People are also coming away from Project Hail Mary — both the movie and the book — wanting more and while there isn’t necessarily going to be a sequel, there are plenty of ways to continue your own sci-fi journey. We’ve already covered comics you will want to check out if you loved Project Hail Mary, but now here are five perfect sci-fi novels you can check out as well — including another of Weir’s novels that is just as much a masterpiece.
The first book in the Bobiverse series, We Are Legion (We Are Bob) follows Bob Johansson, a man who just sold his software company and is ready to enjoy a leisurely life when he gets killed crossing the street. But Bob’s story isn’t over, as he wakes up one hundred years later and finds that he’s the property of the state and has no rights and, maybe even worse, has been uploaded into computer hardware meant to control the AI for interstellar probes looking for a habitable planet. Bob finds himself faced with the choice of doing it and becoming a prime target for competitors or refusing and being turned off for good.
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) is a perfect read if you came away from Project Hail Mary wanting more. The books have a similar hard sci-fi base and an equally high stakes problem to be dealt with, but the two books also read similarly. They use a similar narrative voice, which makes the story a hoot to read. Bob’s funny and sarcastic and offers up a scientific approach to things. It’s a good time all around.
Mickey Barnes is a space colonist with a unique job. He reluctantly signed up to be an expendable, someone who does all of the most dangerous tasks on the mission to colonize the ice world Niflheim. What does expendable mean? Well, when one Mickey dies, a clone version takes its place with most memories intact. However, each cloning drains resources and Mickey keeps dying and, even more than that, two Mickeys end up cloned at once — not good.
Mickey7 was the basis for the film Mickey 17, but what makes Mickey7 a great read for Project Hail Mary fans is the high-stakes survival story, as well as the idea of severe isolation in space and problem-solving elements. The storytelling format is different, but there are a lot of shared themes and tones. Mickey7 is a funny book in a sarcastic, sardonic sense.
You could argue that Sea of Tranquility is not a sci-fi novel and is just a speculative fiction story, but I will argue that you’re wrong and also suggest that the lack of being a straightforward work of science fiction makes it a perfect choice for Project Hail Mary fans who might not consider themselves big sci-fi fans.
The story spans over four timelines and four characters, an exiled man in 1912 Canada, a time-traveling detective in a future moon colony, a novelist on book tour during a pandemic in 2203, and a woman trying to find out what happened to her friend in 2020. All of the stories intersect through an unusual anomaly and you won’t believe how each timeline and each story is connected. The novel is beautifully written and questions the idea of reality, time and memory as well as considers simulation hypothesis. There’s not a lot of heavy science in it, but it’s a beautiful story with surprising turns along the way.
In The Memory Collectors, four people from Ventura California sign up for Aeon Expeditions and get to spend one hour in their past to observe. However, their hour ends up going longer than sixty minutes and they end up stranded only to discover that their lives were all changed by the same night on the same secluded highway and their personal tragedies intersect in an unexpected way.
The biggest similarity between The Memory Collectors and Project Hail Mary is the idea of memory being a core aspect of things. Grace in Project Hail Mary wakes up with amnesia and has to figure out who he is and what he is doing, but in The Memory Collectors, the characters are dealing with fragmented or lost memories that they need to figure out the larger mystery. The book also features unexpected friendship as the characters stranded in the past come together. It’s got plenty of suspense and is a complex, satisfying story.
Maybe the best book fans of Project Hail Mary could read — assuming they haven’t done so already — is another Weir novel, The Martian. The story follows astronaut Mark Watney, the first man to land on Mars. Unfortunately, after s massive storm, he’s presumed dead leading the rest of his mission to leave without him. But he actually survived and, once NASA realizes it, it becomes a huge operation to save him and bring him home.
If you liked Project Hail Mary, you will love The Martian. The books have a similar narrative voice, a lot of the same sort of “figure it out” science, and the themes of isolation in space loom large in both books. This one was also turned into an excellent movie so you can enjoy the story twice, too.
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