Home Archive Reflection Archive FAQ Support (Ko-fi)

Theme: dread

Cover image

The War of the Worlds / Urban Isolation

Author: H.G. Wells (Gutenberg)  | Themes: alienation, cosmic dread, urban life, surrealism, vulnerability  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2026-01-31

I was weary after eating, and went into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black horsehair sofa I found there. I awoke to find that dismal how...
Cover image

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth / Unprepared Voyage

Author: Jules Verne (Gutenberg)  | Themes: human ambition, fragility, nature's power, existential dread, folly  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2026-01-28

We are utterly unprepared for a sea voyage; it is simply madness to think of performing a journey of five hundred leagues upon a wretched pile of beam...
Cover image

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth / Frozen Frontiers

Author: Jules Verne (Gutenberg)  | Themes: isolation, exploration, nature's power, existential dread  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2026-01-26

To the east one only existed somewhere about the eightieth degree of latitude, the Esk, upon the island of Jan Mayen, not far from the frozen regions ...
Cover image

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth / Echoes of Solitude

Author: Jules Verne (Gutenberg)  | Themes: isolation, communication, dread, self-reflection, existentialism  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2026-01-17

Still it was a positive fact that someone was speaking. A dread fell upon my soul that it might be my own words brought back to me by a distant echo. ...
Cover image

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes / Descent into Chaos

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle (Gutenberg)  | Themes: mystery, mortality, dread, urgency, vulnerability  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2026-01-04

At first I thought that she had not recognised me, but as I bent over her she suddenly shrieked out in a voice which I shall never forget, ‘Oh, my God...
Cover image

Frankenstein / Love and Turmoil

Author: Mary Shelley (Gutenberg)  | Themes: love, inner conflict, nature, existential dread, beauty  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2026-01-03

While we love, while we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing—what c...
Cover image

The War of the Worlds / Fate of Humanity

Author: H.G. Wells (Gutenberg)  | Themes: dehumanization, technology, existential dread, agency, industrialization  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2025-12-16

And as the day came they became aware of a fighting-machine standing near by the Langham and looking down at them. He came down the road towards them,...
Cover image

The War of the Worlds / Destruction and Indifference

Author: H.G. Wells (Gutenberg)  | Themes: power dynamics, isolation, existential dread, indifference, human fragility  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2025-11-25

Two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian. He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without an...
Cover image

The War of the Worlds / Encounters with the Unknown

Author: H.G. Wells (Gutenberg)  | Themes: fear of the unknown, alien encounters, exploration, existential dread, industrial anxiety  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2025-11-20

But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks—like eye...
Cover image

Gulliver's Travels / Struldbrug Society

Author: Jonathan Swift (Gutenberg)  | Themes: mortality, aging, societal critique, dignity, existential dread  | Source: Project Gutenberg  | Published: 2025-11-16

“If a _struldbrug_ happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of...