Books like 'A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?'
Readers who enjoyed A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly Weinersmith & Zach Weinersmith also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
space sc-fi psychological action / adventure humor technology politics mars space-travel exploration
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The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, Eisso Post
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsThis is the second novel in "Remembrance of Earth’s Past", the near-future trilogy written by the China's multiple-award-winning science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion — four centuries in the future...Categorized as:
politics technology 21st-century action-adventure adult aliens apocalyptic audiobook -
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsalternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereThe universe began as an enormous breath being held.From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others — the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film Arrival — comes a ground-breaking new collection of short fiction: nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories...Categorized as:
technology 21st-century action-adventure adult ai aliens alternate-history anthologies -
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsSo far the Foundation was safe. But there was a hidden Second Foundation to protect the first. The Mule has yet to find it, but he was getting closer all the time. The men of the Foundation sought it, too, to escape from Mule's mind control. Only Arkady, a 14 year-old girl seemed to have the answer, or did she.. -
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsThey mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities - and unforeseen risks...Categorized as:
technology 20th-century action-adventure ai alternate-history anthologies audiobook children -
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The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them.A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth... -
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsTed Chiang's first published story, "Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF...Categorized as:
technology 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult aliens alternate-history anthologies -
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsFoundation and Empire tells the incredible story of a new breed of man who create a new force for galactic government. Thus, the Foundation hurtles into conflict with the decadent, decrepit First Empire. In this struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars, man stands at the threshold of a new, enlightened life which could easily be put aside for the old forces of barbarism... -
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsFor twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years... -
Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsCivil war looms in the Bobiverse in this brand-new, epic-length adventure by best seller Dennis E. Taylor.More than a hundred years ago, Bender set out for the stars and was never heard from again. There has been no trace of him despite numerous searches by his clone-mates. Now Bob is determined to organize an expedition to learn Bender’s fate—whatever the cost... -
Vengeance by Jennifer Foehner Wells
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFive years have passed since Darcy Eberhardt left Raub for dead on Ulream. Darcy and her ragtag multispecies crew have used those years well, searching for her lost love, Adam, throughout the disreputable fringes of galactic society—though the odds are stacked against them. Along the way, they liberate the vulnerable and accumulate allies, some of them dubious... -
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsStark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings – a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn’t make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw... -
Battleship Leviathan by Craig Martelle
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA derelict warship, ancient but still alive. A small team of humans fighting for all humanity.Built for a time when the races were just finding their way to the stars, finding that they could dominate others. The galactic conquests created the arms race and the ancients, the Progenitors had to protect their own. They built a ship to drive the others away.It worked. And it didn’t...Categorized as:
space-travel action-adventure adult aliens anthologies colonization fiction futuristic -
The Bound Worlds by Megan E. O'Keefe
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWorlds will collide and fates will be rewritten in the thrilling conclusion to the Devoured Worlds space opera trilogy by award-winning author Megan E. O’Keefe. Naira and Tarquin have found a new home on Seventh Cradle. But the peace they’ve built is short-lived as mysterious assailants ambush the settlement and Naira is haunted by visions of a monstrous future... -
This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsSheltered all her life in a corporate satellite in Earth's outer orbit, Jamisia must face the truth about her origins and her role in the power struggle between the Guerans who dominate intergalactic transportation and the rest of Earth's far-flung and genetically mutated colonies who are trying to break the Guera Guild's monopoly... -
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Earth Awakens by Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens.Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna... -
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe astonishing sequel to Children of Time, the award-winning novel of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.Thousands of years ago, Earth's terraforming program took to the stars. On the world they called Nod, scientists discovered alien life - but it was their mission to overwrite it with the memory of Earth... -
The Humans by Matt Haig
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 63 ratingsBody-snatching has never been so heartwarming . . .The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable novel about alien abduction, mathematics, and that most interesting subject of all: ourselves. Combine Douglas Adams’s irreverent take on life, the universe, and everything with a genuinely moving love story, and you have some idea of the humor, originality, and poignancy of Matt Haig’s latest novel... -
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsA groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization... -
The Swarm by Orson Scott Card, Aaron Johnston
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsOrson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm.The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army...Categorized as:
space-travel action-adventure aliens apocalyptic audiobook book fiction first-contact -
Bright Light: Star Carrier: Book Eight by Ian Douglas
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsNew York Times bestselling military science fiction author Ian Douglas brings us the eighth—and penultimate—Star Carrier novel, Bright Light, combining the best action, adventure, and hard science into this universe-spanning series There’s no more time . . . There’s always more time . . . Trevor Gray has been stripped of his command of the starship America, and is unsure what to do with his life... -
Legacy Marines by Jonathan P. Brazee
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEsther and Noah Lysander are the twin children of General Ryck Lysander, Commandant of the Marine Corps, leader of the Evolution, and Chairman of the Federation. When they are told that their father and mother have been assassinated, they are both devastated. Cut adrift, they each decide to enlist in the Corps—but for different reasons... -
Girl on the Moon by Jack McDonald Burnett
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis near-future sci-fi adventure sends humankind back to the moon, this time to make first contact with an inscrutable alien race. And when Earth’s new acquaintances become new neighbors, humanity might not be done with the moon yet — and it might not be done with Earth. Fortunately for humankind, it has Conn Garrow.They said Conn wasn’t qualified for astronaut training... -
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsRich or dead. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe & on reaches of unimaginable horror. The humans who rode the alien Heechee spacecraft stored on the planetoid couldn't know whether the trip would make them millionaires or corpses... -
Reckoning by W. Michael Gear
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe sixth book in the thrilling Donovan sci-fi series returns to a treacherous alien planet where corporate threats and dangerous creatures imperil the lives of the colonists.Three years after Ashanti spaced for Solar System, Turalon reappears in the Donovanian sky. The Corporation has returned. Donovan's wealth is a lure for the powerful families who control the Board... -
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Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsStar Maker is a science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. The book describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing in scale Stapledon's previous book, Last and First Men (1930), a history of the human species over two billion years...Categorized as:
politics 20th-century action-adventure adult aliens alternate-history audiobook book -
Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsTitanic meets The Shining in S.A. Barnes’ Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended.A GHOST SHIP.A SALVAGE CREW.UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal... -
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsThe war has raged for nearly a year and Earth desperately needs an edge to overcome the Sirian Empire's huge advantage in personnel and equipment. That's where James Mowry comes in. Intensively trained, his appearance surgically altered, Mowry secretly lands on one of the Empire's planets... -
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsIn the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the drug Can-D, which enables users to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z... -
The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsAn exceptional debut thriller and “exciting journey” into the dark heart of the Cold War and the space race from New York Times bestselling author and astronaut Chris Hadfield (Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary). 1973: a final, top-secret mission to the Moon. Three astronauts in a tiny spaceship, a quarter million miles from home. A quarter million miles from help...Categorized as:
exploration politics space-travel action-adventure adult alternate-history amateur-sleuth audiobook -
Alien Captive by Lee Savino, Golden Angel
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsWho knew reading sexy alien abduction stories could get a girl into trouble? Or that an e-reader could also be the gateway to another galaxy? I definitely didn't... but here I am anyway, mated to the Tsenturion High Commander just like the unwilling human heroines in my favorite sci-fi romances. The Commander demands obedience... -
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsBefore you see the movie, read the original novel! First published more than thirty-five years ago, Pierre Boulle's chilling novel launched one of the greatest science fiction sagas in motion picture history, from the classic 1968 movie starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, through four sequels and two television series . . . and now the newest film adaptation directed by Tim Burton... -
Starfish by Peter Watts
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew--people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater--down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness... -
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsLeto Atreides, the God Emperor of Dune, is dead. In the fifteen hundred years since his passing, the Empire has fallen into ruin. The great Scattering saw millions abandon the crumbling civilization and spread out beyond the reaches of known space. The planet Arrakis-now called Rakis-has reverted to its desert climate, and its great sandworms are dying... -
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsIt's been two months since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since - until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us... -
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Scanners Live in Vain by Cordwainer Smith
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsMan has conquered space, but not without costs. To maintain the space lanes, Scanners have to undergo an operation in which their brain is severed from their sensory inputs to block the pain of space. Scanner Martel has made this sacrifice. He must monitor his vital functions via implanted dials and instruments in his chest... -
Hour of Judgement by Susan R. Matthews
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBurkhayden is a subject colony, leased by the Bench to a Dolgorukij familial corporation for economic exploitation. When a Nurail woman from the service house is brutally raped and beaten, Andrej Koscuisko –- Ship’s Inquisitor on board the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok –- is called upon to render services under contract... -
Down Among the Dead by K.B. Wagers
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsGunrunner empress Hail Bristol must navigate alien politics and deadly plots to prevent an interspecies war, in this second novel in the Farian War space opera trilogy.In a surprise attack that killed many of her dearest subjects, Hail Bristol, empress of Indrana, has been captured by the Shen -- the most ruthless and fearsome aliens humanity has ever encountered... -
The Traitor's Bride by Alix Nichols
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsDisgraced war hero Areg Sebi is on the scaffold, laying his head on the block. A priestess chants a prayer for the major's soul.In the crowd below, laundress Etana Tidryn stares into his eyes. Last night his lips were hot against hers. He worshipped her with the desperation of the damned.. -
The Neil Gaiman at the End of the Universe by Arvind Ethan David, Neil Gaiman
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA man awakens, adrift in deep space, with little memory of who he is – only to discover that he is the commander of a space mission; the rest of the crew is gone; and he is apparently a writer of some small renown named Neil Gaiman... -
Battle Pod by Vaughn Heppner
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe brutal war of extinction enters a horrifying new round as the cyborgs arrive from the Neptune System, in this, the third book of the series. The Highborn are remorselessly crushing the obsolete Homo sapiens. Gambling with humanity’s existence, Supreme Commander James Hawthorne attempts to lure the dreaded Doom Stars into a trap. Social Unity’s combined Battlefleet is the bait... -
Glasshouse by Charles Stross
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWhen Robin wakes up in a clinic with most of his memories missing, it doesn’t take him long to discover that someone is trying to kill him. It’s the twenty-seventh century, when interstellar travel is by teleport gate and conflicts are fought by network worms that censor refugees’ personalities and target historians... -
God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsCenturies have passed on Dune, and the planet is green with life. Leto, the son of Dune's savior, is still alive but far from human, and the fate of all humanity hangs on his awesome sacrifice..."Rich fare...heady stuff... -
Spindrift by Allen M. Steele
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn the year 2344, the shuttle from the long-missing EASS Galileo returns to Earth carrying three crew members who appear not to have aged. They report that they have made contact with an alien race--and have come face to face with the most apocalyptic force in the galaxy... -
Calypso's Guest by Andrew Sean Greer
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA bargain with the gods throws two men together in a timeless short story of adventure and unrequited love inspired by The Odyssey by Andrew Sean Greer, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less . A man in exile, banished to a planet far from home and cursed with immortality, discovers that a ship has crash-landed near his settlement. After two hundred years, his heart’s desire has come true... -
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The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsTwo hundred years ago, humans made a stunning discovery in the far reaches of the solar system: a huge statue of an alien creature, with an inscription that defied all efforts at translation. Now, as faster-than-light drive opens the stars to exploration, humans are finding other relics of the race they call the Monument-Makers - each different, and each heartbreakingly beautiful...Categorized as:
exploration politics space-travel action-adventure adult aliens archaeology audiobook -
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 46 ratingsDune Messiah continues the story of the man Muad'dib, heir to a power unimaginable, bringing to completion the centuries-old scheme to create a super-being."Brilliant...It is all that Dune was, and maybe a little bit more... -
Chindi by Jack McDevitt
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn a routine survey mission studying a neutron star, an Academy starship receives a transmission in an unknown language. Before leaving the area, the starship launches a series of satellites to find the signal and perhaps discover its origins...Categorized as:
exploration politics space-travel action-adventure adult aliens archaeology audiobook -
The Devil and Deep Space by Susan R. Matthews
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAndrej Koscuisko, the Ragnarok’s Ship's Inquisitor, is going home on leave. His ship of assignment is participating in training exercises, and when an observer station unexpectedly explodes –- killing the Ragnarok’s captain -– Pesadie Training Command has to come up with a cover story in a hurry or risk exposure of its black-market profiteering... -
A Little Journey (The Galaxy Project) by Ray Bradbury, Barry N. Malzberg
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA LITTLE JOURNEY (August 1951) marks Bradbury’s final contribution to the editorial decade of Horace Gold, the editor of GALAXY magazine. Like THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and THE FIREMAN, the story demonstrates Bradbury’s characteristic blending so early in his career of the sentimental and the transcendent, the homely and the mystical...Categorized as:
exploration humor space-travel action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook betrayal -
Start by Odette C. Bell
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHave you ever thought “just my luck!” after dropping your communication device for the third time in a week?Cadet Nida Harper, a recruit to the United Galactic Coalition Academy, has – and worse. So imagine her surprise when she is detailed for a mission to the dark and mysterious planet Remus 12...Categorized as:
exploration space-travel action-adventure anthologies dystopia fiction futuristic galactic-empire
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