Recommendations
Books Like Project Hail Mary
An amnesiac scientist, alone in another solar system, reconstructing why he's there — and finding he's not alone after all
Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary opens on Ryland Grace waking in a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there, two dead crewmates, and equipment that tells him he is not in the solar system where he started. The novel is structured around Grace's memories returning as he works the problem of his mission — and around what happens when he discovers he is not alone in this system. The science is as accurate as Weir can make it; the humor is consistent; and the central relationship of the novel — between Grace and a being from another star system — is one of the most unusual partnerships in recent fiction. If the problem-solving, the optimism about what intelligence can accomplish when it cooperates, and the relationship at the novel's center gripped you, these eight picks go to the same place.
- 1Buy
The Martian
by Andy Weir
Weir's own earlier novel — an astronaut stranded alone on Mars solves survival problems using science and humor. The Martian and Project Hail Mary are not connected, but readers who loved the science-as-comedy approach in one reliably love the other. The Martian is more survival thriller; Project Hail Mary is more wonder and relationship.
- 2Buy
A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
by Becky Chambers
Chambers and Weir both write science fiction that is fundamentally optimistic about what different kinds of beings can accomplish when they decide to understand each other — the relationship between Grace and Rocky in Project Hail Mary is directly comparable in emotional register to the found-family relationships Chambers builds in her Wayfarers series.
- 3Buy
Recursion
by Blake Crouch
A scientist discovers a technology that can alter memory and therefore reality — Crouch's best novel has Weir's same approach to scientific problem-solving as narrative engine, and the same sense of a protagonist who is fundamentally a competent person in an incompetent situation.
- 4Buy
Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
The first contact with an alien species, seen from the perspective of the child trained to defeat them — Card's novel shares Project Hail Mary's central question: what happens when two intelligences try to understand each other across a complete difference in biology and communication?
- 5Buy
Artemis
by Andy Weir
Weir's second novel, set on the Moon's first city — not as loved as The Martian or Project Hail Mary, but the engineering-problem-as-story approach is the same, and the protagonist Jazz Bashara is a more morally complicated version of Weir's competent-protagonist archetype.
- 6Buy
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
by Becky Chambers
A monk and a robot build a language and a relationship in a world that doesn't expect them to encounter each other — the Dex-and-Mosscap dynamic is the fantasy analogue of Grace-and-Rocky, and the philosophical questions they ask each other are remarkably similar: what do you need? What is the point of what we do?
- 7Buy
The Andromeda Strain
by Michael Crichton
Scientists confronting a biological agent they don't understand, under time pressure, using the scientific method as the primary tool — Crichton's most formally rigorous novel is the direct predecessor to what Weir does in Project Hail Mary, and shares its respect for the audience's ability to follow technical exposition.
- 8Buy
Hyperion
by Dan Simmons
Epic science fiction that takes first contact seriously — Simmons' Hyperion Cantos is darker and more literary than Project Hail Mary but shares the same commitment to working out what would actually happen if an intelligence discovered another one, and what that would cost both parties.
More Project Hail Mary Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.