Ryan McGinnis joins me to talk about his sci-fi novel Terrestrial, a disaster story that hits on two fronts.
On Earth, multiple meteor impacts across North America leave scientists trying to understand what’s growing around the craters. Up above, the International Space Station is struck by a fragment, cutting the crew off and leaving them to deal with a rapidly evolving stowaway. The world starts familiar, then the situation keeps tightening until it stops feeling familiar at all.
We talk about where the book came from and how Ryan’s early satirical instincts shifted into something straighter and more tense. Vonnegut comes up, along with classic sci-fi influences, but the main craft focus is structural: why split the narrative between Earth and the ISS, what that does for pacing, and how to stop parallel threads from feeling like two separate books stitched together.
A big part of the conversation is about pressure and consequence. Ryan’s characters are dealing with an unknown biological threat, but they’re also dealing with institutional behaviour that slows things down. The President, McGuffey, is written with a very modern kind of incompetence: image-led, poll-led, and allergic to cooperation. That doesn’t just add “commentary”, it becomes a practical problem for the people trying to respond, especially when information sharing is treated like a political risk.
If you like speculative fiction that keeps the lens fairly grounded, where systems and incentives matter as much as the monster, you’ll get a lot out of this one.
Author Ryan McGinnis
Website: https://ryan-mcginnis.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryanmcginniswriter/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryansnd/
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryansndBook link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G32F936D
Book link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G32F936D