Rin Chupeco has written obscure manuals for complicated computer programs, talked people out of their money at event shows, and done many other terrible things. She now writes about ghosts and fantastic worlds but is still sometimes mistaken for a revenant. She is the author of The Girl from the Well, its sequel, The Suffering, and the Bone Witch trilogy.Her new novel is The Never Tilting World.
At Tor.com, Chupeco tagged five favorite stories where nature does its best to kill you, including:
Hothouse by Brian W. AldissRead about another entry on the list.
When the novel begins, the worse has already happened (at least, by contemporary standards); humans have changed, both physically and physiologically. Their world is slowly dying, and they are seeking out ways to survive this catastrophe, includingescaping into space. All of the protagonists described in the novel are unrecognizable to readers as human, though with similar motivations to staying alive. The sun has expanded to fill the sky, and plants have evolved their own nervous systems, mimicking human physical features such as eyes and acquiring a taste for meat and flesh. The vegetable kingdom has mutated into a parasitical species that’s succeeded in wiping out other animals and endangering what’s left of humankind, which is not the kind of story you usually see in post-apocalyptic novels – which is probably why the premise sounds so terrifying. I’d come in to the book assuming that the strange beings were supporting characters and that the humans would show up soon, then soon realized that the strange beings were the humans!
--Marshal Zeringue
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