John Carpenter’s Tales of Science Fiction is the definitive collection of stories at the crossroads of horror and sci-fi. Follow us into a dark future, from post-apocalyptic earth, into space and beyond. Each mini series explores the universal fears of the unknown, alien life, interstellar travel, and the age old question, can anyone can hear you scream in space. The answer is no.
John Carpenter’s Tales of Science Fiction is the definitive collection of stories at the crossroads of horror and sci-fi. Follow us into a dark future, from post-apocalyptic earth, into space and beyond. Each mini series explores the universal fears of the unknown, alien life, interstellar travel, and the age old question, can anyone can hear you scream in space. The answer is no.
When the moon-bound crew of Gaia stumbles across an enormous alien vessel, more technologically advanced than their own, priorities change. The mystery deepens when the crew discovers the name of the vessel along the hull… written in English: VAULT.
Now marooned on VAULT and trapped with a hostile force they don’t understand, the crew of GAIA is pressed to learn more about this corpse-ridden craft. Cracks in alliances widen, the mystery deepens, and the body count rises.
Four of the seven Gaia crew remain. VAULT has reached its destination. This is the end. Will the survivors find the pieces and solve the puzzle, or will they join the host of ghosts already aboard? Or both?
With all communication lost from a mining asteroid, space station Benson dispatches a rescue ship to investigate. What the team discovers threatens not only to overwhelm and destroy them, but could ultimately threaten all life on Earth.
A mysterious life form tears its way through a rescue team on a deep space asteroid mining facility. The survivors of the disaster now vow to get to the bottom of the continuing mystery as Earth sends its own investigator to space station Benson.
Investigating exactly what happened on the mining asteroid, Jake Dixon returns with a new team that includes the one man he can’t trust. As they make a startling discovery another threat begins to unfold back on space station Benson.
With all eyes on the problem plagued asteroid, something nasty is stirring on space station Benson. Meanwhile at least one person has seemingly survived the incident on Garm so Dixon and his team must explore further, but will something find them first?
Under attack on the mining asteroid, Jake Dixon and his team find themselves fighting for their lives as they attempt to fall back to the safety of their ship. Meanwhile, a monstrous event on space station Benson suggests there may be no safe haven to return to.
Having escaped the horrors of the mining asteroid, Jake Dixon and his team find they are not alone. With a creature loose on their ship and one of their own working against them, who will survive? And what will be left of them?
The survivors of the rescue mission reach Space Station Benson where Jake Dixon finally confronts Dr Andersen and reveals the truth about the organism attacking them. But as further horror unfolds is it too little too late?
Space Station Benson has fallen and hellish monsters roam its corridors. Jake Dixon is left with a stark choice to save Earth and his friends, but at what cost? Horror, action and sacrifice bring VORTEX to its shattering conclusion.
Tattersall Prison. Max lock. The baddest of the bad… until something from the night sky crashes into the complex, trapping cons and guards on the inside, cops on the outside, and escapees between… all of them threatened by a hideous invader who needs to take over nice, warm human bodies. It’s a hostage situation. It’s a battle between species. It’s Earth’s most serious STANDOFF.
A gigantic UFO has crashed into Tattersall Prison. Officials try to contain the perimeter, but the inmates want out … and the invaders want IN—into the inmates. Hostages are taken. Bodies are possessed. Alien bugs infect anyone they can. Inside—chaos. Outside—chaos. And all around, a total and complete STANDOFF.
While hardboiled convict FRAISER BONNER continues to execute prison guards with impunity, the forces surrounding TATTERSALL PRISON struggle to cope with an alien invasion that threatens to spill over into the rest of the world. No negotiation. No parley. Extraterrestrial expert CONRAD GANT, forced into hiding by the government, finds himself drafted to help the very agencies that disavowed him.
THE DEATH CLOCK IS TICKING at Tattersall Prison. Trapped guards. Prisoners with hostages. And alien invaders who want to possess them all. Visitors who like the darkness … and use human beings as a chrysalis for their new, Earth-friendly, forms. Tattersall must be contained … and time is running out.
TIME’S UP. The extraterrestrial invasion of Tattersall Prison now threatens to spill over into the rest of the world. Agent ELAINE FARRIS, UFOlogist CONRAD GANT and lead guard WAYNE JESSUP have moments to get clear of the hot zone before military sterilization from the air … and all they have to do is evade an army of prisoners-turned-aliens, hungry to possess them, too.
The desert above Los Angeles is a harsh, unforgiving place. The heat does something to people’s brains, thinks Lieutenant Ron Pinkerton, investigating a series of shockingly violent crimes perpetrated by the most unlikely suspects. A few miles away, astrophysicists at the Mount Wilson Observatory are grappling with another kind of threat — one that threatens to extinguish humanity.
Astrophysicist Marisa Stringfellow broke out of the observatory thinking she’d be able stop an alien entity on the rampage in the Antelope Valley desert. Lieutenant Pinkerton, meanwhile, thinks Stringfellow may be suffering from heatstroke. “How can you tell they’re aliens?” “Because right before they kill you,” Stringfellow replies, “they’ll start to TWITCH…”
An alien entity is slowly gathering material to build a hive mind — and your brain is on its wish list! It’s up to the unlikely duo of an astrophysicist and an L.A. county sheriff to save humanity, one bullet at a time. But it’s tough to aim straight when you can see dead people shambling toward you, and the end of the world just over the horizon, and your eyes begin to TWITCH…
One minute, you’re just trying to unwind after a tough day at work. The next minute, you’re blind and handcuffed speeding through the desert while random people are shooting at you. But maybe you deserve it, because you tried to kill your wife and colleague just a few hours ago. You’re part of the hive now, and you just found out how everything you know and love can disappear with a single TWITCH.
It all ends here. The end of humanity as we know it. It begins in the Antelope Valley, and will soon spread into Los Angeles. From there… the rest of the planet. Unless an ex-cop who hasn’t fired a gun in 15 years can muster the strength to step into the most dangerous place on Earth, facing the most hideous creatures imaginable, lining up a desperate long shot - praying her hand doesn’t TWITCH.
As the Cold War widened in the 50s, George Kutter and his family trained to be legacy survivors in the event of an atomic exchange with the Soviet Union. When a group of hunting buddies stumble upon a seemingly abandoned fallout shelter, a crash course in Cold War paranoia, propaganda and control awaits. What did the Kutter Family endure? And if WWIII never occured… why are they still down there?
Donnie and his friends planned a weekend of blowing off steam in the woods. Instead, they ended up lost, injured and locked inside the fallout shelter previously inhabited by the participants in some kind of simulated military experiment. But no one told George Kutter the bombs never fell. Now, as this group of frightened, desperate men work to find a way out, the old experiment has begun anew.
Over 60 years ago, the Archonite Initiative studied the effects of stress and loss upon potential survivors of a nuclear war. Believing they could be the last humans alive, the Kutter Family would experience sensory manipulation and divisions in their ranks. But as the manipulations of this Cold War-era simulator are revealed, Donnie and the others begin to lose their patience, minds and lives.
Donnie Montague once dreamed of serving his country like his best friend, decorated war hero Keith Crenshaw. So when military contractor Archonite offered him an opportunity to assist in a mission he was profiled as perfect for, he couldn’t say no. As he and Keith struggle to survive the shelter’s manipulations and distortions, old grievances, jealousies and secrets threaten to destroy them both.
Donnie and Keith think they’ve found a way out of the shelter and work toward an escape. But the Archonite Project was about control, the study of societal structure and conflict resolution under extreme stress, the bonds between family and friends (along with their limits), and the measure of just how far a man might go to protect what he can claim as his.
Marnie Young is a sweet girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly. But one night, without warning, she has a violent seizure. Two days later, she wakes up in a hospital room. As her vision comes into focus, she sees 17 doctors and nurses dead on the floor, blood everywhere. Soon she discovers the shocking truth: Marnie has become lethal, and everyone who comes within three feet of her dies instantly!
What do you do with a girl like Marnie—who involuntarily kills anyone who steps into her personal space? Do you try to cure her? Imprison her? Weaponize her? Marnie, meanwhile, desperately wants to stop killing innocent (and not-so-innocent) people, which means a mad scramble through a police blockade and into the only empty areas left in San Diego… which aren’t as empty as Marnie thinks…
Marnie’s situation grows even more dire as her “kill zone” expands. If it keeps growing at this rate, she’ll murder the entire city! Marnie does have one ally: a mysterious voice on the phone who tries to guide her to safety and help explain her predicament. But then why does he seem to be steering Marnie directly toward danger?
It’s Marnie’s worst nightmare: trapped upside-down in a tube, the subject of a series of hellish experiments to uncover the cause of her strange condition (i.e., instantly killing anyone who comes too close to her). If she’s going to survive, Marnie is going to have learn how to harness her bizarre “power” and escape, even if that means heads will have to roll…
For three days now, Marnie Young has been desperate to learn the reason for her freakish condition (involuntarily killing anyone who ventures too close to her). But when the horrifying answers finally come, she’ll long for those more innocent days, when she was just murdering doctors and nurses in her sleep.
More than twenty years have passed since the Benson Station disaster as an unauthorized rescue mission brings the survivors together again. Now some 5,500 light years from home a familiar evil is rising with a score to settle.
Out in the Cat’s Paw Nebula something evil is unfurling aboard the Barringer Habitat. Jake Dixon is back, but has he brought back with him the very thing he tried to destroy? As the body count begins to rise, more faces from the past, both dead and alive, begin to appear as an investigation begins… but is it already too late?
Something is killing its way through the Barringer Habitat and Jake Dixon is the prime suspect. Now on the run with old ship mate, Anna Cheron, he’s fallen in with a gang that operate outside the law. As something alien once more unfurls it’s tendrils towards humanity Dixon is offered a new mission perhaps even more deadly than the last.
As the horror jumps from the Barringer Habitat to the far flung reaches of Menemsha Bite, the stakes are raised and incredible risks are taken. Jake Dixon and his team struggle to stay one step ahead of the law with an audacious plan to track down the source of the terror slowly unfurling and Dixon finally comes face to face with his past.
Things are unravelling fast on quarantined Menemsha Bite. Once a pleasure planet, it is now a dead world - well, almost dead, as Dixon and his team are discovering. With crack pilot Faye Munro closing in, and former detective Magnusson’s investigation leading him back to the Benson disaster, the stakes and terror continue to increase.
Quarantined Menemsha Bite is giving up its secrets and more as Dixon and his team delve deeper into the structure. Terrible creatures stand in their way and not everyone is going to make it out of there in one piece. Vortex careens its way back to the Barringer Habitat in this explosive installment.
With the horror of Menemsha Bite behind them, Dixon and what's left of the team return to a very different Barringer Habitat than the one they left. Following another appearance by the long dead Willow Sinclair a search for survivors turns into a fight for survival as the Vortex begins to turn faster.
The Barringer Habitat is lost with almost all hands, but the survivors still have much to fear from the dead. A final reckoning is coming for Dixon and the monstrous creature found in the depths of that ancient asteroid. But will his team be able to save anyone or even themselves before the Vortex closes forever?
In New York City, a reptilian humanoid is discovered who can speak English. In Columbia, a scientist crawls up from the depths of the Earth, bringing news of a miraculous new mineral power source, and demons below. In Texas, a convicted murderer is spared by an international conglomerate to lead an expedition to the center of the Earth, because like the scientist, he's been there.
Born in the Underneath, trapped in the Overworld... the calm, inhuman visitor known as KARTKAS is charged with helping a human team visit and explore his stomping grounds... the regions beneath... commonly known as HELL. Their journey only starts in the Bermuda Triangle, aboard a haunted tanker. BENEATH THAT: A violent steam tunnel breaching the Atlantic Ocean floor. And beneath that …?
THE MISSION CLOCK IS TICKING for the Cal-Ex spike team, the scientist, the troubleshooter, the witch, the murderer, and KARTKAS, the emissary from the Underneath. BUT FIRST they have to ride the “Bullet” — the capsule that will deliver them unto Hell. And the trip may destroy them before they even set foot.
WELCOME TO HELL… Communications with the surface cut off, besieged by sand-crawling, piranha-like predators, the CalEx subsurface strike team finds itself in deep combat from the moment they step out of the hatch with no immediate prospect of return to the Upworld they left behind, while still trying to achieve their mission directive to recover the rare mineral discovered by Dr. Correll.
The entire strike team has incurred casualties from the moment they set foot into the blistering purgatory of the Underneath. They are the first humans to venture into this alien landscape, with their half-human, half-reptile native guide. And now they have to contend with a new enemy, a previously unseen form of armored, mantis-like soldier bred solely for combat, engineered to protect and kill!
Battered and burned from the savage insectoid Stalkers, the strike team is now fractured into three parts: Brandon Samples, alone and suffocating… Stef, half-blinded, her group ravaged by the conflict in the Crystal Cathedral… and the remnants of Capt. Lamb's unit, captured and herded by more Stalkers than they can fight. At the end of their quest: demonic gargoyles that speak English!
Captured, jailed and used for arena combat and lab experimentation by living monsters from Earth's medieval past, the surviving members of the CalEx incursion team must figure out whether escape – or survival – is even possible down in the Underneath. These creatures have always been with us. Waiting for their chance to come back, topside … and reclaim the surface-world of Earth for their own.
ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE! …in the thunderous conclusion of the saga of the Underneath! The survivors of the CalEx strike team have one hole card left to play … Meanwhile, the demons of the underworld have a workable invasion plan to dominate the surface of the Earth once more … and only our team, with the uniquely alien Kartkas, can stop them.
It’s a bright sunny day near the Santa Monica Pier. You’re reading an excellent novel and enjoying some downtime. But suddenly… you’re compelled to stand up. So is everyone else around you. And now you’re walking along with them into the ocean. Stop! you want to scream. But your body refuses to listen. Not even when the waves crash over your head, and the water fills your lungs.
You’re taking a shower. Nothing more normal in the world, right? But wait. This is not your shower; this is not your bar of soap; hell, this isn’t even your apartment. You have no idea how you ended up here, naked. But things are about to get far worse as you step out of the shower and leave the apartment and somehow end up in a violent riot on the streets of Beverly Hills…
We all know the world has lost its collective mind. But not quite like this… with random strangers teaming up to commit bizarre acts of violence and self-destruction, from the Santa Monica Pier to the 101 Freeway to a posh Beverly Hills mall. Our only hope lies with four complete strangers — all of whom have had devastating encounters with this phenomenon — who team up in search of answers.
Former Navy pilot and physicist, David Peeler, has a theory that it’s possible to travel between universes within a multiverse. His colleague, Dr. Nestor Torres, is conducting his own tests on faster than light travel. They devise an experiment that would prove both theories. David reluctantly agrees to pilot the ship, and when the day arrives, the experiment appears to be a success… for a moment.
David wants to halt any further testing. Nestor is determined to forge ahead. Then an unexpected visitor shows up at Nestor’s lab. It’s David, but not our David. This Alt-David somehow also ended up here after the test. In his universe, he lost his family. When he discovers our David hasn’t, he wants to replace him and get his family back, and he’s ready to do whatever it takes.
After murdering Nestor, Alt-David shows up at David’s home, while David is left to deal with the police. Camille is confused by the sight of her grizzled husband and his strange behavior, until our David returns home, leaving her flabbergasted. The David’s meet, and after a tense face-off, they realize they need to fix this problem and an uneasy truce is formed.
David makes fake credentials to get Alt-David back into the lab and the two of them get to work. Tensions run high, but after a few weeks, they’re ready for another test flight. This time the results are even more unexpected than the last. And if that wasn’t bad enough, another dead body has turned up and the military police are breathing down David’s neck. Time and options are running out.
The jig is up. The military police are on their way to arrest David for the murdered staff member. All the Alt-Davids are completely unhinged. There’s only one shot left to right this wrong, but it’s risky. Can David pull it off?
Two cutting-edge scientists, friends and rivals since college, race to be the first to make alien contact. One finds a golden entity that offers to cure the worst Earthbound diseases. Simultaneously the other has discovered a creature that could be an alien or even a ghost. Is it two-in-one extraterrestrial contact … or something more monstrous?
ALIEN CONTACT? Or GHOST INVASION? Or perhaps … both?
Intruders or visitors? Invaders or benefactors?
Scientist BEN RAINES seeks to contact the spirit of his dead wife,
but finds an entirely new romantic attraction.
His old college buddy STEVEN ALLARD has spent millions
to make contact with an alien consciousness …
but does it wish to help, or harm?
GOOD NEWS and BAD NEWS: We've made successful alien contact and as a result, cured cancer. But is that the good news, or the bad? Because there's a downside. Because there is an opposite number to the Envoy, a gracile golden visitor who has come to heal: the flipside visitor which looks pretty much like Lovecraft's worst nightmare.
When the moon-bound crew of Gaia stumbles across an enormous alien vessel, more technologically advanced than their own, priorities change. The mystery deepens when the crew discovers the name of the vessel along the hull… written in English: VAULT.
Space Station Benson sits in the Veil Nebula, supporting a series of mining asteroids. A team has gone suddenly silent after triggering a distress beacon. The commander deploys a rescue mission lead by Jake Dixon - a man with reputations as both a hero and a murderer after a previous rescue mission lost a ship, but saved the station. What Jake finds on the asteroid will threaten even Earth itself.
At Tattersall Prison, a max-lock for the baddest of the bad, a fireball from the sky turns the night shift into a nightmare — trapping guards and cons on the inside, cops on the outside, and escapees in-between… all of them threatened by a hideous alien invader which needs nice, warm human bodies in which to incubate. Now the clock is ticking and there’s an invasion to be stopped.
In 1977, astronomers detected the so-called “WOW” signal: a burst of sound from deep space, near the constellation Sagittarius, believed to be extraterrestrial in origin. The next month, the astronomers sent a reply. More than four decades later, the alien intelligence has sent an invasion force of exactly one photon—and it’s the kind of microscopic threat we could have never seen coming.
As the Cold War widened in the 50s, George Kutter and his family trained to be legacy survivors in the event of an atomic exchange with the Soviet Union. When a group of hunting buddies stumble upon a seemingly abandoned fallout shelter, a crash course in Cold War paranoia, propaganda and control awaits. What did the Kutter Family endure? And if WWIII never occured… why are they still down there?
Marnie Young is a sweet girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly. But one night, without warning, she has a violent seizure. Two days later, she wakes up in a hospital room. As her vision comes into focus, she sees 17 doctors and nurses dead on the floor, blood everywhere. Soon she discovers the shocking truth: Marnie has become lethal, and everyone who comes within three feet of her dies instantly!
In the decades following the loss of the space station Benson, a new kind of life has been forged even further into the Veil Nebula aboard a new type of habitat: The Barringer. But a connection back to Jake Dixon, the man who sacrificed everything to stop a nameless horror reaching Earth, now pulls back those few survivors and an all-new crew to face fresh monsters and familiar terror.
Is it one of those assemble-the-team deals? YOU BET! The scientist. The murderer. The mercs. The witch. And the half-human visitor from the Underneath. The mission: Recover the most amazing mineral power source ever discovered. The target: Miles beneath the Earth's crust, teeming with monster denizens we haven't seen in centuries. It's a one-way trip straight to HELL.
It’s 2022. We all know the world has lost its collective mind. But not quite like this… with random strangers teaming up to commit bizarre acts of violence and self-destruction, from the Santa Monica Pier to the 101 Freeway to a posh Beverly Hills mall. Our only hope lies with four strangers — all of whom have had devastating encounters with this phenomenon — who team up in search of answers.
An experiment in faster than light travel goes terribly wrong. Unintended side effects will drop pilot David Peeler into a living nightmare when alternate versions of himself start appearing, each one more deranged than the last. Putting both himself, and his family in danger, David will navigate the farthest reaches of the cosmos, and the abyss of the human mind. Little by little, he will lose himself to the growing insanity of confronting the darkest parts of himself made flesh.
Two cutting-edge scientists race to be the first to make alien contact. One finds a golden entity that offers to cure the worst Earthbound diseases. Simultaneously the other has discovered a creature that seems more monstrous, or even a ghost. Is it Earth's first contact … or last chance?