Project Hail Mary

A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge Dune, by Frank Herbert Diaspora, by Greg Egan The Clockwork Rocket, by Greg Egan The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

It’s a hot topic right now because of the movie, but Project Hail Mary is one of my all time favourites.

Project Hail Mary, I laughed out loud and mocked the premise of the book but it was a great read, one of my best reads ever. Very well done.

I put the Children of Time into my Libby list. Thanks! Project Hail Mary is very good. All of Weir’s stuff is good.

It's between Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time and Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary.

I caught up with some science fiction this year. The Murderbot diaries books by Martha Wells - 6/10. Mixed on these. They're fun to read. The setting is cool and the worldbuilding is shallow but effective (i.e., don't read it if you want game of thrones in space). Each novella takes an afternoon to read. I think "snarky violent droid" is overcooked these days and lost interest after book 5. Light by M. John Harrison - 7/10 excellent prose; great multiple-storyline plot; the journey was better than the destination, but it kept me thinking Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson - 7/10 Fun. If "near future Nigerian/British post-colonial frontier action with guns, robots, and psychic aliens" sounds cool to you, check it out. I liked his Rosewater Trilogy just as much. Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - tough to rate these. brilliant ideas, VERY challenging plots. I wish I didn't get so confused by the end of each book.…

I loved all of Seveneves, and hate Three Body Problem. The biggest difference in theme being, optimism that humanity can overcome any obstacle and flourish. If you want more in that vein, see: Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir Delta-V - Daniel Suarez

* Greg Egan’s short story collections, Diaspora, and Permutation City. Fair warning, Egan puts the “hard” in “hard sci-fi”. * Haven’t finished the Expanse final trilogy, but I really enjoyed the first two. * The Wool series * Project Hail Mary, for story reasons I’d recommend the audio book. * We Are Bob trilogy, fourth book is garbage. * Old Man’s War * The Culture Series by Ian Banks * If you enjoyed Seveneves, and thus can tolerate Stephenson’s consistent habit to drop the ball in the last 20% of his books, Diamond Age is enjoyable.

- Project Hail Mary - Children of Time - Accelerando - The Forever War - Axiomatic

Am 90 pct through Project Hail Mary and agree this book is brilliant. If you're technically / sci-fi inclined you'll love this. The author ties together a great story with scientific knowledge which must have taken significant research. Children of Time is my next audio book coincidentally.

If you’re into Science Fiction: (Note: I listed to these all via the Audible audiobooks, they were all very well narrated and I’d highly recommend listening this way.) #1: The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is amazingly fascinating from beginning to end, if you like speculative evolution zenofiction space operas, you’re in for a real treat. I feel like these books were written for me. I went the audiobook route and chugged through each (roughly 600 page) book, neglecting focus to almost anything else in my life. I would be playing Tetris on my phone (via the Tappy app) while listening at 1.1x speed, which is the perfect amount of mental stimulation to have massive amounts of time go by without noticing. #2: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I don’t want to spoil too much, but this is a must-read for engineer-brain nerds like me that yearn to understand complex systems recreationally. Enough said. Mandatory. I read Artemis by Andy Weir afterwards and enjoyed it too, but Hail Mary is my fave. #3: The Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.…

I read Kurt Vonnegut's _Player_Piano_ and really enjoyed it. It's a story about a heavily computerized society, but the computers are vacuum tube based. "We ran the calculation, replaced all the tubes and ran it again, so we're confident in the result" sort of thing. I also really enjoyed Andy Weir's _Project_Hail_Mary_, and _The_Martian_.

This year I've put myself to the challenge to read at least one book per week which I primarily could complete by reading in the middle of the night while holding our sleeping baby in my arms. It has been an interesting challenge which gave me a lot of fulfilment and has certainly changed my mind on how I view the world. This comment became quite a long read, apologies for that. Books I highly recommend: Churchill by Andrew Roberts (p:1105) A biography about one of the most interesting figures in politics and WWII. Roberts gives a very detailed description of the life of Churchill and manages to keep you interested the entire length of the book. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (p:374) In The God Delusion Dawkins gives arguments why there is no God, why we do not need a God and why religion is damaging to our society. If you are religious it might not be the book for you unless you are open to hear his arguments and line of reasoning. Dawkins will challenge your worldview. The Bomb by Fred Kaplan (p:384)…

Project Hail Mary is such an awesome book. Great buildup, an intriguing plot slowly unfolding with an inquisitive problem solver caught in the middle. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

not released this year, but quite new: Bobiverse Series by Dennis Taylor https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse Project Hail Mary by Weir Andy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54493401-project-hail-ma... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54493401-project-hail-mary)

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir (top recommendation of the year) Sanderson's Skyward Flight series (a few things came out this year, it's young-adult but thoughtfully enjoyable and easy to consume). I read a few Asimov's this year I hadn't gotten around to, but the two that really stood out were 'The Gods Themselve's and 'The End of Eternity'. (I primarily read to sci-fi/fantasy)

The audiobook is worth a listen just for that one special character. Even if you've already read the book

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir By far the best sci-fi book I have read in a long time

I second this. The Hail Mary Project was a great read and even made it into Barack Obama's list[1]. I am working my way through The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin and so far it's a page turner. [1]: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1471168495312420877

Thanks for the tip on REAMDE - it and Dodo are the ones I haven't read. I'll add Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. It's Stephenson's most recent book, and has nice scifi and (HN-crowd-relevant) societal concepts. Beware of a very slow opening. Also: Project Hail Mary. Similar to The Martian in the right ways. More ambitious, with all its benefits and plausibility traps.

Agreed. I mentioned that it is 'imaginative and fun', but it is not the same style of "The Martian" which (in my opinion) had nearly perfect technical execution. I admit to having had some apprehension about a loved author's next effort (I'm looking at you, "Artemis" and "Armada"), but "Hail Mary" did not fulfill that dread for me. So... yay!

Honestly I found Hail Mary to be rather old fashioned, reminding me more of early Niven rather than The Martian. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; I enjoyed it! But he has quite a hill to climb to beat his first novel.

The one that sticks in my head the most (and which I did not think I would enjoy based on the book jacket blurb) is "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I highly recommend to anyone who listens. I also recently encountered "The Fifth Science" by someone named 'Exurb1a' and enjoyed it so much that I am now reading another of his books named "Geometry for Ocelots" Andy Weir's "Hail Mary" is an imaginative and fun read, as is "The Startup Wife" by Tahmima Anam. Oh! And "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet' (or almost anything else) by Becky Chambers.