Read Solaris, a classic science fiction novel by Stanisลaw Lem exploring themes of human psychology and alien contact
Mark Watney stranded on Mars grows potatoes in his own waste; Weir's self-published hit.
A smuggler in the only city on the Moon takes a job that turns into sabotage; Weir after The Martian.
A science teacher wakes alone on a starship with amnesia and meets an alien engineer; Weir's best.
Clarke's novel written alongside Kubrick's film, and it explains the ending.
Clarke's four-book sequence, 2001 to 3001; each one restarts from the film before it rather than the novel.
Frank Poole is recovered a thousand years after HAL threw him into space, and wakes in a ring city built around the Earth.
Heywood Floyd lands on Halley's Comet, then a hijacking puts him down on Europa, the one world humanity was warned to stay away from.
A joint Soviet-American crew flies back to Jupiter to board the abandoned Discovery and find out what HAL was hiding.
Tom Wolfe on the test pilots and the Mercury Seven.
Sagan's book of the series: the pale blue dot before the photo and the cosmic calendar.
Hawking on black holes and the beginning of time with one equation; the most unread bestseller.
A fifty-kilometre cylinder enters the solar system and a crew goes inside; Clarke's purest wonder.
Earth colonises Mars in linked stories; Bradbury's melancholy frontier.
A boy trains for a war against the buggers in a battle room; the ending is the point.
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