7 SFF Theme Parks You’d Never Want to Visit

New Crobuzon Adventure (Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville)
It’s the New Weirdest Place On Earth (TM)! Take a boat into fetid, dirt-caked New Crobuzon Landing via the bituminous Gross Tar, where you’ll be greeted by a cadre of walking cactus men. Don’t worry—they’re like that with everyone. Get your picture taken with the bug-headed denizens of Kiken District, where your kids can wrestle with one of the mindless larvae slithering about. Have your fortune told by the A.I. construct, and don’t be scared—reanimated corpses can’t feel a thing. Parched? Throw back a DreamShake and kiss your troubles (and your sanity) goodbye! Stop by Bonetown and give the towering skeleton of an unknown monstrosity a lucky knock on the Ribs, and then catch a mesmerizing, brain-draining performance by Slake & the Moths!
Featured attraction: An Evening with the Weaver. This eight-legged extravaganza is a guaranteed once-in-a-lifetime experience! You never know what the mad spider god will be up to. Will he take you for a tour of the interdimensional web of reality, or just slice your fingers off with scissors while singing a nonsense rhyme? As the Weaver himself would say, OH GLORIOUS ENTRY BESEECHING YES IMPLORING OH THE CHILDREN YES MOST GLORIOUS PAIN AND PLEASURE TWISTED INNARDS ECSTASY OF ENDING AND BEGINNING AND ENDING

The Stillness: Seasons of Adventure (The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin)
Come to the place where every day feels like the end of the world…because it is! The trick is, you never quite know how it’s going to end. Will your lungs clog with the ash-filled cotton candy of the Choking Season? Will you ride the waves and slough off your skin the the corrosive tsunami of the Acid Season? Pack for all types of weather, because if it’s Boiling Season, you’re not going to want to be caught out in long pants. Just remember to check the sign at the gate entry on your way in: “This is the way the world ends…not with a whimper, but with a (fill in the blank).” You’ll never visit the same park twice! Mostly because you’re highly statistically likely to have perished during your first visit.
Featured attraction: The Fulcrum Academy: Experience the Stillness like a real Orogene with a day at the Fulcrum, where you’ll learn to control your new magical ability to bend the earth to your will…or else! Any who can complete this challenging obstacle course deserve a hand—because the bones in at least one of theirs will have been crushed by one of our exacting cast members.

Shrike’s Peak (The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons)
This exclusive theme park puts you and six friends into the world of Hyperion for a pilgrimage to fun and adventure across six themed “lands.” Start your journey at the Priest’s Forest and strap yourself in for an electrifying ride of a lifetime (or hundreds of them), then hop on a “magic carpet” and swoop across space via the farcaster network (probably you won’t get trapped in the robot hell that lurks between dimensions). When you need a rest, stop by the Poet’s Hall for a pint of grain alcohol and enjoy a 17-hour epic poem of bloodshed and terror. If you’re really lucky, you might even get a visit from the Shrike himself, who will whisk you away for an agonizing, subjectively eternal stay at the Tree of Pain.
Featured attraction: The Time Tombs. Unfortunately, no one ever gets to actually experience them, because by the time you make it through the line, you’ve aged backwards enough that you are too short to ride.

Splashin’ Solaris Water Park (Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem)
Work on your tan and work out your issues at the galaxy’s most psychologically damaging aquatic wonderland. Your journey begins at Hotel Solaris, where you’ll be greeted by one of our slightly insane tour guides, who probably won’t kill himself (or you) before he finishes showing you all the amenities on offer, from phantom music piped directly into your brain to spectres from your haunted past that only you can see! Drop by one of our Ocean World Theaters to gaze out at a panoramic view of the roiling waters below, where the strange shapes you see emerging from the waves might or might not be only in your head. You’ll never want to leave. Nor will you be able to.
Featured attraction: The splash pool, where your darkest fears and insecurities will come to the surface for an afternoon of emotionally shattering edu-tainment!

Duncan Idaho Dunes (Dune, by Frank Herbert)
Frank Herbert’s legendary novels provide the rich setting for this gritty (literally) theme park, located smack dab in the middle of the Sahara Desert. It’s the next best thing to visiting Arrakis itself: As you enter, strap on your stillsuit, grab your maker hooks, and prepare for adventure! Try to avoid being crushed at Shai-Hulud Bay, where sandworms can erupt from the ground without warning (note: all guests must sign a waiver and provide next-of-kin). Jam your hand into the Gom Jabbar, and find out if you’re worthy—or die in agony from a deadly poison! And don’t worry about finding a restroom (or anything to drink)—that’s what the stillsuits are for!
Features Attraction: Baron Harkonnen’s Pleasure Hut (guests 18 and under only, please)

Six Drops Over Oxford (The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis)
Visit England’s only time travel getaway, before the government shuts it down for its shockingly lax safety standards. Outfit yourself in period garb for a trip to that sexiest of historical periods, the Middle Ages! You never know when you’ll end up, so make sure to chat up the superstitious, god-fearing locals—but better hurry, as there’s a good chance they’ll soon start sprouting tumors and dropping dead! If you choose to stay in the modern day, you can enjoy a charming performance by our talented bell choir, assuming you can get anyone on the phone to order tickets (sorry, we should really fix the phones).
Featured attraction: If you have the “time” (ha ha), make sure to visit other Historical Parks. Yuk it up with the gentry (and try not to cause a universe-ending paradox) in the Victorian Era, or see London during the Blitz, and try your hand at working in a dress shop for about 1,000 pages.

The World of Goo (Blood Music, by Greg Bear)
This ill-advised slice of devastated Americana recreates the aftermath of the technopocalypse: as in Bear’s award-winning novel, a plague of self-replicating nanomachines has swept across our park, reproducing so quickly that it has consumed all matter, covering the landscape in a thin layer of grey goo actually made up of trillions and trillions of tiny robotic organisms. The World of Goo is your chance to visit the dark side of the micro-computer revolution. See all the sights, from that grey lump over there, to that other one over there. Dine at one of the popular eateries, provided you can find it, and don’t mind not eating, because goo.
Featured attraction: Well, it’s pretty much all just one indistinguishable glob. But lines are short!
What book do you never want to visit?