Books like “Red Mars”

What to read after “Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
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.
2
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu · 2008
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Hard Science Fiction
- 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.
3
Contact
Carl Sagan · 1985
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Hard Science Fiction
- 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.
4
Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky · 2015
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
- Survival
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.
5
Blindsight
Peter Watts · 2006
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Hard Science Fiction
- Philosophical
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.
6
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir · 2021
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
- Survival
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.
7
Speaker for the Dead
Orson Scott Card · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
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.
8
Rendezvous with Rama
Arthur C. Clarke · 1973
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- 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
The End of Eternity
Isaac Asimov · 1955
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Andrew Harlan works for Eternity, an organization that lives outside time and edits human history for what it believes is the greater good. His work is upended when he falls in love with a woman from his own past.
10
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Survival
A physicist is knocked out and wakes in a version of Chicago where he never married and never had a son. To get home, he must cross a multiverse of his own choices while another version of himself hunts him.
11
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
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.
12
Replay
Ken Grimwood · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and wakes in 1963 in his eighteen-year-old body, with every memory of the years ahead intact. He lives that span over and over, each replay starting later, and slowly realises he is not the only one caught in the loop.