Embrace Your Inner Astronaut With These 16 Books, Movies for National Space Day

pcmag.com:

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American sent into space. He spent 15 minutes there as the sole occupant of Freedom 7, the impetus for dubbing the date National Space Day.

Here on Earth, the space program has inspired many artists who may never zip through the cosmos on a rocket to create their own faraway worlds on the page or screen. In honor of National Space Day, we polled the PCMag staff about some of their favorite space-themed books, movies, and TV shows. Settle in this weekend with their top picks.

When you read through the blurbs for In the Quick(Opens in a new window), you’ll see a lot of references to Jane Eyre and The Martian, two books that might seem alien to each other. But both books' themes cohabitate on these pages and in the alternate world in which this story takes place. June is a 12-year-old genius who, on Earth, attends the astronaut training school named after her beloved deceased uncle. She makes it her mission to right a wrong caused by one of his fuel cells, a journey that takes her to the Pink Planet.

Potayto, potahto; let’s call the whole thing a space adventure. Astronaut Mark Watney becomes one of the first people to walk on Mars, only to have the achievement evaporate in a storm of space dust that leaves him alone on the planet. He is determined to use his engineering and agriculture skills to keep himself alive and to find his way back to Earth(Opens in a new window). 

Before we got lost in theories about whether or not Jodie Foster traveled through a wormhole during those 18 hours of static on her recording device, her character Dr. Ellie Arroway lived inside the pages of a novel by Carl Sagan(Opens in a new window). If you’ve only seen the movie, reading the book will give