82 books like Girlfriend on Mars

This final book is the catalyst for my own: the book that, resting in my hands at the library, made me realize that I could just do this. If I loved reading short stories so much, if I so deeply enjoyed reading about gay girls with horses and game show contestants going to Mars, why couldn’t someone love my own body of work, transsexually languishing in my Google Drive? There can never be enough praise for The Dark, which delivers tonally consistent and individually unique stories that glue me to my seat every time. A big thank you to Deborah Willis, and to whoever put her book on hold that day I was volunteering at the library: I loved her work, and it inspired me to put mine out there. 

"The One Who Waits," one of my favorite stories in this collection, would be regarded more commonly as science fiction, as it takes place during an Earth expedition to Mars. But Ray Bradbury’s story also pioneers the classic horror trope of a small group of people falling one by one to a mysterious creature they cannot see—and with a means of disguise highly imaginative, beautifully written, and fundamentally terrifying. Bradbury is a phenomenal writer and it’s difficult to recommend any one story without feeling certain you’ve dropped the ball in not recommending another--you really can't go wrong with this entire collection--but the quick, clever, nuanced "The One Who Waits" is one of the best sci-fi/horror hybrids ever written.

This nonfiction picture book takes an unusual approach in presenting the story of the Curiosity rover. Curiosity tells the reader about her extraordinary journey to Mars. I was fascinated and enlightened reading details about the construction, launch, and landing of this complex robot. The illustrator’s earthy palette compliments the subject matter. The last illustration of the tiny rover on the red planet left me in awe. It reminded me of standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon and gazing at a scene so vast I couldn’t possibly take it all in. Check out the rover’s path here!

Imagine for a moment that we found life on Mars.

That discovery would shake our world, change our outlook on the universe, and answer the question of whether we’re alone.

Sarah Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist, has spent her life thinking about this possibility and delves into both her and our obsession with the Red Planet in this beautifully written book. Part memoir, part historical account, and part scientific exploration, this book made me want to ditch a career in journalism and take up astrobiology. You’ll never look at Mars the same way again. 

The first three books on this list are focused on the history of space exploration; The Mars Challenge is all about the future. Told us a conversation between an ambitious student and a more experienced space professional mentor, The Mars Challenge explores just that – the numerous challenges humanity will have to overcome before we can take the first steps on the Red Planet. In doing so, it threads a needle brilliantly – doing justice to the complexity of these challenges, but presenting them in a way that a lay reader can understand. The book is perfect for inspiring the next generation of explorers, and provides a fun read for adults who’d like an overview of the challenges of space.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I decided to cross this book off my “should have read a long time ago” list, but right off the bat, the narrator is riffing on humanity’s destruction of its own planet and Europe’s extermination of indigenous groups across the world, and asking if we can really blame the Martians for giving us a taste of our own medicine.

Written in 1898 as the Victorian age waned and the new century loomed, Wells weaves all sorts of still-relevant commentary between the gripping action and horror. Whether it’s the suicidal religious fervor of the curate, the terror of total war and mechanized murder, or societal breakdown as London evacuates, the 1890s had things to say that never stopped being relevant. Maybe we’ll finally sort them out in the next 130 years.

From the first page, I loved the self-centered, egotistic main character full of himself. When his deluded sense of self-worth got him into inevitable trouble, I smiled, thinking he walked into it with eyes open. It came as a pleasant surprise to see the character evolve beyond himself and slowly encompass a wider reality that would benefit Earth and Mars… with considerable risk to himself.

A dash of romance, this powerful story, regrettably short, blew me away. I don’t care that the book is old, but I feel the theme stands the test of time as very enjoyable entertainment. A marker with which I judge every book, and this one shines.

Another work spanning more than a hundred years and featuring many rich characters, crises, and drama, the Mars Trilogy makes a great summer read. At a little more than 1600 pages, the trilogy is like three seasons of a really engrossing television series.

The trilogy contains ample portions of science, science fiction, politics, and explorations of the human condition. There’s even some boom-boom for those who like a few explosions in their stories. Like my other preferences, there’s little “magic” in the Trilogy’s universe; instead, things mostly make sense after accepting a couple of assumptions. The richness of the characters really stood out for me, helped by the fact that the characters, by and large, experience long lifetimes!

A time travel novel that transcends the ages and carries a strange environmental message.

The secrets of Mars are open slather in this adventurous escape to the past of the solar system. The fact that it involves the canals of Mars lends a delicious irony to this tale, which was published in 1999, after NASA's first-ever Mars rover, dubbed Sojourner, touched down in Chryse Planitia on July 4, 1997, atop the landing vehicle, Pathfinder. 

But, of course, this novel is placed in the distant past, when Martians actually existed. Is the alien tree an enemy or is it endeavoring to spread a message?

Robert Zubrin is the foremost authority on how to get to Mars, and in addition to his engineering expertise, he is one of the most prominent advocates of colonizing it. This classic book, now in its updated 25th Anniversary edition, should be read by everyone interested in the future of humankind. It contains more technical detail about space travel than some people will care to learn, but that can be skimmed; the section about colonization, and the concluding chapter explaining why going to Mars is important, are what I chose it for. In Zubrin's opinion and my own, Mars is "the door to an open future, a new frontier on a new world, a planet that can be settled, the beginning of humanity's career as a spacefaring species."