Cosmic horror and sci-fi collide in this eerie, unsettling collection, offering a mix of creeping dread, strange entities, and psychological terror. Each story explores the unknown in its own way—some leaning into Lovecraftian horror, others embracing full-on sci-fi weirdness. There’s a great variety here, making it easy to find something to love (or fear).
Story ratings: 1. Asteroid 6 - 5/5 2. Madame Zeist’s Perfume - 5/5 3. The Outer Teacher is Unknown Kadaath - 4/5 4. The Bogeyman or Two - 4/5 5. The Witch Toaster - 4/5 6. Harley’s Case - 4/5 7. Lawn Care - 4/5 8. Coming of Age - 4/5 9. Club Mitternacht - 3.5/5 10. Electric - 3/5 11. The Day of the Cricket - 3/5 12. The Shamblers - 3/5 13. The Land Spider - 2/5
I could not wait to get my hands on this after reading The Pumpkin King and Other Tales of Terror from Fulcher. This guy writes exactly the kind of horror I love. If you liked "The Outer Limits," you'll love this book. I love horror anywhere, but horror in space has something extra creepy about it. Fulcher does a wonderful job of amplifying the lonely quality of space: there really is no one to hear you scream, and no one to know what happened..... Tough to stop reading and go to bed, and then you're just there in the dark, with stories from Asteroid 6 floating around in your mind. Yeah. It's like that. I sent a copy to two of my friends who love horror. Now they want The Pumpkin King too. This is classic horror at it's best! When is the next book?
Asteroid 6 is the second book I have read of the author and it did not disappoint. The stories are very creepy but short and easy to follow. The writing is so well crafted that it manages to evoke in us tension, fear and eerie feelings. I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys reading horror.
If you're looking for a short read within the cosmic horror genre then this is the right book for you. With vivid description and unsettling exploration makes the stories more gripping and interesting. The book explores different aspects of sci-fi, horror and cosmic genres that will surely blow your mind. All the stories have their own chilling and bizarre experience.
This collection leans into the surreal and the uncanny, with echoes of Lovecraft and Barker but a distinctively personal tone. A slow burn, dreamlike horror that lingers after the lights go out.
Review: Asteroid 6 and Other Cosmic Tales of Horror by R. David Fulcher Reviewed by Romina Fucà ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆ (4/5) R. David Fulcher’s *Asteroid 6 and Other Cosmic Tales of Horror* invites readers into uncanny worlds where the psychological, the supernatural, and the grotesque merge into tales of introspective dread and speculative transformation. Ranging from techno-horror to dreamlike surrealism, this short story collection revives the spirit of weird fiction with a distinctly modern and pulpy sensibility. Rather than relying on visceral shocks or jump-scares, Fulcher’s horror lingers in the margins — in adolescent unease, dream logic, and internal chaos. His protagonists are often emotionally fragile, socially isolated, or caught in liminal stages of life. They confront realities that collapse into madness: boundaries blur between dreams, memory, and altered states of consciousness. At the heart of these stories lies a crisis of trust — between children and parents, friends, lovers, or institutions. Figures of authority are passive, distant, or duplicitous. The result is an unmoored self, struggling to withstand uncanny forces, ancient transformations, or digital intrusions. The title story, *Asteroid 6*, exemplifies Fulcher’s blend of cosmic horror and moral tension. Stranded after a crash, protagonist Jones discovers an ancient alien race in suspended animation. Realizing their destructive power, he sacrifices himself by disabling his oxygen supply — a somber echo of Lovecraft’s theme of confronting ancient, unknowable forces, yet with a humanist tone absent from Lovecraft’s cosmic nihilism. In *Electric*, the nightmare veers into techno-horror. Charlie Fielder, a boy previously struck by lightning, becomes entangled in a digital realm of shifting identity and posthuman dread. Dreams and memory loop in recursive disorientation. Fulcher contrasts real-world domesticity — milk, storms, night lights — with dreamscapes inhabited by demonic circuitry and parasitic light. Here, the influence of Clive Barker — the late-20th-century British author of *Books of Blood*, *Hellbound Heart*, and *Cabal* — emerges, particularly in Fulcher’s treatment of the body and mind as sites of horror and metamorphosis. Several stories echo this corporeal unease. In *The Witch Toaster*, cursed office equipment leads to bizarre bodily distortions, while *Harley’s Case* stages a grotesque summoning ritual that ends in wasp-like mutilation. Both narratives draw on theatrical horror tropes — demonic grimoires, flickering lights, grotesque transformations — yet anchor them in psychological tension. Fulcher also borrows from folkloric archetypes. *The Land Spider* unfolds in a haunted desert landscape, where Indigenous myth and geological cataclysm converge into a surreal apocalypse. Similarly, *The Day of the Cricket* and *The Shamblers* use small details — an insect, an old man’s finger — to unleash profound existential dread and irreversible change. These stories mirror the themes of guilt, fear, and internal rupture, as characters confront both past cruelty and the monstrous reflection of their own unconscious. In *Club Mitternacht*, Fulcher crafts a decadent, dreamlike descent set in a German nightclub, where ritual, trance, and the erotic intersect. A large black cat appears as a possible guardian or demon, and a strange underground rite leaves the protagonist forever altered. This tale, more stylized than horrific, illustrates Fulcher’s fascination with performance and altered states, evoking Brian Stableford’s genre-bending speculative horror, with a touch of decadent European surrealism. If Lovecraft is Fulcher’s metaphysical grandfather — providing themes of ritual madness and ancient knowledge — then Barker provides the corporeal and emotional charge. The collection’s true fear lies not in external monsters, but in loneliness, mutation, and ontological loss. We see this most clearly in *Coming of Age*, where a boy’s encounter with a mysterious coffin in his grandfather’s attic becomes a metaphor for sexual awakening, death, and transformation — a subtle nod to Barker’s *Books of Blood* and *Imajica*, where becoming something else is both liberation and damnation. Even at its most theatrical — with glowing green eyes, flickering screens, or cursed gadgets — Fulcher’s prose remains grounded in emotional truth. These are not just genre exercises but dramatizations of vulnerability: a child’s fear of abandonment (*The Bogeyman Pt. II*), a man’s isolation among disbelieving peers (*Lawn Care*), or a professor’s yearning for transcendence (*Madame Zeist*). Whether cosmic, grotesque, or surreal, each story explores the fear of losing oneself — to madness, transformation, or revelation. Stylistically, Fulcher avoids archaic language or philosophical detours, favoring a clean, direct prose that occasionally dips into vivid imagery or adolescent awe. His narrative pacing is swift, his settings often minimal — bedrooms, basements, small towns, asteroid corridors — yet each functions as a crucible for disintegration. Fans of this collection might also enjoy Clive Barker’s *Books of Blood* (1984–85) for their body-centered horror and surreal urban nightmares, or Lovecraft’s *The Shadow over Innsmouth* (1936) for its theme of ancestral dread and psychological breakdown. For a more mythic, surreal tone, Henry Kuttner’s *The Eater of Souls* (*Weird Tales*, 1937) offers a glimpse into alien horror and cyclical transformation. Finally, readers interested in how perception shapes horror might explore Ernest Bramah’s *Max Carrados* (1914–34), where logic meets the limits of the visible. In sum, *Asteroid 6 and Other Cosmic Tales of Horror* does not aim to terrify in the conventional sense. It unsettles through suggestion, transformation, and the quiet horror of mistrust. Fulcher’s work pays homage to the masters of weird fiction — Lovecraft, Barker, Kuttner, Stableford — but it also has a voice of its own: one that murmurs from inside the closet, from behind the monitor, from beneath the lawn. Not a scream, but a whisper of dread. One that stays with you long after the final page.
R. David Fulcher’s Asteroid 6 and Other Tales of Cosmic Horror is an eerie and compelling collection that masterfully blends sci-fi, horror, and cosmic dread. The titular story, Asteroid 6, plunges readers into the dark unknown as a routine asteroid-clearing mission turns into a nightmarish encounter with an ancient, malevolent force. Fulcher’s vivid descriptions and suspenseful pacing make the protagonist’s descent into madness both gripping and terrifying. The story expertly plays with themes of isolation, the insignificance of humanity in the vastness of space, and the inescapable pull of forces beyond comprehension. As Jones faces his fate, readers are left with a chilling sense of cosmic insignificance—a hallmark of the genre’s best works.
Beyond Asteroid 6, the collection features a variety of unsettling tales, each exploring different facets of horror—from supernatural entities lurking in the shadows to psychological terrors that fester within the human mind. Stories like The Bogeyman, Pt. II and The Witch Toaster showcase Fulcher’s ability to create spine-chilling atmospheres, merging folklore, technology, and existential horror. His prose is crisp, and his narratives unfold with a creeping dread that lingers long after the final page. For fans of Lovecraftian horror and mind-bending sci-fi, Asteroid 6 and Other Tales of Cosmic Horror is a must-read that delivers both thrills and existential unease in equal measure.
This is a collection of short stories in the cosmic horror genre.
I'm still fairly new to cosmic horror, but every time I read something in that genre, it surprises me, as I find there's always something bizarre, or something which unsettles me in a way that I can't put my finger on.
This was a short read at around 100 pages. With short stories, I often find that I enjoy some in the collection more than others. In this case, however, I found that all of the stories made an impression on me. All of them had something that struck me as bizarre, unsettling, or chilling.
I think sci-fi fans will enjoy the first story, "Asteroid 6". The story that I found the most frightening in a relatable way was "Coming of Age", because as a child, I was afraid of monsters in the attic. I also found "The Land Spider" frightening in a similar way, because as a child, I was afraid of spiders. "Lawn Care" also sticks in my mind as unsettling, perhaps because it's the last one in the collection.
If you like short horror stories and are looking for a quick read, this book might be for you.
Love a fun, little short story right before going to bed. Although those may have be too unsettling to put you to sleep. Of course, with the horror genre, how you perceive the story depends mostly on your own imagination so its quite hard to describe how scary it actually is.
You could see the similarities between this and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which i think was the intention. Especially with how the story ended-always answering one question and creating another, usually-why would they choose this? In favour though, creating complicated and morally grey characters, rather pessimistic view for the world and a thrilling short story.
As it is with a collection, i liked some of the stories more, when some i didnt enjoy almost at all but maybe i just didnt the understand or couldn’t relate to the story. Anyway, would recommend for everybody to try it out, definitely worth it. Very interesting and very atmospheric.
This genre is very new to me and i couldn't say much tbh since i don't really understand the things happening in the book. This is even the first time i heard about cosmic horror. But guess what? I don't hate it at all!
I was expecting something horror that would make u scared & keeping u on ur toes, no. It's more like an eerie feelings & discovery how human collide with realistic elements. The alienation of humanity in the face of cosmic forces far older and more terrifying.
I think it kinda similar to lovecraftian horror? But im not sure either since i wouldn't say that i get this book completely.
So far what makes this book outstanding for me is the writing style & the settings of each stories. There are some dark humour as well which he delivered it in a light subtle ways.
In conclusion, this short book is still enjoyable to read.
I found the book a perfect blend of relaxing terror, built-up thrill, and relaxation for the curious mind. The series of likely and unlikely events explores the unseen and unknown, making for a very satisfying read. I loved every part, and chapters that stood out to me include 'Electric,' 'The Witch Toaster,' 'Madame Zeist's Perfume,' and 'Lawn Care.' This book is suitable for young teenagers, lovers of thrillers, and curious minds. It's a rapid, engaging read that's short but long enough to leave a lasting impression. It was hard to put down
I really liked this book! It was a collection of short horror stories and it honestly made me feel like I was watching Black Mirror (the Netflix anthology series)! My personal favorites were “Madame Zest's Perfume,” “Club Mitternacht,” “The Shamblers,” “The Day of the Cricket,” “Asteroid 6,” “Coming of Age,” “The Witch Toaster,” and “Harley's Case.” Notice how I mentioned over half of the short stories in the book? That’s how good it is! I had never read a horror book before this and I’m glad this was my first. It was a memorable one for sure. I’ll definitely read his other books too!
I have been taken to the very depths of Hell and back when reading ASTEROID 6, and R. David Fulcher knows when to reel you in and when to let you go while still having goosebumps on your skin.
It is not about physical gore as much as mentally thrilling what makes his stories so tantalizing.
If I were to give you a guide on which ones to start with, I'd say Asteroid 6, Club Mitternacht, Madame Zeist's Perfume, Coming of Age, and The Witch Toaster; oh wait, that's half the book and it's a testament of how mindblowing his stories are!
When you read a horror story you have to get chills. But this strange collection of stories with a cosmic touch makes you feel uncomfortable. Cosmic horror and sci-fi collide in this eerie, unsettling collection, offering a mix of creeping dread, strange entities, and psychological terror. Each story explores the unknown in its own way-some leaning into Lovecraftian horror, others embracing full-on sci-fi weirdness. There's a great variety here, making it easy to find something to love.
Overall some stories are great some are hit and miss.
the book is a collection of small histories, perfect if you take the book for traveling, that was my case, the prose is easy to read, specially for new English readers, the stories are light horror, not a scary one, more a mix of an adventure book and a horror movie, like you can see in the first history of the book. the narrative is always in first person. I will like to had sometimes a 3 person perspective at the end for more drama of the history, but overall was pretty good, I will like a little more of blood 🫣 but that is just my sadistic side lol.
this books is good at creating unsettling atmospheres and exploring themes like isolation, existential dread, and humanity’s insignificant place in the vast universe. Some of the stories had me hooked, especially the ones that pushed the boundaries of reality and sanity.
That said, a few tales felt a bit rushed, and I would’ve loved more depth in some of the characters and world-building. But overall, the pacing was solid, and the suspense kept me turning pages.
I forgot to review this hahah i love cosmic horror and this author captured it the way he intended to be! I can't wait to read his other works and me being a horror lover in all mediums (books, short stories, films, video games, art), I'm all in! 4 stars because I like how he elaborates things but it's way too short, I need more! also at first I was a bit lost but in the end, I got it :3