Stories of survival, science, and sarcastic anti-heroes like The Martian
More stories of characters having to science the **** out of sticky situations.
Andy Weir’s surprise bestseller The Martian delighted readers with Mark Watney’s sarcastic internal monologue and the realistic depiction of the science of space travel and the clever engineering required to survive on Mars—and return home. For readers who want more hyper-realistic space travel storytelling, acid-tongued anti-heroes, stories of survival against the odds, or some combination these and other qualities that made The Martian such a hit, here are some of our picks.
Artemis
Jasmine Bashara’s a lot like Mark Watney: she’s extremely creative and intelligent and doesn’t really care what other people think. Unlike Watney, Jazz intends to use her smarts to pull off a heist on the moon that’ll leave her rich enough to get out from under a towering debt and maybe lessen some of the drudgery she’s been experiencing for more days than she can count.
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Hatchet
Thirteen-year-old Brian is the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness. He’s got nothing but a windbreaker, a hatchet, and his wits to help him survive until rescue comes. Brian’s going to have to grow up in a hurry and learn to rely on himself if he’s to have a fighting chance at seeing his parents again.
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The Revenant
Hugh Glass is an experienced outdoorsman, a trapper perfectly capable of surviving for weeks on his own as he works in the employ of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Guiding a scouting party should be easy work for Glass, but coming upon a grizzly bear suddenly leads to a near-fatal mauling. When Glass is abandoned by the men charged with looking after him while the others seek help, the thirst for vengeance turns out to be all he needs to survive.
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All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries
Spanning many novellas, Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries is the story of an android assigned to provide security for a human team exploring the surface of a distant planet. But what Murderbot (a self-applied name of unclear origins that the humans don’t know anything about) would really like to do is enjoy watching their favourite shows inside their own head. As readers, we’re entirely inside Murderbot’s head, experiencing their boredom in a job they don’t enjoy. And their curiosity about the corporate-mandated gap in their memory that made them decide to call themselves Murderbot…
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Seveneves
The Earth becomes a ticking bomb in this story about humanity’s effort to band together to avert total annihilation. Thousands of years later, the descendants of the survivors return to the alien planet where the human race originated.
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Aurora
The premise is simple and familiar—humans have located a planet to colonize that will take several human lifetimes to travel to—but in the hands of a master of speculative fiction like KSR, it’s a study of which parts of our humanity survive the most extreme circumstances imaginable.
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Far from the Light of Heaven
First mate Michelle Campion wakes as the ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, light-years from its point of origin, but she soon realizes that among the thousands of sleeping crewmates, many will not be waking up. The investigation into what caused the deaths reveals the true value of human lives in this new political landscape.
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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
A rag-tag interspecies crew of misfits gets the opportunity of a lifetime: build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet and be paid several years’ wages for the trouble. Assuming they survive.
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Do You Dream of Terra-Two?
It’ll take a team of ten astronauts 23 years to reach the earth-like planet found orbiting a nearby star and begin colonizing it for their descendants and other earthlings who’ll follow. But only if they can go 23 years without a total breakdown of crew function, not to mention the infinite number of technical problems that can arise. Because once they set out, rescue is not an option.
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