Reading List
Authors Like
On 14 February 1990 Voyager 1, more than six billion kilometres from home, turned its camera back at Carl Sagan’s urging and photographed Earth as a speck of light. Sagan, born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in 1934, had been taken as a small child to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and in a library as a boy he learned that the stars were distant suns. He helped design the plaque on Pioneer 10 and the Golden Record carried by both Voyagers, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for The Dragons of Eden, and in 1980 presented Cosmos, a thirteen-part television series seen by at least 500 million people in 60 countries. He died in Seattle on 20 December 1996, aged 62. The ten writers below share his conviction that science belongs to everyone, and his habit of making the universe personal.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Popular science · Astronomy · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
The closest matches are Ann Druyan, who co-wrote Cosmos and later made two new Cosmos series, Timothy Ferris, who produced the Voyager Golden Record with Sagan’s team and wrote Coming of Age in the Milky Way, and Jacob Bronowski, whose thirteen-part BBC series The Ascent of Man (1973) came seven years before Cosmos. Further down is a British philosopher who spent her career arguing that science cannot answer every question it is asked to.
10 authors like Carl Sagan
Where to start if you loved Carl Sagan
If you want Cosmos today, read Ann Druyan.
Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020), the companion book to the series she wrote and directed.
If you want the history of astronomy, read Timothy Ferris.
Coming of Age in the Milky Way (1988): how humans worked out where they are.
If you want the series that came first, read Jacob Bronowski.
The Ascent of Man (1974), the book of his 1973 BBC series.
If you want the argument against, read Mary Midgley.
Science as Salvation (1992): why science should not be asked to do the work of meaning.
If you want more Sagan, start with Cosmos.
Then Pale Blue Dot (1994), its sequel, and The Demon-Haunted World (1995), his case for scepticism.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Carl Sagan
Who writes like Carl Sagan?
Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris and Jacob Bronowski are the closest: Druyan co-wrote Cosmos, Ferris produced the Voyager Golden Record and writes the history of astronomy, and Bronowski made The Ascent of Man. Carlo Rovelli and Janna Levin write physics with the same sense of wonder.
What should I read after Cosmos?
Timothy Ferris’s Coming of Age in the Milky Way (1988) for the history, and Ann Druyan’s Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020) for the story brought up to date.
What should I read after The Demon-Haunted World?
Mary Midgley’s Science as Salvation (1992), which asks how far science can go as a guide to life, and, for a cautionary ancestor, Camille Flammarion, the astronomer who believed in séances.
Is there a new Carl Sagan book?
No. Sagan died in 1996; his last book, Billions and Billions (1997), was published after his death, and The Varieties of Scientific Experience (2006) collects lectures he gave in 1985.
Which Carl Sagan book should I read first?
Cosmos (1980) is the place to start. Pale Blue Dot (1994) is its sequel, and Contact (1985) is his only novel.
Who wrote Cosmos with Carl Sagan?
The 1980 series was written by Sagan, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter. Druyan later created Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) and directed Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020).
Sources
List last reviewed 31 October 2026.
Read next
