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The Martian by Andy Weir
Stranded and presumed dead on the Red Planet, a resourceful astronaut turns science into survival, solving one problem at a time as the clock runs out. Fast, funny, and fiercely clever, The Martian is a pulse-pounding celebration of ingenuity and grit.
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In The Martian, did you enjoy ...
... meticulous, real-physics problem-solving under impossible pressure?
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
If you loved how Mark Watney hacks air, water, and potatoes to stay alive on Mars—and how NASA reverse-engineers the Hermes slingshot and Rich Purnell Maneuver—then you’ll click with the way Ryland Grace jury-rigs a starship lab to dissect the mystery of Astrophage. Project Hail Mary delivers that same crunchy, step-by-step ingenuity, plus first-contact teamwork with Rocky that echoes the collaborative spirit that saved Watney.
... step-by-step survival engineering when space itself tries to kill you?
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
You watched Watney ration calories, patch habitats, and do orbital math to catch Hermes; Seveneves scales that survival ethos to humanity’s last stand in orbit after the "Hard Rain." From Dinah MacQuarie’s spacefaring robotics to Ivy Xiao’s hair‑raising station maneuvers and Doc Dubois’s orbital mechanics, it’s the same relentless “solve this or die” energy—just spread across a desperate, exhaustively detailed space infrastructure.
... gallows humor and deadpan banter that cut the tension in life-or-death missions?
Redshirts by John Scalzi
If Watney’s logbook snark—naming the rover, swearing at malfunctioning airlocks, cracking jokes mid-crisis—was your favorite flavor, Redshirts channels that same smart, self-aware humor. Ensign Andrew Dahl and his crew quip their way through statistically absurd fatal missions, using wit as a survival tool much like Watney’s jokes keep him sane when the Hab blows and Pathfinder dies.
... mission logs, chat transcripts, and redacted reports building a tense space-disaster narrative?
Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
If the mission logs and status updates of Watney’s sol-by-sol entries pulled you in, Illuminae doubles down with dossiers: IM chats between Kady and Ezra, sensor readouts, after-action reports, and chilling redactions from the AI AIDAN. It’s that same document-driven immediacy you felt reading Watney’s logs after the Hab breach—only now it’s a corporate attack, a bioweapon outbreak, and an AI with terrifyingly literal logic.
... a fundamentally optimistic, kindhearted tone about humans solving problems together?
A Psalm For The Wild Built by Becky Chambers
If the hopeful lift of NASA and the Hermes crew rallying to bring Watney home stuck with you—the way competence, kindness, and collaboration win—then the gentle, affirming warmth of A Psalm for the Wild-Built will land. Monk Sibling Dex and robot Mosscap trade questions instead of barbs, and like the "bring him home" mindset, the book trusts empathy and curiosity to solve what’s broken.
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