Books like Project Hail Mary

01

The Martian

Andy Weir · Science fiction

Mark Watney is accidentally left behind on Mars when his crewmates, believing him dead, abort their mission during a storm and launch for Earth.

A kindred science fiction read.

02

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Mary Roach · Science

Packing for Mars is Mary Roach's investigation into the unglamorous human problems of spaceflight: what happens to the body in zero gravity, how astronauts eat and sleep and go to the bathroom, what zero-g does to bones and muscles and the vestibular system, and how engineers have spent decades solving problems that are embarrassing to discuss but essential to solve.

A kindred science fiction read.

03

Cosmos

Carl Sagan · Science

Cosmos is Carl Sagan's attempt to tell the full story of the universe and humanity's place in it — from the Big Bang to the origins of life to the rise of science as a way of knowing.

A kindred science fiction read.

04

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Neil deGrasse Tyson · Science

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is Neil deGrasse Tyson's deliberately compact introduction to the biggest ideas in modern astrophysics.

A kindred science fiction read.

05

The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin · Science fiction

The Dispossessed follows Shevek, a physicist from the anarchist moon Anarres, who travels to the wealthy capitalist planet Urras — the world his society broke away from 170 years earlier.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

06

The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin · Science fiction

The Left Hand of Darkness follows Genly Ai, an envoy from a loose interstellar federation called the Ekumen, who has been sent alone to the planet Gethen — also called Winter — to persuade its nations to join.

Both dig into friendship across difference.

07

A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction

A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.

Both dig into friendship across difference.

08

Chaos: Making a New Science

James Gleick · Science

Chaos: Making a New Science, published in 1987, tells the story of how a loose network of scientists working across meteorology, mathematics, biology, and physics in the 1960s and 1970s developed chaos theory — the study of systems that are deterministic but unpredictable because tiny differences in initial conditions produce wildly different outcomes.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

09

Exhalation: Stories

Ted Chiang · Short stories

Exhalation: Stories is Ted Chiang's second collection, containing nine stories written between 2005 and 2019.

Both dig into memory and identity.

10

Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges · Short stories

Ficciones collects seventeen short stories and fictions by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in two parts in 1941 and 1944.

Both dig into memory and identity.

11

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Suzanne Simard · Science

Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who discovered that trees communicate and share resources through underground mycorrhizal fungal networks — the research that gave rise to the concept of the "mother tree" and, at several removes, Peter Wohlleben's popular writing on the subject.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

12

Good Omens

Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman · Fantasy

Good Omens is a comic fantasy novel about the impending apocalypse and the attempts of an angel and a demon — Aziraphale and Crowley, who have been stationed on Earth since the Beginning — to prevent it.

Both dig into friendship across difference.