The Best Books, Movies, Video Games, and Podcasts to Check Out After Watching ‘For All Mankind'[html]
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In a genre dominated by grim, dystopian visions of the future, For All Mankind is a powerful counterweight: an alternate history that imagines a timeline in which the Soviet Union beat America to the Moon, prolonging the space race and laying the foundation for a more egalitarian, tech-forward 20th and 21st centuries.
If you've finished the recently completed fifth season and need more of that kind of sci-fi positivity, you’re probably already excited about the spin-off series Star City, and you’ve probably already made your way through our list of shows with similar vibes to watch. Hence, it's time to explore other media. Here are the best movies, books, games, and podcasts with similarly starry-eyed vibes.
The best books like For All Mankind
For All Mankind is a dense, novelistic series with deep world-building and terrific character work—which means a good book is your best bet for filling that rocket-shaped void in your life.
The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
This award-winning novel, the start of a series, is the ideal book to read if you love For All Mankind. It’s an alternate history that imagines a devastating meteorite impact that almost ends civilization and sends the world careening toward environmental disaster. In the desperate effort to recover and save humanity, manpower shortages mean women step into roles they were traditionally barred from, including the race to the stars. Despite the cataclysm that opens the story, this is the kind of optimistic sci-fi that imagines humanity will rise to every occasion, and fans of the show will love it.
The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
If your favorite parts of For All Mankind involved the terrifying training for, and experience of spaceflight, especially in the early seasons, this legendary work of “new journalism” is the ticket. It recounts the early work in the U.S. on rocket-powered aircraft, Project Mercury, and the first astronauts, detailing the incredibly challenging and dangerous work undertaken by these men. It also delves into the impact their careers had on their families, and offers real-world background that makes the experience of the show even richer.
The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
If you loved the way Mars colonization is depicted in For All Mankind—that grounded, plausible approach that makes it all seem thrillingly possible—check out Robinson’s Nebula and Hugo award-winning series. It shares the same basic optimism, imagining a reality where the world, driven by looming ecological disaster, comes together to terraform and colonize Mars. It’s got a similar scope, spanning nearly two centuries of future history beginning in the year 2026,offering an intelligent view of what a project of that scale would involve.
Singer Distance, by Ethan Chatagnier
One thing missing from For All Mankind is alien life—unless you count the microscopic cells discovered on Saturn’s moon Titan. If you wished there were some E.T.s in the show to spice things up, Chatagnier’s novel will thrill you, revealing as it does in a world where humanity began a laborious communication with Martians in 1894, involving enormous glyphs carved into the Martian surface and some heavy-duty math. When humanity fails to solve the Martian equations, the red planet falls silent for decades, until a brilliant young student formulates a message that reopens the conversation, with world-changing consequences.
Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Part of the charm of For All Mankind is in the characters and their relationships. For more of that vibe, Atmosphere is the right choice. In the early 1980s, astrophysicist Joan Goodwin is thrilled when NASA announces an initiative to recruit female scientists into its space program. Training to be an astronaut is challenging and rewarding—and so are the relationships she forges with her fellow recruits. Not everyone is a friend and not everything is perfect—and a looming disaster in 1984 that puts a shadow on everything—but the story celebrates exceptional people and humanity’s enormous potential in a way fans of the show will recognize.
The best movies like For All Mankind
One of the great things about For All Mankind is the combination of small-scale human drama and the mind-blowing vistas of outer space. For big-screen versions of that, check out these films.
Apollo 13 (1995)
The thrills found in the early seasons of For All Mankind were typically centered on the incredibly dangerous initial attempts to blast off Earth and head to the Moon and beyond. Apollo 13 captures the real-world drama and tension of the 1970 Moon mission that went terribly wrong, stranding three astronauts in a disabled lunar module and prompting a desperate effort on Earth to solve a litany of physics challenges and get them home alive. It’s the perfect choice if you’re jonesing for space race pathos. Rent Apollo 13 on Prime Video.
The Martian (2015)
Space is a pretty dangerous place, as are the other planets in our solar system. The Martian captures both the wonder of exploration and the human drive to survive and triumph over adversity that marks For All Mankind as a special show, telling the story of astronaut Mark Watney, marooned on Mars with insufficient resources for long-term survival. It’s tense, thrilling, and ultimately a celebration of the human spirit, as the world puts aside political differences and comes together to mount a massive rescue mission. Stream The Martian on Fubo or rent it on Prime Video.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
It’s entirely earthbound and has a very different aesthetic—not so much realistic as "computer-generated retrofuturism"—but Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow captures the gee-whiz, let’s do this energy of For All Mankind while also envisioning an alternate history where humanity develops technology along vastly different lines. There are airships, giant robots, and a flying legion of old-school fighter planes in this universe, which is deeply indebted to 1930s sci-fi aesthetics, but under all the CGI flash is a celebration of humanity’s courage and resilience that fans of the show will love. Stream Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on Hoopla or rent it on Prime Video.
First Man (2018)
Another film exploring the incredible courage and determination of the early astronauts, First Man focuses on Neil Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling), the first man on the Moon. In the early 1960s, Armstrong was reeling from the death of his young daughter and entered the Gemini program at a time when the Soviet Union was perceived to be beating the U.S. in the space race. The film explores the deep personal costs to all the men and women connected to the massive project, from lives lost to serious injury and emotional stress, while accurately depicting just how terrifyingly primitive the technology used to get to the Moon actually was. Rent First Man on
