I recently read the trilogy, and absolutely fell in LOVE with this type of story. To clarify, to me, the three body problem trilogy felt like a modern take on cosmic horror, while im not looking specifically for horror. I’m looking for the feeling that this trilogy gave me, a sort of feeling of awe and excitement over the unknown. I love the unknown, but especially i love the idea of the unknown in reality, so stories that ground science fiction worries in reality a bit, but also aren’t entirely afraid to pull out some less realistic ideas to get across certain points. I am looking for any books that remotely feel like this trilogy in that sense.
I feel like such books would be very uncommon however.
EDIT: Do any of you listen to music while you read? I started recently making specific playlists for reading various kinds of books, so far i’ve made a playlist for reading warhammer 40k books and a playlist for reading cosmic horror and creepy stories in general, i came up with the idea while reading three body problem. after i started listening while reading, it made the experience even creepier, which i loved.
EDIT EDIT: For anyone else making suggestions, since theres a few suggestions i already have in my collection i plan to read here. i will provide a list of books i have in my collection that i plan to read. This isn’t all of them, this is just my “cosmic stuff” folder. Some of it is a bit less sci fi and is more just personally interesting for other reasons.
Ballad of black tom- victor lavalle
Blindsight+echopraxia- peter watts (suggested by this thread, already had it, more inclined to read now)
The void trilogy- peter hamilton
Phyl Undhu, Abstract horror, exterminator- Nick Land
The killing star- charles R pellegrino
The revelation space collection- alastair reynolds (newly added thanks to this thread)
The tinfoil dossier trilogy- Caitlin R Kiernan
vacuum diagrams/xeelee sequence- Stephen Baxter (newly added from this thread)
The expanse- james S.A. Corey (haven’t grabbed yet, but plan to)
Not so much cosmic horror, but definitely the sense of awe and scale (both physically and time wise), the Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter. ‘Vacuum Diagrams’ is a short story collection that spans the timeline and I think it’s a good introduction to see if you’ll like it.
Edit: I guess there is some cosmic horror, as in ‘what could make an ancient and powerful race so scared and helpless that they need to build an escape hatch in the universe?’
i should clarify “cosmic horror” for me is a MUCH broader concept in my mind than most think of it, for me, it encompasses so much more than just space gods beyond human understanding. i classify cosmic “entities” as anything out of control of humanity and of the “outside” in some vague sense, capitalism is a lovecraftian monster out of human control, it is not foreign to our world, but a.i. is also very similar in this regard, as is the weather/climate change, to a lesser extent. For me, the lovecraftian concepts in three body was the very idea of a dark forest, the idea that you fundamentally cannot know if the dark forest is in fact real, so they had to more or less assume it was, similar to that even if life is a simulation in order to prevent complete chaos we would still need to assume it’s all real so we aren’t just going crazy and doing ridiculous stuff on the off chance that it isn’t a simulation and murder and such things did matter, such concepts no matter the authors beliefs on how it ends up are always VERY interesting to me.
Just from this line “what could make an ancient and powerful race so scared and helpless that they need to build an escape hatch in the universe?’” I am already curious and will probably grab the book shortly and read some later tonight.
I consume book therefore i am, maybe, probably, we’ll see after i read X more books that further break down my preconceptions on everything i used to think i understood. Somehow i think i will just be less certain :P