If Andy Weir's survival maths and dry humour pulled you in, these are the books that keep the science load-bearing. Each entry says what matches and what doesn't, so you can pick by what you actually loved.
What made The Martian (Andy Weir, 2011) work wasn't the disaster. It was the arithmetic. Every problem Mark Watney faces is solved with real chemistry, orbital mechanics and engineering, and the book trusts you to enjoy the working. That's the filter for this list: books that treat space as a place with physics, not a backdrop.
Readers usually love The Martian for one of three reasons: the solo survival puzzle, the realistic Mars setting, or the competent, funny narrator. The table below shows which book hits which, then each pick gets a short, honest verdict.
| Book | Author · year | Survival puzzle | Mars setting | Funny narrator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project Hail Mary | Andy Weir · 2021 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Artemis | Andy Weir · 2017 | Partly | Moon | Yes |
| Red Mars | Kim Stanley Robinson · 1992 | No | Yes | No |
| Mars Crossing | Geoffrey A. Landis · 2000 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Delta-v | Daniel Suarez · 2019 | Yes | No (asteroid) | No |
| Seveneves | Neal Stephenson · 2015 | Yes | No | Partly |
| We Are Legion (We Are Bob) | Dennis E. Taylor · 2016 | Partly | No | Yes |
| The Fated Sky | Mary Robinette Kowal · 2018 | Partly | Yes (voyage) | No |
| Leviathan Wakes | James S. A. Corey · 2011 | Partly | No | Partly |
| NovaSeed: Eden Rising | Warren Pulley · 2026 | Yes | Yes | No (AI record) |
| Packing for Mars (nonfiction) | Mary Roach · 2010 | n/a | Partly | Yes |
The obvious next read. A lone science teacher wakes on a spacecraft with no memory and has to work out, one experiment at a time, how to save Earth. Same voice, same 'science the problem' structure, plus a first-contact friendship that many readers like even more than Watney's potatoes.
How it differs: Not set on Mars, and it leans further into speculative physics.
Weir's Moon-city heist novel. The engineering of a lunar settlement (pressure, welding, aluminium smelting) is worked out in the same detail, and Jazz Bashara narrates with Watney-level sarcasm.
How it differs: A crime caper first and a survival story second; readers are more divided on it.
The definitive Mars colonisation novel: the First Hundred colonists land and start building, arguing and terraforming. If the Mars setting was the hook, this is the deep end. It won the Nebula Award, and its sequels Green Mars and Blue Mars both won the Hugo.
How it differs: Long, slow and political, with no single survival clock. See our Mars colonisation novels guide for where it fits.
Probably the closest pure match on the Mars side: a crewed mission is stranded and the survivors must cross thousands of kilometres of Martian terrain to reach a return vehicle. Landis is a NASA scientist and it shows in the detail.
How it differs: Less humour, and it is older and harder to find in some markets.
A near-future asteroid-mining expedition where every decision is constrained by delta-v, radiation and money. It scratches the 'competent crew, real numbers' itch hard.
How it differs: Corporate thriller elements and no Mars.
The Moon breaks apart and humanity has two years to get a survival population into orbit. Enormous, relentless engineering problem-solving at civilisation scale.
How it differs: Very long, and the final third jumps thousands of years ahead.
A software engineer wakes up as the mind of a self-replicating space probe. Funny, nerdy, problem-solving narration that is often recommended to Weir fans.
How it differs: Lighter on rigour and more about AI identity than survival.
Book two of the Lady Astronaut series: an alternate-history first crewed expedition to Mars in the 1960s, with slide-rule calculations and the long, claustrophobic voyage taken seriously.
How it differs: Read The Calculating Stars first; the focus is as much social history as engineering.
The first Expanse novel. Not hard SF in every detail, but thrust, gravity and travel time matter in a way most space fiction ignores, and the crew solve problems as a team.
How it differs: A solar-system thriller with a mystery element rather than a survival story.
Two people, Carter and Alina, are selected from eight billion for a one-way mission to Mars and land at Hellas Planitia. Eighty-five centimetres below the surface they find a liquid brine pocket in which something is alive. Part of the story is told through the record of SOLEN, the mission AI, and the series follows the colony across a hundred years. Where The Martian is one person against physics, this is about what kind of settlement deserves to be built on a world that is already occupied. NovaSeed: Eden Rising is Book 1 of four novels plus companion novellas, available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
How it differs: Slower and more emotional than Weir; a love story and a colony saga as much as a survival story.
Disclosure: this site is the official home of the SOLEN series, so treat this as the publisher's own book, not an independent pick. Reading order · Read chapter one free
Nonfiction: what space travel actually does to the human body, told with Roach's trademark humour. Reading it alongside any book on this list makes the fiction sharper.
How it differs: Not a novel.
A hard science fiction Mars colony saga across a hundred years, narrated in part by a mission AI. Available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.