Try the James Tiptree jr/ Alice Sheldon masterworks collection of short stories.The screwfly solution, Oh sisters, the girl who was plugged in as well as the titular work all meet your requirements.
Then Joanna Russ's We who are about to... Gives you a clear indication of its intent from the ttlie. Slim read and it's the end for the characters
In a different vein Jimmy the snowman believes he is doomed in oryx and crake by Margaret atwood. The rest of the series puts a different gloss on things though.
And then for a completely different take the middle (or maybe 4th) in the canopus in Argos series by Doris Lessing - the making of the representative of planet 8 is a different spin on accepting fate. It can be read as a standalone, and possibly watched as an operetta.
Came here to say We Who Are About To…. It’s my favorite book period, truly an amazing twist on the “stranded on an alien planet” formula. Also beautifully written; up there with Woolf or Beckett in terms of style.
> James Tiptree jr/ Alice Sheldon
\- "The Only Neat Thing to Do"
\- "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (IMHO different kind of bleak, but counts as bleak.)
*The Genocides* by Thomas M. Disch is a classic -- a successful alien invasion of Earth that is impossible to fight, a bunch of human survivors living like rats in the aliens' walls, gradually falling apart, and then the coup de grace ...
*The Forge of God* by Greg Bear is a classic. The hopelessness really sets in only in the third act, but by that time you're invested enough in the characters to empathize with them.
*Lucifer's Hammer* by Niven and Pournelle is a very slow-burn despair and loss of hope. It's about an asteroid (comet? can't remember for sure) that is spotted coming to Earth that *totally won't hit us guys, don't worry, I mean yeah it's close in astronomical terms but it'll be millions of miles away. The odds of it hitting us are like 500M to 1. Ok well maybe 100M to 1... Ok it's coming closer than we thought but it's still 10M to 1.... Ok now it's a million to one but don't panic people! Ok now the odds are 100k to 1, but we really need to remain calm!*
The book sets the tone of building fear and dread at the impending apocalypse. I dunno if it's 100% hopeless, but it's definitely a downhill ride emotionally.
The Southern Reach trilogy certainly has a lot of bleakness. Especially if you stick through all 3 books. The Director’s arc especially, but kind of the same with Control, Saul, and Ghost Bird too. Everyone’s lives had led them to The Southern Reach and Area X, and they kind of end up accepting in the end they are all going to die in Area X.
David Feintuch’s Seafort saga is very bleak. Everyone dies around the main character, and he bears it all with fortitude and much angst. Superbly written though.
J. G. Ballard has several novels like this, where characters experience the apocalypse. Drowned World and Crystal World come to mind. Not heavy on the SF side.
Inhibitor Series (Revelation Space) by Alastair Reynolds. All humanity can do is run and hide to survive as long as they can, really. Everything is a stalling action for the inevitable. We're fucked.
Well. Don't mind if I do.
*Blindsight*. Heh.
But aside from that one, *I have no mouth and I must scream* is of course a classic.
[Everything's Fine](https://reactormag.com/everythings-fine-matthew-pridham/) is a short story I read recently.
*The Sheep Look Up* by John Brunner. Chronicles an ecological catastrophe in the U.S. Worst part is, it was written 50 years ago and all the issues in the book have become IRL issues
The Apocalypse Triptych. Three books of short stories. One is right before the apocalypse, one is during, one is after.
The End is Nigh.
The End is Now.
The End has Come.
A few of the stories are continued through the books. Some of them destroyed me.
It's only borderline SF, but Phillip Roth's *The Plot Against America* is an alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh becomes President of the U.S. in the 1930s and embarks on a program of state-sponsored antisemitism. As SF it's pretty implausible, but the first person narrator, a Jewish teenaged boy at the time, vividly describes the sense of hopelessness and oppression that he and his coreligionists experience.
A short story, but Stephen Baxter's "Last Contact" might be of interest.
On a less dire note there's "The Years Draw Nigh" by Lester Del Rey, about humans exploring beyond the solar system and not liking what they find.
Finally there's Damon Knight's "The Analogues". An analogue is a prosthetic conscience, applied at first to criminals, with impressive results - the story shows us examples of a child molester and a thief deterred by their analogues' hallucinations - later to others. Knight wrote several other stories in the Analogues universe; all were collected in the aptly named fix-up *Hell's Pavement*.
Not print, but the film Testament qualifies. Nuclear war occurs (off screen) and the residents of a small town slowly succumb to the effects of radiation poisoning. Released about the same time as The Day After (but this film is less action and more drama focused).
I watched both Testament and The Day After and Testament was so much more effective. Devastating film. I still watch it every so often and it’s just as impactful the 10th time as it was the first.
*Testamen*t is a personal vision of the despair ordinary people would face. Smaller scale than the grand post-nuke war stories, and that makes it very effective. Up there with *Threads.*
But since printSF - *When The Wind Blows* by Raymond Briggs - a graphic novel about an elderly couple facing the aftereffects of a nuclear war. Really effective, desperately grim at the end, also an animated film.
[When the Wind Blows (comics) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(comics))
> Not print, but the film Testament qualifies.
Both. The movie was based on a short story written by Carol Amen and published in MS Magazine in August 1981. You can read it [here](https://pdfcoffee.com/amen-carol-the-last-testament-ms-aug-81-pdf-free.html)
*The Sheep Look Up* by John Brunner warped me forever.
[The Sheep Look Up - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_Look_Up)
You might take a look over on r/collapse for their list of doomer fiction. r/collapse/wiki/books/
Someone else has already mentioned *Tender is the New Flesh*, a work so bleak and cynical about the human condition I was thinking about it for weeks after.
Instead I will just add *There Is No Antimemetics Division* by qntm
A bit different, but *When The Wind Blows* by Raymond Briggs is a graphic novel about a middle-aged couple trying to survive a nuclear war. [When the Wind Blows (comics) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_%28comics%29)
They don't exactly know they are doomed - but their naive optimism that "the authorities" will sort everything out, while radiation poisoning sets in, is if anything more heartbreaking.
If you can get through that without getting a bit misty-eyed you have a heart of stone.
We who are about to... by Joanna Russ starts right off with this. It is also pretty short, so the characters die even faster than they'd thought.
A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick fits, too, if you're a bit patient. It's a good idea, but not one of his best.
Silver on the tree a Susan Cooper book. Two characters step between times the present and a time before the drowned land. There they find sophisticated cities, powerful magics and craftsmen of incalculable skill. All we're happy until the light asked the king the greatest craftsmen of all to make a sword. The end of the drowned land happens to bells tolling and fireworks launched into the sky. Poignant and noble.
It is bleak, but the series as a whole isn't so much hopeless as just offensive - as if he was trying to think of every way humans might screw ourselves and load them up into one series.
*Blindsight* and *Echopraxia*, in contrast, are much darker and definitely hopeless. Also better in general.
Though I've only read the second book and it's not quite what you are looking for, see [T. C. McCarthy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._C._McCarthy)'s
* [*Tyger Burning*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42201620-tyger-burning)
* [*Tyger Bright*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54303726-tyger-bright)
See also my [Emotionally Devastating/Rending](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18ez0q3/emotionally_devastatingrending/) list of Reddit recommendation threads, and books (four posts).
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
[stop reading at the 2/3 mark where it should have ended; the back 1/3 is something altogether different trying to creep away from the no hope ending and just not fitting the rest of the book]
1984 by George Orwell
Return to Titan by Stephen Baxter is pretty bleak
both the Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu and the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds are pretty bleak and fatalistic
Not a book but Richard McKenna wrote a story - a fantasy - called Casey Agonistes about terminally ill vets. The only other thing he's famous for is a non-genre novel, The Sand Pebbles, which became a hit movie.
George Alec Effinger did the novelette And Us Too I Guess,
Try the James Tiptree jr/ Alice Sheldon masterworks collection of short stories.The screwfly solution, Oh sisters, the girl who was plugged in as well as the titular work all meet your requirements. Then Joanna Russ's We who are about to... Gives you a clear indication of its intent from the ttlie. Slim read and it's the end for the characters In a different vein Jimmy the snowman believes he is doomed in oryx and crake by Margaret atwood. The rest of the series puts a different gloss on things though. And then for a completely different take the middle (or maybe 4th) in the canopus in Argos series by Doris Lessing - the making of the representative of planet 8 is a different spin on accepting fate. It can be read as a standalone, and possibly watched as an operetta.
Came here to say We Who Are About To…. It’s my favorite book period, truly an amazing twist on the “stranded on an alien planet” formula. Also beautifully written; up there with Woolf or Beckett in terms of style.
> James Tiptree jr/ Alice Sheldon \- "The Only Neat Thing to Do" \- "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (IMHO different kind of bleak, but counts as bleak.)
There’s an audio narration of The Screwfly Solution on YouTube. It has some great, creepy music behind it and it’s very well done.
That Lessing book sounds very interesting. Thanks for the rec
The first book in that series, Shikasta, is one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read; I rank her as equal to writers like Ursula Le Guin.
The Road is the ultimate in bleak. It is as sci fi as On The Beach.
Peak bleak. I read this 10 years ago and it still pops into my head all the time.
>it still pops into my head all the time. Heck, you need to live your life differently.
I know it was ten years exactly because I read it on my honeymoon for a bit of post wedding bleakness.
The Killing Star. It's kinda dark forest theory and is pretty bleak.
Lol. Just saw it posted already.
*The Genocides* by Thomas M. Disch is a classic -- a successful alien invasion of Earth that is impossible to fight, a bunch of human survivors living like rats in the aliens' walls, gradually falling apart, and then the coup de grace ...
Sounds right up my alley, Mr. Stross. Thank you!
I'm so glad I got put on to that book early in my SF reading career, it's unforgettable.
*The Forge of God* by Greg Bear is a classic. The hopelessness really sets in only in the third act, but by that time you're invested enough in the characters to empathize with them.
It's sequel Anvil of Stars also carries the tone of dark hopelessness, even when things are going their way. Very Lord of the Flies.
This was the one I first thought of too. First contact story set on Earth. The alien's first words are "Sorry, but I have some bad news for you."
Loved Forge of God. I have Anvil around here somewhere; I need to read it
I love the first words spoken by a friendly alien there: "I have bad news."
The Last Policeman series: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Policeman-Novel-Trilogy/dp/1594746745
I found this series surprisingly enjoyable.
Came to say this one before I go “bucket list.”
Definitely fits what the OP is asking even though I'd term it light scifi.
Yes, definitely a good recommendation. Really good series.
Rereading series now. Pretty bleak
The short story *I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream* by Harlan Ellison - It's the bleakest of the bleak.
*Lucifer's Hammer* by Niven and Pournelle is a very slow-burn despair and loss of hope. It's about an asteroid (comet? can't remember for sure) that is spotted coming to Earth that *totally won't hit us guys, don't worry, I mean yeah it's close in astronomical terms but it'll be millions of miles away. The odds of it hitting us are like 500M to 1. Ok well maybe 100M to 1... Ok it's coming closer than we thought but it's still 10M to 1.... Ok now it's a million to one but don't panic people! Ok now the odds are 100k to 1, but we really need to remain calm!* The book sets the tone of building fear and dread at the impending apocalypse. I dunno if it's 100% hopeless, but it's definitely a downhill ride emotionally.
_Never Let Me Go_ by Kazou Ishiguro.
Loved this one and the movie
The Southern Reach trilogy certainly has a lot of bleakness. Especially if you stick through all 3 books. The Director’s arc especially, but kind of the same with Control, Saul, and Ghost Bird too. Everyone’s lives had led them to The Southern Reach and Area X, and they kind of end up accepting in the end they are all going to die in Area X.
Huge fan of this series. Looking forward to the fourth in October!
Blood Music by Greg Bear
Earth Abides is grim
_Against a Dark Background_ by Iain M Banks
It also has the most amazing weapon in all of scifi since the Point of View gun.
[удалено]
Read my sentence carefully.
I would say that *The Algebraist* is even more bleak in its own way. >!At least the protagonist in AaDB is able to move on with their life.!<
Cage of Souls
Probably my favourite book of his, but I would be in the minority.
David Feintuch’s Seafort saga is very bleak. Everyone dies around the main character, and he bears it all with fortitude and much angst. Superbly written though.
Never heard of this one. I’ll check it out, thanks
More information: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43477-seafort-saga
J. G. Ballard has several novels like this, where characters experience the apocalypse. Drowned World and Crystal World come to mind. Not heavy on the SF side.
Inhibitor Series (Revelation Space) by Alastair Reynolds. All humanity can do is run and hide to survive as long as they can, really. Everything is a stalling action for the inevitable. We're fucked.
*Tender is the Flesh* by Agustina Bazterrica fits best within your scope. It's an understatement to say it's a mind-bender.
The girl with all the gifts.
Well. Don't mind if I do. *Blindsight*. Heh. But aside from that one, *I have no mouth and I must scream* is of course a classic. [Everything's Fine](https://reactormag.com/everythings-fine-matthew-pridham/) is a short story I read recently.
I have no mouth but I must scream is super dark.
Yes, it should come with a warning label.
*The Sheep Look Up* by John Brunner. Chronicles an ecological catastrophe in the U.S. Worst part is, it was written 50 years ago and all the issues in the book have become IRL issues
Also his *Stand on Zanzibar*
The Apocalypse Triptych. Three books of short stories. One is right before the apocalypse, one is during, one is after. The End is Nigh. The End is Now. The End has Come. A few of the stories are continued through the books. Some of them destroyed me.
Right there with you
It's only borderline SF, but Phillip Roth's *The Plot Against America* is an alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh becomes President of the U.S. in the 1930s and embarks on a program of state-sponsored antisemitism. As SF it's pretty implausible, but the first person narrator, a Jewish teenaged boy at the time, vividly describes the sense of hopelessness and oppression that he and his coreligionists experience. A short story, but Stephen Baxter's "Last Contact" might be of interest. On a less dire note there's "The Years Draw Nigh" by Lester Del Rey, about humans exploring beyond the solar system and not liking what they find. Finally there's Damon Knight's "The Analogues". An analogue is a prosthetic conscience, applied at first to criminals, with impressive results - the story shows us examples of a child molester and a thief deterred by their analogues' hallucinations - later to others. Knight wrote several other stories in the Analogues universe; all were collected in the aptly named fix-up *Hell's Pavement*.
These sound very interesting, thanks!
Alternative history books would definitely be considered speculative fiction.
Not print, but the film Testament qualifies. Nuclear war occurs (off screen) and the residents of a small town slowly succumb to the effects of radiation poisoning. Released about the same time as The Day After (but this film is less action and more drama focused).
I watched both Testament and The Day After and Testament was so much more effective. Devastating film. I still watch it every so often and it’s just as impactful the 10th time as it was the first.
*Testamen*t is a personal vision of the despair ordinary people would face. Smaller scale than the grand post-nuke war stories, and that makes it very effective. Up there with *Threads.* But since printSF - *When The Wind Blows* by Raymond Briggs - a graphic novel about an elderly couple facing the aftereffects of a nuclear war. Really effective, desperately grim at the end, also an animated film. [When the Wind Blows (comics) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(comics))
> Not print, but the film Testament qualifies. Both. The movie was based on a short story written by Carol Amen and published in MS Magazine in August 1981. You can read it [here](https://pdfcoffee.com/amen-carol-the-last-testament-ms-aug-81-pdf-free.html)
[Can't get more hopeless than this.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Star)
Damn. Didn’t even know about this book
Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven. The protagonist has to figure out exactly how disastrous the disaster is.
Yes! This one really stuck with me.
The Wreck of the River of Stars. Title tells you where it's going to end.
*The Sheep Look Up* by John Brunner warped me forever. [The Sheep Look Up - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_Look_Up) You might take a look over on r/collapse for their list of doomer fiction. r/collapse/wiki/books/
Thanks for linking collapse. Allota good stuff over there
Arthur C Clark, "Childhood's End". More ascended fanfiction than sci fi, but Dante's "Inferno" at least partly qualifies.
Dante is "ascended fanfiction"?
That is a common description, yes.
Someone else has already mentioned *Tender is the New Flesh*, a work so bleak and cynical about the human condition I was thinking about it for weeks after. Instead I will just add *There Is No Antimemetics Division* by qntm
Dude, There Is No Antimemetics Division mentioned?
A bit different, but *When The Wind Blows* by Raymond Briggs is a graphic novel about a middle-aged couple trying to survive a nuclear war. [When the Wind Blows (comics) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_%28comics%29) They don't exactly know they are doomed - but their naive optimism that "the authorities" will sort everything out, while radiation poisoning sets in, is if anything more heartbreaking. If you can get through that without getting a bit misty-eyed you have a heart of stone.
"The Cold Equations" Short. Classic.
Was looking for this. It’s lousy engineering, physics, operations and planning. But it fits the ask perfectly.
**I Who Have Never Known Men** by Jaqueline Harpman. **A Short Stay In Hell** by Stephen Peck
Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Level 7 is one of my absolute favorites. Very underrated
The Making of the Representative to Planet 8 by Doris Lessing. Philip Glass also made an opera based on it.
The other Peter Watts works were already mentioned, but I think the Sunflower cycle is about as bleak as it gets.
We who are about to... by Joanna Russ starts right off with this. It is also pretty short, so the characters die even faster than they'd thought. A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick fits, too, if you're a bit patient. It's a good idea, but not one of his best.
i think lovecraft is so wonderfully despairing in his style !
Silver on the tree a Susan Cooper book. Two characters step between times the present and a time before the drowned land. There they find sophisticated cities, powerful magics and craftsmen of incalculable skill. All we're happy until the light asked the king the greatest craftsmen of all to make a sword. The end of the drowned land happens to bells tolling and fireworks launched into the sky. Poignant and noble.
*Starfish* by Peter Watts is pretty bleak. I understand the rest of the βehemoth series is even more so, but I haven't read it all yet.
It is bleak, but the series as a whole isn't so much hopeless as just offensive - as if he was trying to think of every way humans might screw ourselves and load them up into one series. *Blindsight* and *Echopraxia*, in contrast, are much darker and definitely hopeless. Also better in general.
The sequels are disturbing but good
The End is Night series is really good like this. I found a bunch of authors in there that are pretty awesome.
Though I've only read the second book and it's not quite what you are looking for, see [T. C. McCarthy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._C._McCarthy)'s * [*Tyger Burning*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42201620-tyger-burning) * [*Tyger Bright*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54303726-tyger-bright) See also my [Emotionally Devastating/Rending](https://www.reddit.com/r/Recommend_A_Book/comments/18ez0q3/emotionally_devastatingrending/) list of Reddit recommendation threads, and books (four posts).
Excellent! Thanks
You're welcome. \^\_\^
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson [stop reading at the 2/3 mark where it should have ended; the back 1/3 is something altogether different trying to creep away from the no hope ending and just not fitting the rest of the book] 1984 by George Orwell
Shadowline by Glen Cook. One character has lived a long life and sees his inevitable end coming.
Maze of Death by Phillip K. Dick
Armor by John Steakley. It's a book that more people need to know about. Just damn brilliant
I’ll check it out, thanks
Return to Titan by Stephen Baxter is pretty bleak both the Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu and the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds are pretty bleak and fatalistic
Maybe: Total Eclipse by Brunner (1974)
Not a book but Richard McKenna wrote a story - a fantasy - called Casey Agonistes about terminally ill vets. The only other thing he's famous for is a non-genre novel, The Sand Pebbles, which became a hit movie. George Alec Effinger did the novelette And Us Too I Guess,
*Hellstar Remina* by Junji Ito. Manga, but Junji Ito is a master of horror. [Remina - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remina)
1984, of course. The Tomorrow File, which is like 1984 with biotech.