If you liked
Books like Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir
Project Hail Mary is what The Martian fans had been waiting for. Andy Weir went back to the formula (one competent science-trained protagonist, a sequence of physical-engineering problems, the prose voice that earns laughs by treating disaster as a normal Tuesday) and added a first-contact relationship with a spider-sized rock-eating alien. If you finished it and needed another book in the same hard-SF register, these are our recommendations.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Fifth Seasonby N. K. Jemisin
“The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin 2015 review. On a continent where seismic activity defines life, three women's stories converge as a fifth season begins. Hugo Best Novel 2016, the first volume of the Broken Earth trilogy, and the most important fantasy debut of the 2010s.”
Klara and the Sunby Kazuo Ishiguro
“Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 2021 review. Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches the children passing by the storefront and waits to be chosen. Late-career Ishiguro at his most patient and most strange.”
Never Let Me Goby Kazuo Ishiguro
“Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 review. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, a special English boarding school. As adults, they begin to understand what Hailsham was for. The novel that defined the contemporary literary-SF register.”
11/22/63by Stephen King
“11/22/63 by Stephen King 2011 review. An English teacher discovers a portal to 1958 and decides to stop the Kennedy assassination. The single best late-King novel and the rare time-travel book that earns its 849 pages.”
American Godsby Neil Gaiman
“American Gods by Neil Gaiman 2001 review. An ex-convict named Shadow takes a job as bodyguard to a strange man named Wednesday and learns the old gods of immigration are still here, dying slow. The defining American urban fantasy of the 2000s.”
The Handmaid's Taleby Margaret Atwood
“The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 1985 review. In the near-future Republic of Gilead, women have been stripped of their rights, and the handmaid Offred remembers the world before. The most-cited dystopian novel of the late twentieth century.”
FAQ
Common questions about Project Hail Mary read-alikes
- What is the closest match for Project Hail Mary?
- The Fifth Season. Same patient hard-craft worldbuilding, same willingness to put a competent protagonist through an impossible physical problem and trust that the reader will work through the engineering details. The magic system is geology rather than chemistry but the structural discipline is identical.
- I want more Andy Weir specifically.
- The Martian and Artemis are the obvious follow-ups, neither reviewed here yet. Artemis is the weaker of the two; start with The Martian if you have not already.
- I want more hard science fiction.
- The Fifth Season is the highest-craft pick from our catalog. Outside the catalog, Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Aurora), Greg Egan (Diaspora, Permutation City), and Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others) are the canonical contemporary hard-SF writers.
- I want something more literary but still speculative.
- Klara and the Sun and Never Let Me Go are quiet literary science fiction with the same patient interiority Weir uses in the Hail Mary thread. 11/22/63 is Stephen King's most disciplined speculative novel.
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