Books like “The Martian”

What to read after “The Martian” 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
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.
2
Contact
Carl Sagan · 1985
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
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.
3
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.
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
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu · 2008
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- Hard Science Fiction
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
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.
7
The Mysterious Island
Jules Verne · 1875
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- Deserted Island
- Survival
Five Union prisoners escape a siege in a hot-air balloon and are blown onto an uncharted island. There they rebuild a small civilization from its resources, aided by an unseen hand and threatened by a hidden danger.
8
Blindsight
Peter Watts · 2006
From the same world: “Hard Science Fiction”
- 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.
9
The Decagon House Murders
Yukito Ayatsuji · 1987
Similar setting: “Deserted Island”
- Deserted Island
- Survival
Seven members of a university mystery club sail to a remote island that was the scene of an unsolved family murder a year earlier. Cut off by a storm, they are killed one by one, and the survivors must use the rules of detective fiction to name the killer before none are left.
10
Gateway
Frederik Pohl · 1977
Same genre: “Science fiction”
- 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.
11
The Wager
David Grann · 2023
Similar setting: “Deserted Island”
- Deserted Island
- Survival
In 1740 a British warship hunting a Spanish treasure galleon is wrecked off Patagonia. Months later two groups of survivors reach South America with opposing stories, and a court martial must decide which men were heroes and which were mutineers.
12
A River Enchanted
Rebecca Ross · 2022
Similar setting: “Deserted Island”
- Deserted Island
Jack is summoned home to Cadence, an island of two peoples, to find girls who have vanished without trace. He must work with Adaira, the laird's daughter, and call on the spirits he abandoned. On an island steeped in old magic, old grudges and new feelings refuse to stay buried.