Books like “Blindsight”

What to read after “Blindsight” by Peter Watts: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Rendezvous with Rama
Arthur C. Clarke · 1973
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
A giant cylinder enters the solar system, and a small expedition is sent to meet it. Inside they find a sealed alien world of cities, seas and machines, with no sign of its makers and systems that are beginning to wake.
2
Red Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson · 1992
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Hard Science Fiction
- Philosophical
The first hundred colonists arrive on Mars in 2026 to build a new world, a mission split between those who want to preserve the planet and those who want to change it. Over decades their disagreements grow into open conflict with Earth.
3
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu · 2008
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
During the Cultural Revolution a secret military project sends signals into space, and an answer comes back. Decades later a scientist is pulled into a hidden struggle over how humanity should reply to an alien civilization facing its own collapse.
4
Contact
Carl Sagan · 1985
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
A radio astronomer detects a signal from a star system twenty-six light years away, and the message it carries turns out to be a set of instructions for a machine. As governments and faiths argue over its meaning, she must decide what she will risk to make the journey.
5
Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky · 2015
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
After humanity's fall, a terraforming experiment leaves a world where evolved spiders build a growing civilisation. A last ark ship of humans arrives above the planet, setting the two species on a collision course across centuries of war, memory and first contact.
6
Solaris
Stanisław Lem · 1961
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
A scientist arrives at a station orbiting the ocean planet Solaris, where the crew is haunted by visitors shaped from their own memories. As the planet resists every attempt to understand it, he confronts what the living sea seems to be doing to them.
7
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir · 2021
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
A man wakes on a spacecraft with no memory of his name and two dead crewmates. As his past returns, he learns he is humanity's last hope against a dying sun, and that his only ally may be something he never expected.
8
Speaker for the Dead
Orson Scott Card · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- First Contact
Years after the war against the Formics, Andrew Wiggin travels as a Speaker for the Dead, revealing the truth of the departed. On the colony world Lusitania he is drawn into the fate of a human family and the alien Pequeninos, whose customs hide a terrible secret.
9
The Martian
Andy Weir · 2011
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
During a mission to Mars, astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead and left behind. Alone with limited supplies and no way to call Earth, he applies his botany and engineering skills to grow food and signal that he is alive.
10
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- First Contact
Giant alien ships appear above Earth's cities and impose a peaceful rule under the Overlords. Decades of calm and progress pass, but humanity's golden age hides a purpose no one can guess until the Overlords finally reveal themselves.
11
Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Cosmic
- Creeping Dread
Four women cross into Area X, a coastal region sealed off for decades, to survey it as the twelfth expedition. The biologist records the abandoned bunker, the writing on its walls and the animals that seem almost aware. She also knows her husband went in before her and came back changed.
12
Schismatrix
Bruce Sterling · 1985
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Abelard Lindsay is a trained diplomat moving between two posthuman factions, the Shapers and the Mechanists, as humanity spreads across space. His long career of alliances and betrayals carries him across a changing solar system.