I loved how Andy Weir made the science an essential part of the adventure without ever letting it slow the story down. The problem-solving felt believable, the stakes kept building, and the humor made the character feel genuinely human. Most of all, I felt completely immersed in a future that seemed not only possible, but almost within reach.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old human error are…
What stayed with me most was how seriously the book treated climate change as a problem of science, economics, politics, and human behavior all at once. It made me think about not just what might happen, but how institutions and people might actually respond. I also appreciated how much I learned along the way. It was ambitious, thought-provoking, and grounded enough to feel uncomfortably plausible.
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his…
I loved the originality of the story and the way it connected very different lives, times, and places without ever feeling forced. It made me think about time, memory, technology, and what gives our lives meaning. The writing was elegant and precise, and the book stayed with me long after I finished it.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.
One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads
“One of [Mandel’s] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet.” —The New York Times
When a Mars rover discovers living microbes capable of absorbing carbon dioxide, Dr. Julie McCray believes she may have found a way to help reverse Earth’s climate crisis.
But within hours, the mission is mysteriously shut down, the data is seized, and Julie is pulled into a covert struggle involving NASA, the CIA, and foreign powers determined to control the discovery.
As the stakes rise, Julie must decide whom she can trust—and how far she is willing to go to protect a scientific breakthrough that could change the future of humanity.
The Rocket Scientist is a near-future science-fiction thriller grounded in plausible science, Mars exploration, political intrigue, and international espionage. I
