Saturday, November 16, 2024

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

 

Earth is threatened by an interstellar virus that's eating the sun, threatening human extinction.  So they harness the virus to propel a spaceship and find an antidote.  And the main character, a grade school science teacher turned astronaut with amnesia, has to figure out how to save the world when he wakes up light years away.  

Implausible? Exactly.  Escape that I need right now? Yes.  

I've enjoyed lots of science fiction being a big Asimov fan, and a reader of Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Douglas Adams, among others.  This book was a diversion with a quirky main character who can miraculously fix anything that goes wrong on the ship, explaining the problems and fixes for a good dose of science and math along the way.  He's aiming for the source of the antidote and meets a fellow traveler...I won't spoil it but it's a bro tale of saving their parts of the universe.  Fun read.

Published:  2021  Read: November 2024  Genre: Science Fiction


Quotes:

"Light is a funny thing.  It's wavelength defines what it can and can't interact with.  Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally non existent to that photon.  That's why there's a mesh over the window of a microwave.  The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through.  But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely.  So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off."

[Rocky is the alien the narrator encounters in space] "Rocky speaks with musical chords.  While it's very difficult to make a computer turn human speech into texts, it is very easy to make a computer identify musical notes and find them in a table."

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