Book Recommendations: If Project Hail Mary Wrecked You, Read These Next

Project Hail Mary is one of those books that sneaks up on you. It starts as a survival puzzle: Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is or how he got there, and has to science his way back to understanding his own mission before he can even begin to figure out how to save Earth from a dying sun. The first hundred pages are genuinely thrilling just as a problem-solving exercise, Andy doing what he does best by making the scientific method feel as exciting as any action sequence.

And then Rocky shows up, and the book becomes something else entirely.

Grace does not volunteer. He is recruited, in part, because he is the right scientific mind for the job, and in part because he has nothing keeping him on Earth. No family. No relationships. Nothing waiting for him at home. The people who sent him were not wrong that he was the right choice. What they did not account for was what happens when someone with nothing to lose finds something worth losing everything for.

Grace does not save Earth because he rises to the occasion. He saves it almost as a side effect of becoming someone who cares again. And when he has the chance to go home, when the probes launch and the mission technically succeeds, he does not take it. Not because Earth does not matter, but because home stopped being Earth a long time ago. He was asked to find something worth being brave for. It was not a planet. It was one specific relationship with one specific alien who knocked on glass to say hello.

The audiobook, narrated by Ray Porter, is one of the best listening experiences we have had in years. Ray’s performance of Rocky alone is worth the runtime.

And now the movie is here, released last week with Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. Ryan is exactly right for this role. He has always been best when he gets to be quietly funny and deeply human at the same time, and this movie leans into that completely. Rocky is a practical effect and the friendship lands exactly the way it needs to.

Whether you devoured the book, saw the film this week, or both, here is the question we always end up asking after something like this: what do I read next?

Here are some starting points.

The Disasters by M.K. England earns every recommendation we have ever given it. MK is a nonbinary author, and the cast they built reflects that same commitment to representation being woven into the story rather than bolted on. Bisexual narrator Nax and his crew of space academy washouts, including Zee, a trans girl from Kazakhstan who is the steadiest person in the book, have to clear their names after accidentally witnessing the biggest crime in the history of space colonization. It is funny, fast, full of found family energy, and the kind of book where trans characters get to just exist and be brilliant and save the day. It has the same scrappy energy as Ryland Grace figuring things out one bad option at a time.

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson is the most emotionally direct parallel to PHM on this list. Henry Denton has been periodically abducted by aliens for years. Then they give him an ultimatum: the world will end in 144 days, and all he has to do to stop it is push a button. The problem is that Henry is not sure he wants to. His boyfriend died by suicide. His family is falling apart. He has very few reasons to believe the world deserves saving. The aliens do not care why he pushes the button, only whether he does, and the reason Henry eventually finds is not grand or universal. It is small and specific and human. That is the same emotional architecture as PHM, and it will stay with you the same way. This book carries significant content around suicide, grief, self-harm, and bullying, so go in prepared.

The Final Six by Alexandra Monir hits the science-forward survival thread hard. Earth is being ravaged by climate change, and twenty-four teenagers from around the world are drafted into the International Space Training Camp, competing for six spots on a mission to colonize Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. Iranian-American protagonist Naomi is a science genius who does not fully trust the people running the mission, and she is right not to. It has the stakes, the pacing, and the genuine investment in science that PHM readers will recognize.

Nyxia by Scott Reintgen follows Emmett Atwater, a Black teenager from Detroit recruited by a massive corporation alongside nine other teens from around the world to compete for spots on a mission to mine a mysterious substance on a hidden alien planet. The competition is brutal and the corporation is hiding something. It has the found family that emerges under pressure, the morally complex corporate antagonist, and the kind of pacing that makes you miss your stop on the train.

Ignite the Stars by Maura Milan is one we have reviewed here at BookCrushin before, and it holds up. Everyone in the universe thinks the notorious outlaw I.A. Cōcha is a man. He is not. He is Ia, a seventeen-year-old girl and one of the best pilots alive, and when the imperialist Commonwealth catches her, they force her into their military academy rather than execute her. Diverse cast, three POVs, spaceship battles, social justice themes woven through every page. Maura builds a world that feels lived in and a protagonist who is genuinely hard to put down.

The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid takes a sharp turn into the political, but if what you loved about PHM was the question of what it means to be human, this one is for you. Nemesis is a Diabolic, a genetically engineered weapon created to protect one person and kill everyone else. When her senator’s daughter is summoned to the galactic court as a hostage, Nemesis takes her place. What follows is twisty, morally complex, and completely addictive. The bond between Nemesis and Sidonia is the emotional core, and it is genuinely moving in the way Rocky and Ryland are.

The Infinity Courts by Akemi Dawn Bowman is the most conceptually ambitious pick on this list. Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto dies before the book even begins and wakes up in Infinity, the AI-controlled afterlife, where Ophelia, a virtual assistant humanity once trusted completely, has taken over and is enslaving human consciousness. Nami joins a rebel squad to fight back. It asks big questions about technology, consciousness, and what we owe each other, and it does it with a diverse ensemble cast and a protagonist who genuinely believes in saving everyone, even when it makes her life harder.

PHM is a book about what happens when science and connection meet in the loneliest place imaginable. These books are all, in their own ways, about the same thing. Start anywhere.