The Martian is a survival story with a science textbook's precision — Mark Watney doesn't just survive, he survives by solving problems with real science. That combination of hard science and human determination is the thing readers return for. Here are the books that deliver the same experience.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The obvious place to start, and the only honest answer if you want more of the same. Rocky the alien and the amnesiac protagonist create a different dynamic than Mark Watney's situation — there's more collaboration and less solo improvisation — but Weir's voice, the hard science, and the problem-solving structure are consistent. If you loved The Martian and haven't read this, stop reading this paragraph and go read it.
Buy Project Hail Mary on Amazon →
Artemis by Andy Weir
Same author, different setting. The lunar city of Artemis isn't Mars, but the problem-solving approach is identical: Jazz Bashara is a smuggler who gets drawn into a conspiracy and has to use her knowledge of lunar economics and physics to survive. Less polished than The Martian but Weir's voice is so distinctive that even his lesser work is better than most genre fiction.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Heinlein's 1966 novel is the foundational text for the kind of hard-SF survival-and-improvisation that Weir does. The lunar colonists in Heinlein's book have been making things work with insufficient resources for generations — and when they decide to push for independence, they do it with physics and political philosophy in equal measure. If you want the intellectual satisfaction of watching someone figure out how to make a thrown object navigate a gravitational gradient, this is the book.
Buy The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress on Amazon →
Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearney
Wait — this is a non-fiction manual, not a novel. But if what you loved about The Martian was the specific pleasure of watching a character solve a physics problem with limited resources, this book (freely available from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine) provides that pleasure continuously. It's a compendium of survival skills developed for nuclear war scenarios, and it's written for a non-specialist audience. Not for everyone, but if the physics problem-solving in The Martian was what hooked you, this will keep you occupied for a long time.
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (Book 2 of Three-Body Problem Trilogy)
Not survival fiction in the individual sense, but the second book in Liu's trilogy contains sequences of survival against impossible odds that rival anything in Weir's work. The "wallfacer" concept — where each strategy to defeat the alien sophons is devised in complete secrecy, making every action feel like a chess move in a game whose rules you don't fully understand — has the same intellectual satisfaction as watching Watney solve his oxygen problem. Different scale, but same pleasure.
Buy The Dark Forest on Amazon →
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's novel has a different texture than Weir's — it's slower, more contemplative, and more interested in politics than survival mechanics. But Genly Ai's journey across Gethen, surviving political environments he doesn't understand using cultural intelligence and patience, offers a different kind of problem-solving satisfaction. If you want the travel-and-survive-in-an-alien-culture experience, this is where to find it.
Buy The Left Hand of Darkness on Amazon →
💡 Key Takeaway
The only real answer to 'I want more The Martian' is 'read Project Hail Mary' — it's the same thing, done even better. After that, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is the book with the most similar intellectual DNA, even if it doesn't read like a thriller the way Weir's books do.