Pillar to the Sky by William R. Forstchen

What’s the tallest skyscraper man could build? The truth will probably boggle your mind – and provides the inspiration for New York Times bestselling author William Forstchen’s thrilling tale about the race to build a ‘space elevator’ that would rear miles into the sky, piercing the Earth’s atmosphere.

With a multitude of insurmountable problems facing us on Earth – including diminishing oil supplies, global pollution and overcrowding – the setting of Forstchen’s 2014 novel resonates strongly, as does the frustration as a global team of scientists try to overcome bureaucracy, corruption and greed to make their planet-saving dream a reality. You can imagine them facing the same obstacles in our real world; and that’s what makes the book so realistic.

The Return by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes

If you want to read a realistic novel about space, who better to write it than a man who’s actually been there? Believe it or not, the second man on the moon – the inimitable Buzz Aldrin – penned this thrilling tale, in collaboration with prolific author John Barnes.

In this novel, the cold war between Pakistan and India heats up to a boiling point, and the detonation of a nuclear device in the Earth’s atmosphere sends an EMP across the globe which fries circuitry and electronics worldwide. That would be bad enough – but the EMP also impacts the International Space Station, which starts a fatal descent to Earth.

Only disgraced astronaut Scott Blackstone can potentially save the doomed astronauts – by teaming up with a secret skunkworks project that possesses the only means to return to space in time.

The vivid realism of this novel demonstrates Aldrin’s unmatched knowledge of space travel – and the thrilling tale keeps you on the edge of your seat from the first page to the last.

One Way by S.J. Morden

All the best murder mysteries take place in a closed environment – the stranded Orient Express, a storm-wracked manor house, or – in the case of this thrilling science fiction novel – the barren surface of Mars.

In One Way, author S.J. Morden tells the tale of eight convicts given the chance at a new life, as they establish the first colony on Mars; knowing that their journey there is as much of a death sentence as they would have received at home. But when a series of ‘accidents’ starts claiming the lives of the colonists, astronaut (and convicted killer) Frank Kittridge starts to suspect that there’s a sinister agenda at work.

There’s a really unique premise behind the concept of this book, and it answers the question of how to tackle an issue like planetary colonization when the pioneers know they’re making a one-way trip. With the realism and scientific grounding of The Martian and the thrills of a proper whodunit, this is a great read.

Gunpowder Moon by David Pedreira

A murder mystery takes center stage in this next novel, too – although it’s set a little closer to home. Voted by Nerdmuch as one of the Best New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books of 2018, Gunpowder Moon takes place on the Sea of Serenity in 2072, when a lunar mining operation is rocked by humanity’s first interplanetary murder. It’s down to former Marine Caden Dechert to find the culprit before he strikes again.

Once more, the scientific grounding people like about Andy Weir’s book is present in Pedreira’s novel – with careful research conducted to make the fictional lunar colony as realistic and ‘possible’ as it can be. 

2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke 

I always like to round off these lists with a classic, and perhaps there’s no more classic tale of space exploration than the Odyssey series, by Arthur C. Clarke. I read 2010 as a teenager and much preferred it to the original and the movie of 2001. 

It’s ironic now to look at the (back then) oh-so-far-in-the-future date of 2010 and see how much Clarke got wrong – like the continuation of the cold war, for example. But so much remains right; with the technology of space travel envisioned even five decades ago, and still being turned into reality today.

To my mind, 2010: Odyssey Two is superior to the original because it’s less esoteric and grounded. It has a deeply meaningful and satisfactory end, and remains one of the most realistic of space travel novels even decades after publication.