If you were hooked from the moment Teacher staggered out of a thaw-pod into subzero corridors, dodging predatory bioconstructs and hunting for the bridge, you’ll vibe with the salvage crew in Dead Silence as they board a derelict luxury liner and discover it’s a death trap. Like the flesh-grown “Mothers” and living machinery that stalked the halls in Hull Zero Three, this wreck hides engineered horrors and impossible whispers that force the crew into the same desperate, duct-by-duct scramble to stay alive.

Teacher’s amnesiac search for the ship’s purpose—and the slow realization that even his own recollections can’t be trusted—echoes through Cormac Easton’s account in The Explorer. As the expedition unravels and the crew starts dying, Cormac’s version of events twists, recasts, and contradicts itself, much like the way Hull Zero Three drip-feeds the truth about the failed mission and the multiple “Teachers.” You’ll get that same stomach-dropping thrill when each revelation forces you to rethink everything you’ve been told.

If Teacher’s struggle to define who he is—after waking blank, discovering other versions of himself, and realizing he’s a tool built for a mission—was your jam, Ancillary Justice hits the same nerve. Breq used to be a starship AI spread across many bodies and must navigate the universe as a single, limited self. The way Hull Zero Three probes identity through clones and repurposed bodies finds a powerful mirror in Breq’s quest to reconcile memory, purpose, and personhood.

The technical, biological grit of Hull Zero Three—from bioengineered ship systems to the grim arithmetic of survival—pairs perfectly with Aurora. As the generation ship’s closed ecosystem falters, the crew must confront the same kind of mission-splitting choices Teacher uncovers about whether colonization should proceed at all. If you were compelled by the hints that the target world wasn’t welcoming—and that the ship itself might have turned against its orders—this gives you a rigorously modeled, emotionally resonant version of that dilemma.

The nightmarish biotech and bleak corridors of Hull Zero Three—from flesh-grown systems to engineered predators—find an even darker counterpart in Blindsight. As a posthuman crew investigates an alien signal near the Oort Cloud, they confront entities as inscrutable and lethal as anything that hunted Teacher, alongside the same unsettling questions about what minds are for. If the book’s grim tone, body-mod menace, and philosophical chill grabbed you, this will burrow right under your skin.