Five Frightening Books About Fiction Bleeding Into Reality

Unlike the rest of the books on this list, The Lathe of Heaven isn’t a horror story, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that Le Guin’s version of fiction becoming reality is at all pleasant. The story starts with George Orr doing everything in his power to stay awake because some of his dreams end up changing reality (although he’s the only one aware that anything changed in the first place).

While that might sound like, well, a dream come true, George isn’t coping well with the burden of this power. He’s forced to see dream specialist Dr. William Haber, who is initially—and understandably—skeptical about his new patient’s predicament, but quickly realizes that he’s telling the truth.

Haber thinks he can use George’s bizarre power for the good of humanity, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and dreams can be rather unwieldy, uncooperative things. All of that to say, read The Lathe of Heaven if you want a brilliant, powerful exploration of why playing God is a dangerous game.

Ronald Malfi’s Ghostwritten is a collection of four novellas, each of which is a different take on the idea of strange and sinister books. The final tale in the collection—appropriately titled The Story—sees a choose-your-own-adventure tale come to life. While that may sound like pure childhood fun, in Malfi’s hands, the idea is given a dark twist.

The novella kicks off with Grady finding out that his recently estranged friend Taryn has died by suicide. He takes it upon himself to investigate the odd circumstances surrounding her death and discovers that she had become obsessed with an interactive online book in her final days alive. As Grady continues to dig, he not only finds himself irrevocably drawn into the choose-your-own-adventure story, but also realizes that it has the power to actually change reality.

For a brief moment, Misha Byrne is living his dream: he’s a successful Hollywood screenwriter who’s just been nominated for an Oscar. But he comes crashing back down to reality when he’s told that the studio executives have demanded he rewrite the season finale of his hit sci-fi TV show. Specifically, he’s ordered to kill off one of the lead queer characters—playing into the notorious trope referred to in pop culture as ‘bury your gays’—because the algorithm says that it’ll perform better.

Misha is fed up with queer characters being treated as disposable, but then he’s hit with an even bigger problem: the fictional monsters and villains from his various scripts start hunting him down… in real life. Are his fans taking things too far? Is the studio trying to scare him into complying? Or have his past creations really come to life?

Bury Your Gays is a fun and thrilling roller-coaster ride of a horror story, with Misha serving as a lovable and hilarious protagonist to follow through the madness made real. But the book also has a serious side, delivering a searing critique of AI, corporate greed, and lackluster queer representation in media.

Best friends Andrew and Thomas provide each other with support and solace at Wickwood Academy, where they both channel their feelings into art. Andrew writes creepy fairy tales and Thomas often draws and paints the twisted monsters from those stories (some of which are featured throughout the book in gorgeously macabre illustrations by artist Jana Heidersdorf).

Thomas is being unusually distant at the start of the new school year—which weighs particularly heavily on Andrew because of his unspoken romantic feelings for his friend—and each night he mysteriously disappears into the forest at the edge of the school. When Andrew follows him into the trees one night, he discovers that Thomas is fighting and killing the now-somehow-real monsters from his drawings.

Figuring out how to stop the dangerous creatures from coming to life becomes Thomas and Andrew’s top priority, but there’s still time for them to (rather messily) try to figure out their feelings for one another. From the monsters to the emotions, everything in Don’t Let the Forest In is channeled through Drews’ lyrical, memorable prose.

When the Wolf Comes Home launches into a sprint almost immediately. Jess arrives home from a particularly brutal shift at her diner job to find a lost little boy hiding in the bushes outside. She takes him in, but before she can figure out how to help him, a distinctly werewolf-like creature goes on a rampage through the apartment building.

Jess and the boy make a speedy getaway, and from there the story is a fast-paced, pedal-to-the-metal chase that belongs in a nightmare. Although Jess tries to rationalize the beast she saw—that now seems to be in hot pursuit of them—it soon becomes apparent that the boy is far from ordinary, and his fear may just have something to do with the thing that attacked them.

The horror elements of the story are delightfully fresh and creative and bring forth blood-soaked chaos, but it’s all grounded by an emotional core. Not only is the budding connection between Jess and the boy heartwarming to follow, but they’re both working through some pretty intense daddy issues.