Books like “Project Hail Mary”

What to read after “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
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.
2
The Martian
Andy Weir · 2011
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
- Survival
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.
3
Gateway
Frederik Pohl · 1977
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- Space Ship
- Survival
Prospectors ride alien ships left behind at Gateway, gambling their lives on unknown destinations in search of fortune. A miner haunted by his past signs on for one more trip, and the station's robot therapist records the fears he cannot voice.
4
Contact
Carl Sagan · 1985
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
- First Contact
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
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu · 2008
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
- First Contact
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.
6
Red Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson · 1992
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
- Survival
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.
7
Blindsight
Peter Watts · 2006
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
A crew is sent to the edge of the solar system to meet an alien intelligence that has been watching Earth. Led by a man who has rewired his own brain, they discover that the visitor's mind works nothing like their own.
8
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.
9
Old Man's War
John Scalzi · 2005
Similar setting: “Space Ship”
- Space Ship
- Found Family
At seventy-five, John Perry joins the Colonial Defense Forces, leaving Earth for a new body and a war among the stars. What begins as a chance at a second life becomes a fight to understand the colonies, the enemy and what he is fighting for.
10
Solaris
Stanisław Lem · 1961
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- Space Ship
- First Contact
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.
11
The Maze Runner
James Dashner · 2009
Same genre: “Science fiction”
Thomas wakes in a maze with no memory of who he is, surrounded by boys who arrived the same way. Each day the walls open and monstrous machines roam, and Thomas becomes sure he was part of the experiment that trapped them.
12
Speaker for the Dead
Orson Scott Card · 1986
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- First Contact
- Found Family
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.