Books like The Martian
What should you read after Andy Weir’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Andy Weir
- 2014
- 384 pages
- Science fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Martian
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchProject Hail Mary
Andy Weir
Weir again and better: another man alone with an impossible problem and a whiteboard, except this time he has company, and the reveal is worth the wait.
- Problem-solving under pressure
- Jokes in the face of death
- One person against the void
- Amnesia framing at the start
Best for a rescue everyone wantsApollo 13
Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
The true one: three men, a crippled spacecraft, and a room full of engineers improvising with whatever is aboard. Every problem in it actually happened.
- A rescue everyone wants
- Real engineering detail
- Problem-solving under pressure
- Nonfiction, drier in places
Great matchEndurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Alfred Lansing
Antarctica in 1915 rather than Mars, and just as much a logistics story — twenty-eight men, no rescue coming, and a boat journey that should not have worked.
- Problem-solving under pressure
- A rescue everyone wants
- One person against the void
- History, not science fiction
Best for jokes in the face of deathThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
For the voice rather than the science: Adams is where the flippant-about-annihilation register comes from, and Watney would have got every one of the jokes.
- Jokes in the face of death
- One person against the void
- Real engineering detail
- No science, no problem-solving
Best for real engineering detailSeveneves
Neal Stephenson
Stephenson takes a single orbital catastrophe and works the engineering all the way down, at a level of detail that makes Watney's potato farm look casual.
- Real engineering detail
- Problem-solving under pressure
- Jokes in the face of death
- Lecture-length technical digressions
Worth a look — with a warningAurora
Kim Stanley Robinson
The corrective to Weir's optimism: a generation ship where the engineering is meticulous and the conclusion is that the whole idea may simply not work.
- Real engineering detail
- Problem-solving under pressure
- Jokes in the face of death
- Deliberately deflating by design
What should you read after The Martian?
The Martian by Andy Weir works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — weir again and better: another man alone with an impossible problem and a whiteboard, except this time he has company, and the reveal is worth the wait.
If what stayed with you was a rescue everyone wants, read Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger instead: the true one: three men, a crippled spacecraft, and a room full of engineers improvising with whatever is aboard. Every problem in it actually happened. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing is the other strong option — antarctica in 1915 rather than Mars, and just as much a logistics story — twenty-eight men, no rescue coming, and a boat journey that should not have worked.
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