The Overlap of Sci-fi and Horror

Gothic literature—and thus the more modern horror genre that grew out of it—was initially created as a reaction against the Age of Reason. Over the course of the 18th century, an intellectual and philosophical movement swept across Europe that emphasized logic, rationality, and scientific advancement. Enlightened thinkers sought to banish outdated superstition and believed that all of life’s great questions could be answered through the use of experimentation, observation, and reason. You can see how this philosophy would give rise to science fiction—a genre of literature which predicts scientific advances not yet achieved and imagines how they might change or shape society. But first something else was born: a genre that would look back to a time before the Enlightenment and revel in unexplained mysteries, heightened emotions, and a disconcerting dearth of logic or reason. These two genres at first seem fundamentally incompatible, and yet they are not so separate as you might think. To understand why, we’ll need to take a look at the history of how they overlap. 

Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley, is often considered the very first science fiction novel. It is also one of the best-known Gothic novels. Coming on the tail end of the Gothic heyday at the turn of the nineteenth century, Frankenstein is a dark tale of violence and death at the hands of a terrifying monster. Yet this monster is not quite of the supernatural variety. Instead, Shelley combines the newly discovered concept of electricity with the burgeoning field of anatomy to posit a seemingly plausible way that Victor Frankenstein could create a living being from dead body parts. After he accomplishes this task, Frankenstein is forced to reckon with its consequences and the ethical questions that arise. In this way, Victor Frankenstein embodies a core trope that will crop up repeatedly at the intersection of sci-fi and horror—that of the Mad Scientist, one who pursues scientific experimentation at the expense of ethics and crosses the line from the study of nature to the creation of the unnatural.

Mary Shelley’s less well-known novel, The Last Man (1826), is also an important example of early science fiction. Set during the end of the twenty-first century, the story depicts a world ravaged by plague, which in turn brings violence as those who remain divide into factions and fight for survival. The main character, Lionel Verney, is the only survivor by the end of the novel. The story’s futuristic setting is a characteristic that would come to define a significant portion of the sci-fi genre (and would set it apart from Gothic novels, which are traditionally set in the past). It also essentially invented the post-apocalyptic subgenre of science fiction, and established several core tropes of that subgenre, such as plague, warring factions, and fanatic rulers.

Another of the biggest names in the horror genre has also dabbled in sci-fi: Edgar Allan Poe. Unlike Shelley, Poe tended to keep his horror and sci-fi somewhat separate, with his horror stories revolving around ghosts and murders and his overtly science fiction tales tending not to be particularly horrific. An example of the latter is his relatively obscure story “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.” Originally published in a magazine and passed off as a true account, the story tells of a man who travels to the moon via hot air balloon and encounters extraterrestrials living there. But though space-traveling hot air balloons don’t crop up in Poe’s horror tales, we do see other elements associated with science fiction, such as an emphasis on rationality and logic and an interest in (pseudo)sciences like mesmerism.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century came the two authors that are largely responsible for solidifying science fiction as a genre: Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Verne was most famous for his sci-fi adventure novels, one of which is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870). While not generally classified as horror, I would argue that it’s a classic example of a monster tale and contains a number of pretty horrifying moments. The novel centers on a team of men who are determined to hunt down a giant sea monster that has been terrorizing ships. They join the crew of Captain Nemo on his futuristic submarine. When they do encounter the many-tentacled monster, it attacks their vessel and snatches up one of the crew members. The basic premise of this story has been re-purposed for horror tales many times, most recognizably in Jaws.

H. G. Wells has written some of the most obvious early blends of science fiction and horror. Among these are War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man. But the one that I want to talk about here is The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). In this novel, a shipwrecked man ends up on the island home of Doctor Moreau, where he soon learns that the doctor is performing experiments on the island’s animal inhabitants to make them into human-like hybrid beings via a painful vivisection process. With this book, Wells continues the Mad Scientist trope introduced by Shelley and brings it to new heights.

The turn of the twentieth century brings us to H. P. Lovecraft. His name is basically synonymous with science fiction and horror, which he collapsed together into a genre called weird fiction. Lovecraft’s stories make use of cosmic horror—overwhelming awe and terror in the face of incomprehensible eldritch beings and existential nihilism. But these eldritch beings are not presented as merely supernatural creatures. Rather, they are discussed in scientific terms as extra-terrestrial, or even extra-dimensional beings. His stories such as “The Colour Out of Space” (1927) and “The Shadow Out of Time” (1935) are two examples that deal directly with the idea of an alien species visiting earth, a common sci-fi theme.

In fact, providing a scientific basis for what would otherwise be considered a supernatural being is another common trait of horror/sci-fi hybrids. Richard Matheson does this in his novel I Am Legend. This novel combines two separate traditions: that of the vampire story popularized by Bram Stoker’s Dracula and that of plague-based apocalypse tale à la Shelley’s The Last Man. In I Am Legend, almost the entire population of earth is wiped out by a pandemic that causes the dead to rise and exhibit symptoms resembling vampirism. Neville, the sole survivor, uses scientific methods to learn about the bacteria that causes this phenomenon. In the twenty-first century, Max Brooks continued this idea of depicting a monster-based apocalypse through a scientific and analytical lens with World War Z (2006).

It seems that merging horror with science fiction has an extensive history, especially in stories about the potential apocalypse or the ethical limits of science as represented through the Mad Scientist trope. Horror, then, is not just a reaction against the Age of Reason, but is in conversation with it. One way of writing horror is to reject Enlightenment ideas and embrace the illogical, the unexplained, and the supernatural. But there is also horror to be found in the fact that even after the scientific revolution, we still don’t have all the answers. In fact, sometimes scientific exploration only leads to more mysteries. And sometimes the answers we do find are still terrifying.

What are your favorite examples of science fiction horror? Have you read any of the works mentioned here? Share your thoughts in the comments!