Science Fiction – Page 29 – Trigger Warning Database

Semiosis by Sue Burke

Semiosis by Sue Burke

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet’s sentient species and prove that mammals are more than tools. Forced to land on a planet they aren’t prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape–trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Graphic rape
Physical injury & illness
Cannibalism
Death of a child
Murder
Torture
Animal death
Animal abuse

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Told by the central character, Alex, this brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism. Anthony Burgess’ 1963 classic stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a classic of twentieth-century post-industrial alienation, often shocking us into a thoughtful exploration of the meaning of free will and the conflict between good and evil.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Rape
Murder
Torture

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

Doro knows no higher authority than himself. An ancient spirit with boundless powers, he possesses humans, killing without remorse as he jumps from body to body to sustain his own life. With a lonely eternity ahead of him, Doro breeds supernaturally gifted humans into empires that obey his every desire. He fears no one — until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is an entity like Doro and yet different. She can heal with a bite and transform her own body, mending injuries and reversing aging. She uses her powers to cure her neighbours and birth entire tribes, surrounding herself with kindred who both fear and respect her. No one poses a true threat to Anyanwu — until she meets Doro… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Slavery
Rape
Sexual assault of a minor
Forced breeding

Patternmaster by Octavia Butler

Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler

IIn the far future, the human race is divided into two groups striving for power. The Patternmaster rules over all, the leader of the telepathic Patternist race whose thoughts can destroy or heal at his whim. The only threat to his power are the Clayarks, mutant humans created by an alien pandemic, who now live either enslaved by the Patternists or in the wild.

Coransee, son of the ruling Patternmaster, wants the throne and will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means venturing into the wild mutant-infested… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Slavery
Torture, off-page

Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler

Clay’s Ark by Octavia E. Butler

In an alternate America marked by volatile class warfare, Blake Maslin is traveling with his teenage twin daughters when their car is ambushed. Their attackers appear sickly yet possess inhuman strength, and they transport Blake’s family to an isolated compound. There, the three captives discover that the compound’s residents have a highly contagious alien disease that has mutated their DNA to make them powerful, dangerous, and compelled to infect others. If Blake and his daughters do not escape, they will be infected with a virus that will either kill them outright or transform them into outcasts whose very existence is a threat to the world around them… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Pandemic
Torture
Kidnapping
Imprisonment

Dawn by Jim Butcher

Dawn by Jim Butcher

In a world devastated by nuclear war with humanity on the edge of extinction, aliens finally make contact. They rescue those humans they can, keeping most survivors in suspended animation and begin the slow process of rehabilitating the planet.

When Lilith Iyapo is “awakened,” she finds that she has been chosen to revive her fellow humans in small groups by first preparing them to meet the utterly terrifying Oankali, then training them to survive on the wilderness that the planet has become… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Slavery
Rape
Medical experimentation

Together We Burn by Isabel Ibanez

Together We Burn by Isabel Ibanez

Eighteen-year-old Zarela Zalvidar is a talented flamenco dancer and daughter of the most famous Dragonador in Hispalia. People come for miles to see her father fight in their arena, which will one day be hers.
But disaster strikes during their five hundredth anniversary show, and in the carnage, Zarela’s father is horribly injured.

Facing punishment from the Dragon Guild, Zarela must keep the arena—her ancestral home and inheritance —safe… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Grief & loss depiction
Blood depiction
Death of a parent
Murder
Kidnapping
Fire
Animal death
Animal cruelty

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.

But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Transmisia
Deadnaming, on-page
Misgendering
Dysphoria & forced detransition
Child abuse
Abusive relationship
Attempted suicide
Self-injury
Blood & gore depiction
Body horror
Graphic emesis
Death of a parent recounted, off-page
Death of a friend, on-page
Murder & mass murder
Gun & knife violence
Kidnapping
Arson & building fire
Cults

The Blood Trials by N. E. Davenport

The Blood Trials by N. E. Davenport

The blood spilled between the Republic of Mareen and the armies of the Blood Emperor long ago. The blood gifts of Mareen’s deadliest enemies. The blood that runs through the elite War Houses of Mareen, the rulers of the Tribunal dedicated to keeping the republic alive.

For his granddaughter, Ikenna, the only thing steady in her life was the man who had saved Mareen. The man who had trained her in secret, not just in martial skills, but in harnessing the blood gift that coursed through her…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misogyny
Racism
Alcohol consumption
Blood depiction
Emesis

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse

The great city of Tova is shattered. The sun is held within the smothering grip of the Crow God’s eclipse, but a comet that marks the death of a ruler and heralds the rise of a new order is imminent. The Meridian: a land where magic has been codified and the worship of gods suppressed. How do you live when legends come to life, and the faith you had is rewarded?

As sea captain Xiala is swept up in the chaos and currents… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

Misgendering
Suicide
Self-harm for blood magic
Alcohol consumption
Blood & gore depiction
Body horror
Death of a parent recounted
Murder
Torture
War themes