SF as Thriller/Thriller as SF

For various reasons I’ve been pondering thrillers as a genre lately, considering the directions of future projects.  One of the nice things about SFF is the fact that it is the universal donor of literary genres.  Tropes from science fiction and fantasy can be mixed with almost any other genre you can name.  They seem to do particularly well in mystery/thriller contexts, see the Dresden Files for an example marketed as SFF, see Repairman Jack for one marketed more more as thriller.

So, thinking thriller thoughts, I grabbed The Fold by Peter Clines from Audible.  If this is the first you’ve heard of this book, you are lucky.  If any book deserves to be read (or listened to) spoiler free, it is this one.  This is structured as an excellent thriller that’s best read without any preconceptions where it is going.  We have all the requirements: unexplained goings-on, an interesting protagonist, a research lab populated with a cast of characters that are keeping secrets, and a project that seems to be running perfectly fine. . . until it doesn’t.

That’s all I’ll say about the plot, because the less you know where you’re going, the more fun it will be.