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It’s springtime, my little chest-bursters! The birds are chirping, the critters are twitterpating, and the melting remains of snow are releasing all the alien organisms that have lay dormant. Okay, that last one probably isn’t happening, but I have read and watched a lot of stories where infectious things come out of the thaw not to think maybe it could. Parasites looking for a host are popular in science fiction, and they are usually from an alien life form that came to Earth. Now they just need a warm nostril or ear canal to crawl inside, and boom! You’re the host with the most.
Whether parasites, alien babies, or other creepy crawlies getting inside people freaks you out or delights you to no end, here are five tales of tenacious organisms having their way with humans, both on Earth and in space.
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler
This collection is worth it just for the title story, which won both a Hugo and Nebula award. There’s an alien planet that houses a protected community of humans. The planet’s residents are called Tlics, and they let the humans live—as long as they volunteer one child to carry the eggs of the Tlics. One such child, Gan, contemplates how to get out of the situation after he realizes what is going to happen to him.
The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu
Roen went to sleep one night a pizza-loving IT technician and woke up a pizza-loving IT technician with an alien in his brain. Tao, from an ancient race of aliens, has set up shop in Roen’s head and is talking to him. It turns out these aliens have been living inside various Earth lifeforms since before the dinosaurs. Over the many years, they’ve split into factions, and they’re getting ready for war. Tao needs Roen to get into shape and become a spy if he wants the humans to have a chance to survive.
Parasite by Mira Grant
Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) might not be too far off in predicting a future medical treatment like the one in this book. But hopefully it will turn out better. In Parasite, scientists have genetically engineered a tapeworm that protects humans. Once inside a host, it can keep a body safe from illness, help the immune system, and even release drugs. But the tapeworms are getting tired of their positions and want to have lives of their own. Which means their hosts are in for a terrible time.
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Jillian vs Parasite Planet by Nicole Kornher-Stace
This great middle grade sci-fi novel from the author of Archivist Wasp deserves a lot more love! Jillian has a lot of anxiety about traveling off-planet, but her parents assure her that everything will be fine. Spoiler: Everything will not be fine. Almost immediately after their arrival on an alien planet, Jillian is separated from her parents and discovers there is an alien life form trying to make its way inside the humans. Like, with lots of wriggling. So with the help of her space ship’s sentient computer, she must try to save her family and herself! Not only is the computer funny, but this a great story about dealing with your fears.
Infected by Scott Sigler
This was the first book that came to mind for this post, because the freaky cover used to stare out at me from the shelves when I worked at a bookstore. Leaning heavily into the sci-fi/horror genre, this is about a bioengineered parasite that turns ordinary humans into bloodthirsty killers. It’s up to a CIA operative and a CDC epidemiologist to come up with a way to stop the parasites from spreading any further, without becoming infected—or murdered—themselves.
Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the Book Riot podcast All the Books! and on Bluesky and Instagram.
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The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.
This week, we’re highlighting the best new poetry collections of 2025 (so far)! From the deeply personal to powerfully political, many of these collections reflect the zeitgeist and introduce some fresh voices in poetry. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
How is it that we’re already more than a quarter of the way through 2025? I’m ahead of my reading goals and still feel so far behind at the same time. I’ve packed in plenty of poetry, though, finding lots of wonderful and surprising voices emerging. It’s early, but totally time to check in with some of the best new poetry collections of 2025 so far.
It’s funny how timely these collections are. Keep in mind that publishing moves VERY SLOWLY, so books that have been released in the first quarter of 2025 were probably completed in late 2023 or early 2024, only seeing the light of day recently. So, these collections were written in the run-up to last year’s presidential election. Nevertheless, many of these collections feel like guttural reactions to the world right now. Amazing how prescient art and artists can be, huh?
These poetry collections run the gamut from deeply personal to powerfully political. Let’s face it, those two are often the same anyway, particularly when it comes to poetry. Most exciting to me is how many of these best new poetry collections of 2025 so far are fresh voices to the poetic scene. Let’s dig into those collections, shall we?
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