Just finished it and love every minute. Any recs for similar books.
No spoilers for others please
Uh the martian
Yeah that’s the obvious one haha.
I’m reading it now and yes, my previous book was also the Project Hail Mary. I’m not even a Sci fi reader.
If you liked Project Hail Mary, then you should read the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. The premise is as follows:
Bob is dead. Long live Bob.
Tap for spoiler
Software engineer Robert Johansen uses his share of the money from the buyout of his company (the rest having been split amongst the employees) to start a trust to support his end-of-life maintenance needs. But Bob’s idea of “end-of-life” is being cryogenically frozen until such a time as whatever killed him can be fixed. What he wasn’t counting on, however, was getting hit by a car later that day and waking up over a hundred years later. Finding that, not only has he not been revived, but instead digitised, but also that the christofascist government doesn’t recognise him as a human or worthy of rights, he is surprised to also be informed that the reason they instantiated his consciousness was to become the guiding intelligence of a Von Neumann Probe, and that Bob is going to the stars… At least, he should be, as long as none of the opposing factions in the government or any of the other countries also building their own probes nuke him first.
Bobiverse is an example of hard science fiction, with similar limitations to what PHM uses. The primary conceits that go beyond what’s currently assumed to be possible are:
- the assumption that it is possible to simulate consciousness using electronic media
- the existence of some method of interacting with the fabric of reality to warp spacetime through a reactionless drive (here called “subspace theory”). This assumption allows for interstellar travel over reasonable time scales (but not superluminal travel) and, later, communications. Think a combination of the “Ansible” and the Bussard ramjet from “Tau Zero”
- the fantasy that most people have comprehensible reasons for their actions.
E: I also wish to advocate for Children of time and, if you have additional spare time, Seveneves.
Seconding the Bobiverse. If you like a single guy having to science his way out of desperate situations, Bobiverse is definitely for you!
Or, rather, a plural guy.
Now that I think about it, Seveneves might be one of the closest books in feel to Hail Mary
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
I have a love/hate reaction to this suggestion.
Love - It’s a great book!
Hate - I’ve read it already, and I came here hoping for ideas of new books to read!
Oh, good suggestion. It’s much more military SF than PHM, but it does have a lot of other similarities, and the series becomes less military focused. It didn’t come to mind as something a person would like if they liked PHM, but it probably does fit.
Awesome book, which is part of a series.
Yes this is a good one.
Came here for this. Great story.
This is getting away from the hard science of Project Hail Mary but if you like Old Man’s War check out the Interdependency Series. It’s a bit funnier.
In case it helps any, I made a post with a giant number of spoiler-free short reviews of SF and fantasy books, including most of the ones mentioned here (might have to click the links to the earlier posts for a number of them).
Thanks for making that post. I had a similar reading list that year and plan to check out some of those I hadn’t heard of.
Awesome! The whole reason I post it every year is in hopes that some people will find something they want to read because of it.
Holy smokes, do you have a hardcover account I can follow?
I’m not sure what a “hardcover account” is, so I’ll say no. The only place I post is here. I was originally a .world person, and my original posts were from that account, but at some point switched to this .ca one (same name). The post I linked has all my prior annual entries from both accounts, and if you check the posts submitted by this account you’ll see I sometimes do single book or single subject posts now.
You should look into hardcover
What is it?
The Mote In God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Hey this is a good call that should be higher on the list. Not as much humor, but a great alien contact story with well grounded science and A+ storytelling. An all-time great book.
Contact by Carl Sagan
A deepness in the sky
I’d say “A Fire Upon the Deep” first, as it was written earlier, and Deepness was technically a prequel.
Old Man’s War by Scalzi. A lot like heinlein used to write.
Yes to this… what a good series. Less of the sciencey wonder and puzzles that phm offers but more future science concepts that are really interesting and the applications of in war.
While not knowing what you liked about Project Hail Mary, it’s hard to suggest anything more than what has already been mentioned. A much darker look at space and aliens would be Stephen R. Donaldson’s Gap Cycle. I would like to second a vote for A Deepness in the Sky.
“Dragon’s Egg” is a great little book written by a physicist/aerospace engineer and it shows.
Titan by Ben Bova. It kept me awake all night turning pages.
Looking it up to confirm the author, I literally just learned that it’s part of a series. Off to see dear Anna I go.
Haven’t read or watched ‘PHM’, but I’ve heard that Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Mars’ trilogy is sorta comparable to ‘The Martian’, which latter is being recommended in the thread. Robinson is known for doing tons of research for his books and writing very realistic ‘hard’ sci-fi.
The Mars trilogy is much also well grounded hard SF, but the story involves a big cast of characters, and a lot of politics and interpersonal issues/relationships. It’s a great series, but it has a much different feel than PHM.
All I’ll say is the movie was a great adaptation of the book. Neither takes away from the other and it’s worth doing both
If you want a weird recommendation that isn’t a SciFi clone but matches a really wild world with some pretty hard rules with loose justification because its cool.
The Lost Swords: Fred Saberhagen. It feels like the kind of stuff where you praise your character for their ingenuity and cringe at their failures. World is also real neat.
Clarksworld. Monthly SciFi publication
