole structure of not knowing what’s real and what is just an illusion and not knowing how much time has passed.
The three body problem/rememberance of earth’s past trilogy keeps me up a night every once in a while.
