Communion (1987)

Strieber was already a successful horror novelist — *The Wolfen*, *The Hunger*^[1] — when he wrote *Communion* as a first-person account of being taken, in late 1985, from his cabin in upstate New York by a group of non-human "visitors." Tellingly, he refused the word "alien," preferring the neutral "visitors" and staying open about their nature: extraterrestrial, psychological, or something else entirely. What secured the book's place in history was its cover — a face with grey skin and huge, teardrop-shaped black eyes, painted by Ted Seth Jacobs to Strieber's description. That single portrait went on to define what most people picture when they hear the word "alien."