Sci-Fi in the Dark | New Weird Short Stories by Nathan Harker

I’ve always had a thing for the dark side of science fiction. The type of stories that don’t neatly fit into the sci-fi box with its clean spaceships and glowing robots. No . . . I’m talking about the stories of robots with flawed programming code, the ones where the future doesn’t look hopeful—it radiates with existential dread. With horror.

This little collection you’re about to read is called Sci-Fi in the Dark for a reason. These are science fiction stories, for sure, but they were written in the bosom of the night. Not just literally—though some of them were created late at night while the wind clawed at my bedroom window—but spiritually, too. These are tales where science turns into madness, love short-circuits, politics rot, and reality itself is a paranoid delusion at the core.

Let me outline this reality for you.

In Jimmy Batlemew’s Theory of Multiple Dimensions, a janitor discovers a girl stuck in another dimension while mopping the floor behind a supercomputer. That sounds impossible until Jimmy crosses over to the other side himself.

Pathogen X is a post-apocalyptic medical horror where an unknown pathogen doesn’t just rewrite human biology—it disfigures your form, your natural shape, your appearance.

For the Love of Robots is a soft one, but it might cut the deepest. It’s about romance, yes—but also grief, loneliness, and the hostile conditions of Mars.

In The Girl from Tomorrowland, an alien girl from the future arrives in a failed DJ’s recording studio, and the energy she brings will either transform the boy into a superstar or a depressed druggy.

The Last President is more political—imagine a dystopian world after a nuclear war, lethal dosages of radiation, and the atmosphere so radioactive it can no longer sustain life. What happens when the last elected leader of the United States fails to restore the peace . . . and is overthrown by the enemy?

And In the Closet of Darkness? That’s the one I almost didn’t include. It’s the story I’m still not quite comfortable with. Let’s just say you’ll want to read it with the door open—but I suspect, by then, it might be too late.

So here we are. Six strange realities. Some hopeful, some dreadful, some existential. All of them weird.

Welcome to the dark side.

—N.H.

2025