A reading stack by Steve DeGroof
Three science fiction books that take a sharp turn.
Expendable crew members. Murders on an alien station. A medical breakthrough with teeth.
Each of these books begins with a recognizable science fiction premise, then turns it somewhere stranger.
Steve DeGroof chose three novels that bend familiar science fiction setups in unexpected directions: a starship where supporting characters keep dying, a detective on an alien station, and a medical breakthrough that becomes a biological nightmare.
About the recommenderSteve DeGroof is the author of A Matter of Scale, where dragons raid the trash bins of a town accustomed to impossible creatures.
01
Redshirts
John Scalzi · 2012
"Redshirts" is a lighthearted parody of / homage to "Star Trek". The characters teeter on the edge of self-awareness for much of the novel, stumbling through a world that doesn't quite make sense. Much reality bending, time travel and fourth-wall breaking ensues.
Steve DeGroof
Why the opening works
An ensign looks across a cave full of carnivorous worms and thinks, “Well, this sucks.” The line punctures heroic space-opera language and tells us whose perspective matters.
02
Station Eternity
Mur Lafferty · 2022
Murder seems to follow Mallory Viridian around. In an attempt to escape the body count, she signs up to live on a space station populated almost entirely by non-humans. Unfortunately, running off to deep space isn't quite far enough. Think "Murder She Wrote" meets "Babylon 5".
Steve DeGroof
Why the opening works
Mallory’s history of finding murders is presented as both trauma and genre problem. The book makes the amateur-detective premise strange again by taking it seriously.
03
Ancestor
Scott Sigler · 2010
Scientists at a remote facility are working on developing the perfect xenotransplantation donor animal by re-creating the common ancestor of all mammals. In true Sigler fashion, things go horribly wrong, and the team finds itself trapped on an island with literal nightmare creatures. The result is a fun, twisty gore-fest.
Steve DeGroof
Why the opening works
Fischer arrives in Greenland expecting the end of the world to look more industrial. The dry disappointment gives a biological disaster both scale and a human point of view.
04
A Matter of Scale
Steve DeGroof · 2021
Dragons are raiding the trash bins of Willow Falls, where impossible creatures are part of an average day.
The book behind the stack
Why the opening works
The opening gives us a black sphere, a lake of magma, a proximity suit, and then one exhausted line about feeding dragons. Wonder and workplace comedy land together.