Books Like Project Hail Mary: 9 Brilliant Sci-Fi Reads to Try Next

Few books have converted as many casual readers into science fiction devotees as Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. A man wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of who he is or why he is there, and what follows is one of the purest hits of competence porn ever written: watch a clever, funny, deeply human narrator science his way out of one lethal problem after another, armed with duct tape logic and a teacher's gift for explaining things. Add a chain of genuinely jaw-dropping reveals and a friendship that sneaks up on you and breaks your heart in the best way, and you have a book people press into strangers' hands.

So what do you read when you have finished it and nothing else feels quite right? Here at Ever After Books in Dalton-in-Furness we get asked this constantly, so we have pulled together the nine books we actually recommend across the counter. Some lean into the lone problem-solver, some into the first contact wonder, some into the warmth and the jokes. All of them scratch a real part of the Project Hail Mary itch.

What to read after Project Hail Mary

The Martian by Andy Weir

The obvious first stop, and it earns the spot. Mark Watney is stranded alone on Mars and has to farm, engineer and wisecrack his way to survival, one solved catastrophe at a time. It is the same voice, the same log-entry structure and the same joy in watching science actually work, just without the aliens. If you came for Ryland Grace's humour, Watney is his older brother.