What to read if you loved Project Hail Mary

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat.

After aliens turn Earth into a sadistic, intergalactic game show, Coast Guard veteranarian Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, battle through a trap-filled, video game-like fantasy-dungeon for survival (and ratings). 

Keeping viewers entertained is essential. Survival, however, is not.

We Are Legion: We Are Bob by Dennis E. Taylor

Welcome to the Bobiverse. We are Bob. We are legion. And we never intended on this.

Bob Johansson had a plan. After selling his software business, a leisurely retirement awaited him. That is, until he's killed crossing the street just moments after signing the papers.

When Bob wakes up a century after his death as an AI tasked with exploring space, things get complicated fast. Using his new abilities, he does what any engineer would do: he makes more Bobs and sets to save humanity before it's too late.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

The Earth was a ticking time bomb. To ensure survival, they had to look beyond its atmosphere. So they became pioneers.

Five thousand years later, their progeny form seven distinct races, and they must journey to an alien: Earth.

A magnificent, visionary work of speculative fiction that will dazzle you with its depth, psychology and awesome imagination.

The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord

The world is changing, and humanity must change with it. Rising seas and soaring temperatures have reshaped Earth. A group of visionaries is working to guide humanity forward.

Their greatest hope may be Owen, a pop megastar whose hidden talent could be the key to uniting Earth as it looks toward the stars.

But his gift is unpredictable and seductive. Can he transcend his human limitations and find the freedom he has always dreamed of? Or is he doomed to become the dictator of his nightmares?

Old Man's War by John Scalzi

At seventy-five, John Perry is looking for a fresh start – in the army. 

Earth’s military can transform elderly recruits, restoring their youth. In return, they demand two years of dangerous service in space. Perry begins again in a new body, built from his DNA. A genetically enhanced and upgraded new body, ready for battle.

But Perry will be fighting for his life on the front line. He'll pay the price for his choices. And he'll discover the universe is even more dangerous than he imagined...

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

It is 2066 in rural Nigeria. Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless.

Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again – but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realisation about a horrifying future.

This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

Welcome to the Northwestern Hemisphere, 2529. A world born from the ashes of our own, where nearly half the population is born invisible.

Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right. But all she has fought to earn comes crashing down when she learns her missing brother, presumed dead, is alive and the prime suspect in a high-profile political murder.

With five days until the hemisphere's election, Sweetmint must evade and outsmart those who seek to destroy her and her people, while confronting hard truths many would rather keep hidden.

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Born in the wasteland, Cara has fought all her life to survive. Against the odds, she has secured a life in the lower levels of wealthy Wiley City. If she keeps her head down, she may earn citizenship – on this world, at least.

Of the 380 realities that have been unlocked, Cara is dead in all but 8. While multiverse travel is possible, no one can visit a world in which their counterpart is still alive. And no one has fewer counterparts than Cara.

When one of her remaining selves dies mysteriously, Cara is plunged into a new world with an old secret. What she uncovers reveals her role in a threat to the entire multiverse...

Frontier by Grace Curtis

In the distant future, climate change has reduced Earth to a hard-scrabble wasteland. Saints and sinners, lawmakers and sheriffs, gunslingers and horse thieves abound. Folk are as diverse and divided as they've ever been – except in their shared suspicions when a stranger comes to town.

A heartfelt queer sci-fi Western set in a climate-ravaged future, full of love, loss, and laser guns.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, while years move on for everyone she has known.

One day, she meets a mysterious boy; fallen from the sky. He possesses the Jaunt, the rare ability to travel instantly across the universe.

Fumiko Nakajima, the scientist behind the Stations that govern space, has searched for someone like him for centuries. Together they set out to protect the boy, journeying across light-years to the fringes of space, where only each other can be trusted.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

In the future, instead of terraforming planets to sustain human life, explorers of the galaxy transform themselves.

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists develop somaforming, allowing astronauts to survive hostile environments through synthetic biological changes. 

Ariadne is one such explorer, sent to survey four habitable worlds fifteen light-years from Earth. As she and her crew cross time and space, Earth moves on without them. Ariadne begins to record their journey in hope someone is still listening.

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Eight intelligent and entertaining tales, this bravura collection from the science fiction maestro weaves vignettes of alien languages and angelic visitations – including the story that the Academy Award-winning film Arrival, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth to the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life, Chiang's unique imagination invites us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

The opening volume of Butler's groundbreaking Lilith's Brood saga

When Lilith Lyapo wakes in a small white room with no doors or windows, she remembers a devastating war, and a husband and child long lost to her.

She finds herself living among a strange race that intervened in the fate of humanity hundreds of years before. 

Now they want Lilith to lead her people back home. But salvation comes at a price - to restore humanity, it must be changed forever...

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns.

The first book in a groundbreaking trilogy, adapted for Netflix. 

The Martian by Andy Weir

A lone astronaut is stranded on Mars, with no way to communicate with Earth, and in a Habitat designed to last 31 days.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. 

The bestseller behind the film starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain, with heaps of Andy Weir's trademark humour.