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Notes -
"Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. It's pretty good! Lonely, nerdy, interesting. I'd give it an easy 9/10. I'm intentionally not giving a detailed review because it's impossible to talk about the book without major spoilers.
Project Hail Mary is excellent. It's a bit softer than The Martian, but still one of the best hard science fiction novels I have ever read. MC is just Mark Watney with less swearing, but that's OK; I like Watney, and other authors have made a career out of writing the same character over and over again (e.g. Robert Heinlein).
It is, indeed, impossible to talk about without spoilers; MC wakes up in a room with no memory and has to go from there. But if you are OK with spoiling maybe the first fourth of the novel, there is a great review over on /r/rational.
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Reading it too, right now, since it was mentioned here and I liked the Martian film.
That said, I find the book...mediocre, as far as literature goes. I appreciate the elaborate nerd adventure that's laid out in there, but at the same time so much of it requires fantastically unlikely coincidence or outright localized stupidity to happen that it's just too transparently designed to deliver a sequence of set-piece action, tension and camraderie scenes. At the same time all the characters seem very cartoonish and unlifelike. The writing itself is competent, but artistically uninteresting.
I'm reading it. I'll finish it. It nerd-sniped me as effectively as any hard-ish sci-fi book can. But at the same time it feels immensely overrated.
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Public Service Announcement for anyone who might want to read Project Hail Mary (the book) and hasn't yet: the trailers for Project Hail Mary (the movie) contain major spoilers, for something like a quarter of the most interesting plot developments in the book, without the context that made those developments as interesting as they were.
My kids and I had already read the book, but I feel bad for anyone who would have wanted to read it but didn't know about it or just didn't get to it yet.
Anyone who was a fan of The Martian and would also enjoy something a little less dry (at the cost of being less grounded; this time there's a vital plot device that's a much bigger stretch than "implausibly strong dust storm") should read Project Hail Mary ... and if somehow you've also avoided seeing any of the movie trailers yet, you should read Project Hail Mary quickly, and until you're at least halfway through the book you shouldn't see Ryan Gosling's face (possibly disguised by a beard - don't be fooled!) pop up on a screen without immediately closing your eyes, covering your ears with your hands, and loudly saying "La la la la" for the next three minutes.
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