Books like Andy Weir

Begin this one for its vast evolutionary thought experiment; stay because Tchaikovsky makes a genuinely nonhuman intelligence startlingly understandable. As the remnants of humanity seek a new home, a failed terraforming project develops in ways its creators never anticipated. The resulting civilization is not merely humans wearing alien masks: its bodies, instincts, technologies, and social structures grow from a radically different foundation.

That is the deepest kinship with Project Hail Mary. Both books treat understanding another species as an act of patient inference—and make the accumulation of shared knowledge emotionally thrilling. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the foundation of a much-loved series, Children of Time has become a modern landmark of big-idea science fiction. Its scale is immense, but its wonder rests on beautifully concrete discoveries.

When a catastrophe makes humanity’s long-term survival uncertain, mathematician and pilot Elma York joins the effort to accelerate the space program. Kowal makes calculation tactile: trajectories must be checked, machines mastered, procedures improved, and institutional obstacles confronted by people whose expertise is too valuable to ignore.

Where Project Hail Mary gives you one scientist improvising at the edge of extinction, The Calculating Stars shows competence becoming collective—mission control, engineers, pilots, and human computers turning knowledge into momentum. Elma’s anxiety and ambition also give the technical triumphs an intimate cost. The novel won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, an unusually emphatic sweep earned by its combination of propulsion, humane characterization, and optimistic rigor. It makes spaceflight feel difficult enough to matter and possible enough to inspire.