I’m making this list as more of a personal resource, but one that I feel others would be really interested in. I haven’t been into reading non-fiction or engineering fiction (a term of my own crafting), but I’m really looking to stretch my brain in new ways. This will be a living document. All the book links are to Amazon, and I am not paid by them in any way. I’m also looking to get more into long-form blogging.

The tl;dr version is an Amazon list I put together: Engineering Book List.

Personal List

Two books that fall into this category (and I absolutely loved them both) are:

• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
• The Martian by Andy Weir

Elon Musk

Not quite the same thing, but the real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk, points to these books (according to Lifehack) as a stepping stone for him:

• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
• Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
• Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon
• Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark
• Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
• Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Orestes and Erik M. Conway
• The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

Reddit

I took to subreddit, /r/AskEngineers to ask a broader audience books they’ve found that emulate The Martian. Post: Other Engineering Fiction Like The Martian. They said the genre I’m looking for is “hard sci-fi“, which is based on real science. Here’s my post, followed by a compiled list of the recommendations:

• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
• The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Book 1: Red Mars)
• The Soul of a New Machine by  Tracy Kidder
• Slide Rule by Nevil Shute
• The Rocket Company (Library of Flight) by Patrick J. G. Stiennon
• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich & Leo Janos
• Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story by John Bloom
• The Silo Series by Hugh Howey (Book 1: Wool)
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
• The Last Centurion by John Ringo
• Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (Book 1: The Color of Magic)
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
• Tales of Known Space series by Larry Niven (There are 48 books in the series. Specifically recommended was Ringworld)
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
• Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Von Neumann’s War by John Ringo & Travis Taylor
• DAEMON series by Daniel Suarez (DAEMON and Freedom^TM)
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Adventures of Conrad Stargard series by Leo A. Frankowski (Book 1: The Cross-Time Engineer)
• Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge (Book 1: A Fire Upon The Deep)
• The Jackhammer Elegies by Stefan Jaeger
• Saturn Run by  John Sandford & Ctein
• Flood by Stephen Baxter
• Engineer Trilogy by KJ Parker (Book 1: Devices and Desires)
• Arkwright: A Novel by Allen Steele
• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
• Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
• Stranger in a Strange Land (Remembering Tomorrow) by Robert A. Heinlein
• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
• Blindsight by Peter Watts
• The Rocket Company (Library of Flight) by Patrick J. G. Stiennon
• A Signal Shattered by Eric S. Nylund
• Signal to Noise by Eric S. Nylund
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman