Andy Weir Books in Order: The Martian, Project Hail Mary, and Complete Guide (2026)

Andy Weir has published three science fiction novels, and the reading order is simple: The Martian first, Project Hail Mary second, and Artemis whenever you like — it is the weakest of the three and has no connection to the others. None of the books are sequels; they share a near-future universe but have no overlapping characters or plots.

Quick answer: Start with The Martian. Read Project Hail Mary second. Artemis can be read at any point. All three are standalone novels — no reading order is strictly required.

All Andy Weir Books at a Glance

Andy Weir published The Martian chapter by chapter on his personal website, for free, beginning around 2009. He self-published it as an e-book in 2011 at 99 cents — the minimum price Amazon would allow — and it was discovered by a literary agent after selling tens of thousands of copies without any traditional publishing support. Crown Publishers bought it in 2013. It became a bestseller and then a major film. Weir had written the whole thing on his own terms, for readers who wanted exactly the kind of book he wanted to write.

That origin story matters because it explains something about the three novels Weir has published: The Martian (2011/2014), Artemis (2017), and Project Hail Mary (2021). They are all hard science fiction — the science is real, the constraints are genuine, and the protagonist’s survival depends on understanding and applying actual physics, chemistry, and biology. They are all standalones with no shared characters. And they all feature an isolated protagonist using methodical problem-solving to survive an impossible situation, narrated with a particular kind of dry, competent humor.

The reading order is straightforward. Start with The Martian. Read Project Hail Mary second. Artemis can be read at any point — it is the weakest of the three, but it completes the catalog and it is worth reading.

Start With The Martian

Mark Watney is a botanist and mechanical engineer on a NASA mission to Mars. A dust storm forces an emergency evacuation. In the chaos, Watney is struck by debris and the crew’s life-sign monitors fail; they believe him dead and launch without him. He is not dead. He is alone on Mars, with supplies designed for a 30-day mission, and the next scheduled Mars mission is four years away.

The premise is simple. The execution is exceptional.

The Martian is told primarily through Watney’s mission logs, and his voice is the engine that drives the entire novel. He is funny, specific, relentless, and optimistic in a way that functions as its own form of tension. When Watney announces, with apparent cheerfulness, that he is going to have to solve six different problems before he starves to death on an uninhabitable planet, the humor does not defuse the stakes — it heightens them. His refusal to catastrophize forces the reader to confront just how catastrophic the situation actually is.

The novel alternates between Watney’s first-person logs on Mars and third-person chapters covering NASA’s response once they discover he’s alive, and the crew of the Hermes as they receive the news mid-mission. The structure is clean and the pacing is controlled. Weir does not let the reader off the hook: every solution Watney finds creates new problems, and the novel’s plotting has the relentless logic of a mathematician working through a proof.

The 2015 Ridley Scott film — with Matt Damon as Watney — is one of the most faithful book-to-film adaptations in recent science fiction. Watney’s voice, the problem-solving structure, and the humor are all intact. A few minor plot threads are compressed or cut, but a reader who watches the film will not feel that the adaptation missed what the book was doing. It is also worth noting that the film works better if you have read the book: Damon’s performance is built on the same logic as the narration, and understanding the technical constraints makes the solutions land with more force.

Project Hail Mary — the Masterwork

Ryland Grace wakes alone on a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there or why. He does not remember his name for the first several pages. He works out where he is — deep space, very far from Earth — through careful observation of his environment, and then he begins to work out why.

Project Hail Mary is structured as a dual narrative: Grace’s present-tense investigation of his situation aboard the ship, and his gradual recovery of memories explaining how and why he came to be there. Both threads are gripping. The memory-recovery structure lets Weir withhold information organically while maintaining forward momentum, and the revelations arrive in the right order — each one recontextualizing what came before without feeling manipulative.

Then, roughly a third of the way through the book, Grace encounters Rocky.

We will not explain who or what Rocky is in detail, because the discovery is part of the book’s pleasure. What is worth saying is this: the relationship that develops between Grace and Rocky is the emotional center of the novel, and it is handled with genuine care and invention. Weir solves, methodically and plausibly, the problem of how two beings with no shared language, no shared sensory experience, and no shared evolutionary history would actually communicate. The solution is scientifically grounded and narratively brilliant. The friendship that results from it is among the most moving relationships in recent science fiction.

Project Hail Mary is the best first-contact science fiction novel in decades. It takes its premise — what would actual contact with non-human intelligence require, practically and cognitively — more seriously than most novels in the genre, and it earns its emotional conclusion. Many readers who considered The Martian Weir’s best work changed their assessment after finishing this one. It is a more complete novel: funnier in places, more ambitious structurally, and genuinely moving in a way that The Martian, for all its brilliance, does not attempt.

Artemis — the Weakest Entry, but Still Worth Reading

Jazz Bashara lives on Artemis, humanity’s first and only city on the Moon. She works as a porter, makes extra money through small-scale smuggling, and is generally in debt. When a wealthy client offers her an enormous sum to sabotage a rival’s business operation, she accepts — and discovers that what she agreed to is the edge of something much larger and more dangerous than a commercial dispute.

Artemis is a heist novel set on the Moon. The structure is entertaining: Weir’s research into lunar economics, engineering, and atmosphere management is thorough, and the physical environment of Artemis — the domes, the airlocks, the smelting operations — is rendered with the same specificity he brought to Mars in The Martian. The plot moves. The lunar science is sound.

The weakness is Jazz herself. Her first-person voice does not land with the same force as Watney’s. Watney’s humor emerged from the gap between his situation — certain death — and his determination to solve problems rather than panic; it was funny because it was also a survival mechanism. Jazz’s voice reaches for the same register without the same narrative justification, and it reads more as a stylistic choice than a character truth. The supporting characters are thinner than in the other two novels, and the conspiracy plot, while functional, does not generate the same sustained tension as Watney’s survival math or Grace’s investigation.

None of this makes Artemis a bad book. It is a fast, intelligent, lunar heist novel with better science than most of the genre. It simply is not on the level of what Weir achieved in his first and third novels. Reading it completes the Weir catalog and it is worth completing, but approach it as the B-side rather than the centerpiece.

The Hard Science Fiction Approach

Weir’s method distinguishes his books from the majority of popular science fiction. He starts with real science, does the mathematics himself, and builds his plots around actual constraints rather than convenient fictional ones. The chemistry Watney uses to produce water on Mars is real chemistry. The orbital mechanics in Project Hail Mary are consistent with real physics. The atmospheric composition and pressure challenges in Artemis reflect genuine engineering problems with enclosed habitats.

This approach produces two things that are harder to achieve simultaneously than they look. First, it generates genuine tension: the problems are hard because the constraints are real, and the solutions are satisfying because they are actually solutions rather than narrative hand-waving. Second, it produces a particular kind of humor — the humor of a very capable person explaining, patiently and clearly, exactly how much trouble they are in and exactly what they plan to do about it.

The common concern about hard science fiction is that the technical content overwhelms the narrative. Weir manages this through his protagonists’ voices. Watney and Grace are both gifted explainers; they translate complex problems into plain language with the easy confidence of people who have spent their careers communicating technical ideas to non-specialists. The science never feels like homework because the characters are genuinely engaged by it — and their engagement is contagious. If a chapter of orbital mechanics threatens to bog down, it is because Weir has not yet found the narrative hook; in his best work, the science is the narrative hook, and the technical detail is the source of the suspense.

Weir has acknowledged that research and fact-checking are central to his process, and that he has been corrected by specialists after publication on a small number of points. The corrections have been minor. The overall scientific integrity of his novels is unusually high for popular fiction.

Andy Weir Books Ranked

Andy Weir’s Short Fiction: The Egg

Before his novels, Weir published short stories on his website. The most notable is The Egg — a two-page philosophical story about what happens after death. It has been read by tens of millions of people, adapted into a YouTube video, and translated into dozens of languages. It shares nothing with his novels in terms of setting or genre but demonstrates the same economy and conceptual precision that characterises his best work. It is available free online and takes ten minutes to read.

Is Andy Weir Writing a New Book?

As of 2026, Weir has not announced a confirmed fourth novel or publication date. He has spoken in interviews about working on new material, but nothing has been officially confirmed. Given the pace between his previous novels — six years between The Martian and Artemis, four between Artemis and Project Hail Mary — a fourth book in the mid-2020s would be consistent with his pattern.

What to Read After Andy Weir

Readers who respond to Weir’s hard-SF approach — the scientific rigor, the problem-solving structure, the grounded near-future settings — have several natural directions.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) covers similar planetary territory with far greater political and ecological scope. Robinson’s science is as rigorous as Weir’s, but his novels are denser, slower, and more interested in the social and philosophical dimensions of space colonization. The Martian covers a few hundred days; Robinson covers centuries.

The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey operates at a similar level of scientific plausibility but at novel-series scale — nine books covering decades of a solar-system civilization. The physics of space travel in The Expanse are treated with the same respect Weir brings to them; the storytelling is more conventionally thriller-paced than Robinson, and more politically complex than Weir.

For readers primarily interested in first-contact science fiction following Project Hail Mary, Ted Chiang’s short fiction — particularly “Story of Your Life,” the basis for the film Arrival — covers the question of non-human communication with even greater linguistic and philosophical depth.

Weir has published three novels in fifteen years. The catalog is small and consistent. There are no weak entry points, though there are clear peaks. A reader who works through all three in the recommended order — The Martian, Project Hail Mary, Artemis — will spend around 1,400 pages with one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary science fiction, and will finish with a reasonably complete picture of what Weir can do and what he is still developing. It is a small body of work, but it is one that rewards engagement with its methods as well as its plots.

Frequently Asked Questions

What order should I read Andy Weir books?

Start with The Martian, then Project Hail Mary, then Artemis. The books are not connected by characters or plot, so any order works — but this sequence starts with his most accessible novel, moves to his best, and ends with his most divisive.

How many books has Andy Weir written?

Andy Weir has published three novels: The Martian (2011, traditionally published 2014), Artemis (2017), and Project Hail Mary (2021). He has also published short stories, most notably The Egg, which has been widely shared online.

Should I read The Martian before Project Hail Mary?

Yes, if only because The Martian is the better first Weir experience — it establishes his style, his sense of humor, and his approach to science-as-plot. Project Hail Mary works perfectly as a standalone, but reading The Martian first helps calibrate what Weir does and sets up the emotional payoff of Project Hail Mary landing as a development of that approach rather than just another sci-fi novel.

Is Project Hail Mary a sequel to The Martian?

No. Project Hail Mary is set in the same near-future universe as The Martian and Artemis, but shares no characters and has no plot connections to either book. It is a completely standalone novel.

What age group is Andy Weir for?

Andy Weir’s novels are written for adults but are accessible to confident teenage readers. The content is mostly science-focused with mild language and no graphic violence or sexual content — the books are frequently taught in high school science classrooms because of their accurate depictions of physics, chemistry, and biology.

Books Like The Martian

For science fiction novels with The Martian’s problem-solving optimism, hard science, and compulsive readability, see our Books Like The Martian guide.

Books Like Project Hail Mary

For science fiction novels with Project Hail Mary’s inventive science, emotional stakes, and page-turning momentum, see our Books Like Project Hail Mary guide.

For the Best Science Fiction Books

For the definitive guide to science fiction — from Asimov and Herbert to Andy Weir and Ursula K. Le Guin — see our Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time list.

For the full Andy Weir bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Andy Weir author page on Editors Reads.

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