History ParanoiaFuel / Literature

* ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' has a whole slew of mundane situations that could kill you. Is your teacher treating you like dirt? She's a servant of Hades. Do those [[WaxMuseumMorgue "garden statues"]] look [[UncannyValley eerily lifelike]]? They're victims of Medusa who were TakenForGranite. Did you... oh no, is that a CHAIN RESTAURANT you're going into? (Cue hydra heads breaking through the windows.) OhCrap.

* ''Literature/{{After}}'' by Francine Prose. The rules are always changing, break one and it's a one way ticket to 'Operation Turnaround' [read: your grave]. What might some of these rules be? Did you have a cell phone on your person at school? What about gum? Anything red? Did you eat lunch alone? Oh, and Big Brother's watching you. And by watching you, I mean ''really'' watching you. Yes, even 50 miles away. Remember your sweet history teacher? The one who didn't report that sweet, A++ girl who broke a rule? Yeah, she had a "Health Emergency". And don't expect your parents to help you, they've been brainwashed. Everything is for your own good. And they could come for you at any time- right in the middle of a normal school day, even if you've done nothing wrong. Have fun at school, dear.

* "Jeffty Is Five" by Creator/HarlanEllison. Imagine, for a moment, that your child is Jeffty. He is five years old, physically, mentally, emotionally and developmentally though chronologically he is much older. Because he is still five you have to take care of him, as long as he is five which may be ''for the rest of your life''. Now that may not seem so bad on the surface but then you add in the fact that even more impossible stuff happens around him. He keeps getting new issues from magazines that went out of business. He keeps watching new episodes of tv shows that were cancelled years ago. And to top it all off, you can do absolutely nothing about it, nor can you tell anyone. Now who feels like never having children ever? [[FromBadToWorse It Gets Worse]] when Jeffty [[KidsAreCruel gets beaten up by some older boys]] at the cinema while [[AdultFear the narrator isn't around to look after him]]. And then [[spoiler:Jeffty's mother is driven to murder Jeffty just to live in the present again.]] This story is ''light'' for something by Harlan Ellison.

** Apparently, according to the man himself, kids come up and tell him that they read it kind of like they would read an adventure story, whereas [[AdultFear their parents]] would go around the house and turn on all the lights.

* Kurt Vonnegut's ''Literature/HarrisonBergeron''. The premise is that it takes place in a CrapsackWorld where TheGovernment creates total equality - by preventing anyone from being better at anything than anyone else. And the agency dealing with this is [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans fully permitted to use]] '''[[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans lethal force]]''' [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans if anyone tries to remove their handicapping measures]]. TheMovie is even worse: intelligent people have to pay "mind whores" to play chess and have intelligent conversation, and it turns out the smart people are all really running the world. The short story, however, was intended as a parody of the world that many anti-civil-rights and anti-politically-correct folks claimed would be created if some measure of equality was required by the government, not as a ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''-esque piece against the stifling of individuality. [[WordOfGod Word Of Author]] on record suggests that this is the more reasonable interpretation. [[http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_could Mr Vonnegut has weighed on on this one]].

* ''Literature/WarriorCats''. What ''do'' your cats think about? Do they hate your guts? Are they actually the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Hitler]] of their world, or a mass-murderer? Or worse... ''are they plotting to kill you?'' After all, a cat with [[AxeCrazy Sc]][[MagnificentBastard o]][[ManipulativeBastard u]][[ChaoticEvil r]][[ForTheEvulz g]][[CainAndAbel e's]] claws and temperament would probably find it all too amusing to slit an unsuspecting human's throat as they slept.

** Biography of the author suggests that much of this paranoia was drawn from his own life and his unique mind. Dick likely suffered some degree of paranoid schizophrenia. He was smart and self-aware enough to know that his perceptions might be warped, but was never free of the suspicion that reality was disintegrating around him. This lead him to write with equal intensity in the genre of science-fiction and the spiritual field of UsefulNotes/Gnosticism.

** Rita Skeeter. The creepy part is that she [[spoiler: does her spying ''in the form of a bug''.]]

** ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban Prisoner of Azkaban]]'' introduces us to Animagi, [[VoluntaryShapeshifting wizards who can turn into animals]]. At the climax, it's revealed that the big villain of the book, [[spoiler: Peter Pettigrew]], managed to hide out as the Weasley family's pet rat Scabbers for twelve years after killing twelve Muggles. Yep, so for all you know, your pet cat could be a crazy mass-murderer. Good luck sleeping after that.

** The movie actually increased the ParanoiaFuel with [[spoiler:a doll that acts as the Other Mother's spy. Said doll can change appearance, move around when you're not looking, and the Other Mother can see through its (button) eyes. Sleep tight.]]

** Think He Who Walks Behind is scary? The later books introduce He Who Walks Beside, aka, Nemesis. It can possess anyone - just anyone, no matter what their powerlevel or morality. Anyone, including the Faerie queen who can plunge the world into another Ice Age, wizards who can call down DeathFromAbove via satellite strikes, can be a puppet for Nemesis. Your best friend, your brother, your mentor,the sweet little girl you just rescued, anyone may be its tool. Not even the guy whose job it is to guard the world from Nemesis can be sure whether or not someone is possessed, unless Nemesis chooses to reveal itself - and then of course, it's mostly too late. It is InUniverse ParanoiaFuel too. All the powerful characters know that some of the other powerful ones are possessed - but not who exactly is possessed, or how many, leading to widespread distrust and overly complicated BatmanGambits. And by the way, Nemesis is just a tool for [[EldritchAbomination the Outsiders]] who want to break into our world and bring about [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt total Reality Shutdown.]]

* ''Literature/TheWatertower'' by Gary Crew. It's a Australian childrens picture book about a kid who dares his friend to go into an old creepy water tower. The layout, the imagery and the atmosphere makes it far more unsettling than any childrens book has a right to be. By the end, we never find out what happened in the tower, only that something was in there. Something that can possibly infect people. Most of Gary Crew's other novels / stories aim for a comfortable residency deep in the heart of ParanoiaFuel territory.

* An in-universe example of ParanoiaFuel is "stealth chess", a variant of traditional chess played at the Assassins' Guild in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''. Each player has two extra pieces (Assassins) that move up and down two extra rows at the sides of the board, can spontaneously leap out and attack ''any'' non-Assassin piece in their range, and ''may not actually be where they seem to be''. The game is '''designed''' to foster paranoia in Guild students who play it.

** Book 3 of ''Literature/TheDarkTower'' series, ''Literature/TheWasteLands'', features an example of Paranoia Fuel combined with nightmares in the story, in the form of Charlie the Choo-Choo. Despite being a children's book, this story gives Jake, Susannah and Eddie the creeps when they first read it. Jake imagines that beneath the sugary sweetness of the story, the titular character is evil to the core, which foreshadows the Ka-Tet's encounter with Blaine the Mono at the end of the book and the beginning of the next one. Given the [[http://www.scificincinnati.com/images/wastelands_6_choo_choo.jpg illustration of Charlie]] that some editions of the book have, it's hard to disagree with Jake's instincts, what with the evil grin on Charlie's face and the children on the train apparently screaming in terror.

** One fan theory suggests that there are no muggle-born wizards or witches, but there are some evil wizards, armed with Imperio and Obliviate.

* Creator/PhilipKDick infuses this into all of his work. In most cases, it is unclear whether the source of unease is a conspiracy, the breakdown of reality itself, or

* ''Blit'', a sci-fi short story by Creator/DavidLangford (which one can in fact read for free online [[http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm here]]). In essence, [[spoiler:modern-day mathematicians discover a certain pattern which can kill you just by ''looking at it'', and various terrorist groups paint it on walls to kill whoever's unlucky enough to wander by... and quite horribly, it transpires]]. Ever tried not looking at walls for a few days?[[note]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/parrotTB.jpg *wink*[[/note]]
** Read the companion document, ''comp.faq.basilisk''. Do you use an HTML email viewer with embedded images enabled? Imagine being sent something a bit nastier than ''goatse''...
** Another sci-fi story was a transcript of a professor's lecture on types of sentences, beginning with the simple "I am." As the lecture progresses, and the professor adds more complex sentence structure, the sentences begin to take on a life of their own. The story ends with the transcript abruptly stopping, and an addendum saying the professor suffered a sudden brain aneurysm.
* Everything ever written by Creator/FranzKafka. For instance, in ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'', a man wakes up to find that, for absolutely no discernible reason, he has turned into a giant beetle. In ''The Trial'', the main character goes through a trial in a KangarooCourt, without ever even being told what he is accused of.

* Chapter two of the book ''That's Incurable!'', by George Thomas and Lee Schreiner, is 'deliberate Paranoia Fuel. The chapter title? "Ten Diseases You Were Better Off Not Knowing About". Some of the diseases are communicable, some genetic, and some hadn't had a cause isolated as of 1984, when the book was published. But the three things they all had in common made it blatantly clear that the chapter was intended as Paranoia Fuel:

* Anything by Creator/PhilipKDick. Example: in "The Father-Thing," [[spoiler: a little kid discovers some alien thing has killed his father and is walking around in his skin. Nobody else notices the difference.]]
** You think that's fictional? Consider [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia prosopagnosia]], a neurological condition that causes you to [[spoiler: lose the ability to recognize familiar faces, leading to the delusion that ''family members have been replaced by strangers'']].
** There's another story where researchers land on an alien planet full of shapeshifters. Who are trying to kill them and can assume the shape of ''anything''. One character is attacked by their microscope, another by their rug. "My wife gave me that rug, I trusted it completely!"

** Dementors, wraith-like monsters who drain your happiness and potentially suck out your soul. Not good enough? They're invisible to muggles like you. You know that shivery feeling you get down the top of your spine as you read this page? That feeling of dread, growing larger and heavier in the pit of your stomach? That's what dementors do ''before ''they even attack''. Then they make you relive the very worst experiences of your life (and, them being invisible, you have no idea why your mind seems to be driving itself to suicide) and the very last thing you feel is their cold, desiccated mouths on yours as they suck your soul away.'' '''And then you feel nothing at all.'''

* Jeff [=VanderMeer's=] ''Literature/{{Ambergris}}''-books: There's a race of interdimensional midgets living beneath the sewers, who observe your entire city through ubiquitous fungus spores, and they manipulate people's behaviour with different spores that you breathe in or eat with your food, that affects your emotional balance and behaviour. Everything underground is their realm, not even your own cellar is safe if you stay down there too long. Oh, and they can walk through the walls. And they plan taking back over the city that was once taken from them.

* Book 3 of Creator/StephenKing's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' series, ''Literature/TheWasteLands'', features an example of Paranoia Fuel combined with nightmares in the story, in the form of Charlie the Choo-Choo. Despite being a children's book, this story gives Jake, Susannah and Eddie the creeps when they first read it. Jake imagines that beneath the sugary sweetness of the story, the titular character is evil to the core, which foreshadows the Ka-Tet's encounter with Blaine the Mono at the end of the book and the beginning of the next one. Given the [[http://www.scificincinnati.com/images/wastelands_6_choo_choo.jpg illustration of Charlie]] that some editions of the book have, it's hard to disagree with Jake's instincts, what with the evil grin on Charlie's face and the children on the train apparently screaming in terror.

* In ''Discworld/TheWeeFreeMen'', Tiffany frequently has to contend with dromes: doughy creatures that spin dreams the way spiders spin webs, trapping people inside and watching them dream and eat dream food until they starve. Tiffany thinks how dangerous it would be if they got out of Fairyland to the real world, turning life into a nightmare and warping your perspective until you wanted to die. Then she immediately changes the thought to ''I wonder how many have got in already and we don't know?''

* Creator/NeilGaiman's short novel ''Literature/{{Coraline}}'' was specifically written for this purpose (the idea of coming home to people who look like your parents, but aren't). And now Henry Selick, director of ''WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas'', has turned it into a movie. Expect future generations to spend their whole lives going into morbid shudders at the sight of black buttons. The cover has a creepy eye-less living puppet being grabbed by a bunch of hands, one of which has a freaking huge sewing needle.

*** And now someone's gone and made a line of dolls very like the Other Mother's spy. That's not the best part. You can also get the dolls pet mice. With button eyes. Sleep tight.

*** Neil's treatment of the Queen of Sheba takes something that should be really nice, and then [[VaginaDentata makes it horrible]].

*** That wasn't the first time he'd done that, either. In the short story 'Gray Matter' some kind of infection gets into a can of beer - and if you drink it, you turn into an oozing, cannibalistic horror.

*** An elaboration on this short story: Richard Morrison signs up for the titular organization, which prides itself on its pragmatism. Their method of getting people to quit smoking is very simple: they put all of their clients under twenty-four hour surveillance, with an agent constantly with them. No, ''constantly.'' Over time, the time is eventually lessened, and after the first year or so, the surveillance becomes completely random--but it could happen at any moment. And if the company catches you smoking, they will trap your loved ones in a room wired to deliver powerful electric shocks to whoever is in it, and ''make you watch as they electrocute them.'' And that's just what happens on the first slip-up--if you continue to smoke, the company's agents will keep up the electrocutions while also adding vicious beatings to the punishments. If you still don't stop, they'll eventually kill you. If you gain too much weight as a result of eating to compensate being unable to smoke, they will start dismembering your loved ones if you don't take the weight off, starting with the fingers. It's implied that they're willing to follow a client quite possibly for the rest of their lives. Morrison is understandably terrified, but on the first night of his treatment, his desire for a cigarette grows so strong that he moves into his private study, a room with no windows and one door, to try to sneak a smoke. He's all alone, it's the middle of night, and he's about to light up--when he ''hears something moving in the closet.'' Sweet dreams.

*** This same theme is the basis for Adam Phillips' ''[[http://www.biteycastle.com/taken.htm Taken]]''. He must be a Roald Dahl fan.
* Despite ''knowing'' it is a parody (sort of...), ''The Literature/{{Illuminatus}} Trilogy'' has still made readers paranoid enough to see conspiracies and TheIlluminati everywhere in life these da- OH DEAR GODS THEY'RE PROBABLY HERE TOO! Don't see the [[color:white:fnords]] don't see the [[color:white:fnords]]
** One of the appendices to ''Illuminatus!'' admits that the books were designed to program the reader in a variety of ways that would only become apparent after a number of years. (Or maybe that's just what They ''want'' you to think...)

*** [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/proposals-for-scp-001 The encoding formula for SCP-001]] is not recommended for anyone under [[Wiki/SCPFoundation Overseer level]].

*** So, they were in a land of [[ChestMonster Mimics]]?
* ''Literature/{{Lullaby}}'' by Creator/ChuckPalahniuk. There's a [[BrownNote lullaby]] that's an ancient killing curse and it kills anyone who has it read to them. It was printed as a nursery rhyme in a popular children's nursery rhyme book. You could kill your kids accidentally by reading it to them. Easily.
** In the story, there are a few people that have used the song so they can kill you just by ''thinking'' the song at you. Oh, and you don't even have to know the person. They might hear your voice on the radio, decide you're being annoying, and boom.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' had dementors, wraith-like monsters who drain your happiness and potentially suck out your soul. Not good enough? They're invisible to muggles like you. You know that shivery feeling you get down the top of your spine as you read this page? That feeling of dread, growing larger and heavier in the pit of your stomach? That's what dementors do ''before ''they even attack''. Then they make you relive the very worst experiences of your life (and, them being invisible, you have no idea why your mind seems to be driving itself to suicide) and the very last thing you feel is their cold, desiccated mouths on yours as they suck your soul away.'' '''And then you feel nothing at all.'''

*** Although fortunately, they only live in tropical regions. So if you live up north, you're probably fine.

* Various stories in David Lubar's ''[[Literature/{{Weenies}} In The Land of the Lawn Weenies]]'', but in particular, The Slide. You know those tube slides on playgrounds? Well, what if one of the support tubes holding it up actually leads down to a giant, insect-queen-like ''thing'' that spews out [[CreepyChild quasi-children]] thrown straight out of the UncannyValley, and if you go down that slide, you'll fall into the tube and become the food source for the 'mother'? And said children are going to actively try to force you to go down said slide?
** Lubar seems to enjoy taking normal childhood games and experiences and turning them into pure unadulterated versions of this trope. Did you ever try to walk around with your eyes closed for fun as a kid? Hope you didn't get sucked into a horrible alternate dimension and transformed into a [[EldritchAbomination screeching monstrosity]] unable to reverse the process and get back to your own world because ''you have no eyelids!''
*** The best example of this might be the story Forgotten Monsters. It tells of the place where bogeymen that fall out of the public collective go, including one particularly powerful creature called the Wanderban. It's a sort of mental SpeakOfTheDevil, and can attack anything that so much as thinks of it. And its plan to escape the hall and terrorize the earth once more is to make an author write about it, so that [[TheFourthWallWIllNotProtectYou anyone who reads the book will know its name and worry about it, so it can kill them. You're reading that book.]] And when Lubar explains where he got the idea, he only says it seemed to pop out of nowhere. By the way? By writing this, I'm making you worry about the Wanderban. It can get you.

* Creator/MichaelCrichton's ''Literature/TheAndromedaStrain'' is about an outer-space virus that kills ''everything''. And it mutates with every growth cycle. And [[spoiler:setting off a nuke ''would just make it stronger''.]]

*** And it ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593 has.]]'' '''''With far worse consequences.'''''

* ''The Cobra Event'' by Richard Preston. Good luck reading it without running to the bathroom to see if there are yellow rings around your eyes. Yellow rings + cold symptoms = infection. Infection = congratulations, soon you will be eating yourself.
** His other two virus books, ''The Demon in the Freezer'' and ''The Hot Zone'' are even worse. Because the events in those books are real. Just try reading them without periodically having to remind yourself that the head ache your feeling isn't the beginning of your brain liquifying.

* ''Literature/TheWatertower'' by Gary Crew. It's a Australian childrens picture book about a kid who dares his friend to go into an old creepy water tower. The layout, the imagery and the atmosphere makes it far more unsettling than any childrens book has a right to be. By the end, we never find out what happened in the tower, only that something was in there. Something that can possibly infect people.
** Most of Gary Crew's other novels / stories aim for a comfortable residency deep in the heart of ParanoiaFuel territory.

* Shirley Jackson's ''Literature/TheHauntingOfHillHouse'' is this trope in spades.
* This is the point of all of Creator/ThomasPynchon's books.

* "Jeffty Is Five" by Creator/HarlanEllison. Imagine, for a moment, that your child is Jeffty. He is five years old, physically, mentally, emotionally and developmentally though chronologically he is much older. Because he is still five you have to take care of him, as long as he is five which may be ''for the rest of your life''. Now that may not seem so bad on the surface but then you add in the fact that even more impossible stuff happens around him. He keeps getting new issues from magazines that went out of business. He keeps watching new episodes of tv shows that were cancelled years ago. And to top it all off, you can do absolutely nothing about it, nor can you tell anyone. Now who feels like never having children ever?
** [[FromBadToWorse It Gets Worse]] when Jeffty [[KidsAreCruel gets beaten up by some older boys]] at the cinema while [[AdultFear the narrator isn't around to look after him]]. And then [[spoiler:Jeffty's mother is driven to murder Jeffty just to live in the present again.]] This story is ''light'' for something by Harlan Ellison.

* ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles''. Case Nightmare Green. In just a few years a host of [[EldritchAbomination eldritch abominations]] are going to break into our reality and eat our brains. The government knows very well what's coming, and ''they can't do anything about it.'' And neither can ''you.''
** There's also the problem of magic = applied mathematics. The series protagonist, Bob, was recruited by the Laundry because he accidentally wrote a program that would have unleashed Nyarlathotep on an unsuspecting Wolverhampton. Now think about how many hackers, viruses and assorted crapware programs are out there. A tentacle emerging from your shiny new Droid to strangle you is the ''least'' of your worries.

*** An elaboration on this short story: Richard Morrison signs up for the titular organization, which prides itself on its pragmatism. Their method of getting people to quit smoking is very simple: they put all of their clients under twenty-four hour surveillance, with an agent constantly with them. No, ''constantly.'' Over time, the time is eventually lessened, and after the first year or so, the surveillance becomes completely random--but it could happen at any moment. And if company catches you smoking, they will trap your loved ones in a room wired to deliver powerful electric shocks to whoever is in it, and ''make you watch as they electrocute them.'' And that's just what happens on the first slip-up. It's implied that they're willing to follow a client quite possibly for the rest of their lives.

* ''The Plant People'', a short story by Dale Carson in ''[[Creator/BruceCoville Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens]]'', detailed a mysterious fog filled with dancing lights that slowly turned people into cacti. It seems silly until you read about them first changed into brainless, green-veined shells of their former selves, wandering listlessly around trying to photosynthesize, and see the illustration of one confused victim clutching a cactus, not seeming to mind the pain. Worse still is the end: [[spoiler: A news report says they finally found a cure, but just as they're about to reveal it, the fog descends...]]

* {{Mistborn}}: The [[spoiler: kandra. They can be hired by anyone, are bound by contract to do their job, and can take on the form of anyone dead. So your family members could be killed and have their bodies eaten and imitated by kandra and you wouldn't even know it. Kandra are also great actors, and people being impersonated are often tortured before they're killed to learn information about them and prevent BluffTheImposter. Also, in the later books, Ruin. He can hear anything spoken and see anything written down unless it's written on metal. He can also change anything written down if not written on metal, is a master manipulator, and, if he can get a hemalurgic spike into you, he can manipulate you with voices in your head and change your basic urges and instincts. He is everywhere. And what's his goal through his manipulation? To cause the end of the world. *shudder*]]

* ''JohnDiesAtTheEnd'' by David Wong. What if they've taken someone you know, or ''used'' to know? Maybe they're around you right now. [[spoiler:Maybe they're ''you''.]]