Just finished it and love every minute. Any recs for similar books.
No spoilers for others please
The Expanse. Foundation.
Also Andy Weir is a piece of ****
Andy Weir is a piece of ****
Ok, source? I genuinely want to know.
I’ve already cut Rowling out of my life, I’m not above adding on to that list given a compelling reason.
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.
“Dragon’s Egg” is a great little book written by a physicist/aerospace engineer and it shows.
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
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars was pretty good just now.
Infinite by Jeremy Robinson is similar. the sequel is not as good and gets preachy. But the first book stands alone with a good stopping point.
Have you read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or Journey to the Center of the Earth? They very much are the genesis of the kind of pop science novel style that Weir writes in. A lot of the science is wrong but that’s pop sci for you.
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.
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds.
I have heard that “The Expanse” is a very good book series. Tho I haven’t watched the series or read the books.
Three Body Problem is a great tv-series that are also based on books. If I recall correctly the author of Three Body Problem won the sci-fi award when he released that book.
K & R for Three Body Problem (the book) Hard sci fi with a minimum of distractions. The 30 episode chinese series is on youtube (but read book first).
Another upvote for The Expanse book series. It has been one of the very few series where I was actually waiting for and monitoring for the next book to be released. The TV series was good, but the books are so much better and carry on well past where the TV series let off.
Going to also chime in for The Expanse series. Fantastic book series and fantastic show. Both are in my all time favorites.
The expanse books are great and, like PHM, very accurately grounded in real science (hard SF). I never finished reading the series only because I had watched the show and they did such a good job of faithfully following the books that it just felt like a fresh reread.
I know I’m an outlier, but I didn’t care for 3BP at all. So many of the things people do just seemed unlikely or thinly motivated, and the computer technology seemed somehow both too advanced and not advanced enough in some ways.
I could not recommend the Expanse** series highly enough. all 9 books in the main series were great. the show was awesome as well, although they only touch on the first 4 books or so and the events happen in a slightly different order. if you’re looking for an epic space saga that never lets you forget about the consequences of being in the vacuum, pick up a copy of Leviathan Wakes
If it’s the alien encounter you like, you could try the Lilith’s Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler or A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys.
Uh the martian
I’m reading it now and yes, my previous book was also the Project Hail Mary. I’m not even a Sci fi reader.
Yeah that’s the obvious one haha.
Children of Time from Adrian
TartovskyTchaikovskyI adore this one. Good recommendation.
Big upvote for this, though his last name is Tchaikovsky , or alternately Czajkowski. He’s become my favorite author currently writing.
Came here to suggest this one too. Spider culture is quite interesting.
The 4th book came out a couple days ago. Quite fun, so far
I have the second and the third waiting for me on my e-reader. Got to finish some other things before. 😭not enough time to read
Oooohhh
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.
Now that I think about it, Seveneves might be one of the closest books in feel to Hail Mary
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.
