The most obvious literary precursor for Sphere is Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, not only in the setting but also in the battle with a giant squid. Peter Benchley's Jaws (1974) and The Deep (1976), along with innumerable science fiction tales of encounters with aliens and explorations of strange worlds, such as Arthur C. Clarke's tale of underwater life in the future, The Deep Range (1957), as well as those concerning time travel, the transformation of something imagined into something real, and mind over matter, might be cited too.

There is an echo of George Orwell's 1984 (1949) in the concept that terror is peculiar to each individual and derives its full power from the individual's mind.

The close reader can also find parallels with Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man (1953) and The Stars My Destinations (1957) or with Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and...