If the chilling, scientifically plausible misjump in “Beyond the Aquila Rift” hooked you—the way Thom’s reunion with “Greta” unravels into a revelation about what really happened—then you’ll love the bleak, brainy odyssey of Blindsight. A crew of posthuman specialists, including the unsettling linguist-alienist Szpindel and the vampire captain Jukka Sarasti, ventures to the edge of the solar system to parse an intelligence that doesn’t think like us. It’s the same fusion of hard physics, cognitive science, and creeping dread you felt as the station’s facade crumbled around Thom.

If the gut-punch twist of “Beyond the Aquila Rift” thrilled you—the kind that forces you to reinterpret every prior scene—Children of Time delivers that same high. As Dr. Avrana Kern’s terraforming project spins out of control, generations of humans and an uplifted arachnid civilization advance toward an unexpected, breathtaking convergence. Like the rug-pulls in stories such as “Merlin’s Gun” and “Minla’s Flowers,” the final act recontextualizes the entire journey in a way that’s both audacious and deeply satisfying.

If the woozy, disorienting unravel in “Beyond the Aquila Rift” drew you in—Thom’s intimate scenes with “Greta” curdling into a nightmare of uncertain reality—Annihilation channels that same uncanny undertow. Following the Biologist into Area X, you’ll encounter journals that contradict memory, landscapes that edit themselves, and discoveries that feel as intimate as they are alien. It evokes the same surreal, lingering unease that made the station in “Aquila Rift” feel both tender and terrifying.

If you loved the best-of collection’s punchy variety—jumping from the lethal geometries of “Diamond Dogs” to the cosmic perspective of “Zima Blue”—Axiomatic serves up similarly concentrated blasts of concept and consequence. Stories like “Learning to Be Me” and “Axiomatic” explore identity when the self becomes editable hardware, delivering the same one-sitting intensity and aftershock you get from Reynolds’s most incisive shorts.

If the expansive wonder in pieces like “Zima Blue” and the far-future vistas of “Merlin’s Gun” set your imagination humming, Rendezvous with Rama is pure sense-of-wonder fuel. Commander Norton’s crew enters a silent, cylindrical world drifting through the solar system, mapping seas, cities, and enigmatic “biots” with the same hushed reverence for the unknown that Reynolds brings to his grandest cosmic set pieces.