Honestly, I'm not sure a super long adaptation is necessary for Project Hail Mary. I could see all of the major beats getting done in about 2 hours or so. There are chapters with fairly long descriptions of the experiments that could be summed up in just a few seconds of screentime. People who want to see the math can read the book. Part of making a good movie adaptation is realizing that film and print are different media and a fully faithful direct translation rarely works very well. The movie ends up bloated and overly exposition heavy, sometimes forgetting that the audience can see…
I would not classify it as great, but somewhat below par. I made a list of things I did not like about the book, but it would spoil many things. Not spoiling bits: - All characters are two-dimensional. The further from the main protagonist, the more 2D. - Dialogues go from wooden to cringe-worthy, with few exceptions. - Protagonist swings from super over- cautious to careless and back. - Alien with deus-ex-machina syndrome, always having the perfect tech, material or skill to fill in the lacks of the protagonist. - Tired trope of amnesia to make the protagonist remember…
I totally understand abandoning ExForce. It got better once the writer went full time but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I put up with it because I’m a completionist and the author has a plan to end the series in just a few more books so I’ll stick it out but I get it. I think the core ideas in Bobiverse keep me hooked as I just enjoy them but I see your point and don’t begrudge anyone who gave up on it. This is a totally random question but have you ever read the Honor Harrington series? They aren’t related at all (other than “sci-fi”) but I’m always interested in other series people…
Relativistic speeds are a plot point in Andy Weir's recent book "The Hail Mary Project". You might know him from the Martian a few years ago. Scott Manly did a Youtube episode on all sorts of weird propulsion mechanisms that people have come up with over the years a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEZv_OXA_NI. There are some interesting concepts in there. Including the anti matter based concept discussed in the article. Particularly fusion looks like it might get us some interesting amounts of delta v.
Of course there are personal tastes, so I'd simply look at large scale data. The winner for 2022 is A Desolation Called Peace. [1] As per Amazon it ended up with far fewer purchases, lower reviews amongst those who purchased it (in spite of a rather conspicuous amount of reviews that are generally critical of the book then giving it 5 stars anyhow), and it won the Hugo. Of course the Hugo obviously shouldn't just be "#1 book [in genre] on Amazon" because the entire point of awards is to focus on quality, which may not always be clearly reflected by sales. But when even the relatively small…
What authors of the past were neglected in your opinion, or perhaps unfairly promoted? In modern times I think this is fairly easy to demonstrate. Books like Project Hail Mary are insufficient to win, while the most winning works are not especially exceptional. Those that are, perhaps The Three Body Problem, tend be the exception rather than the rule. The vote also is not fair. People publicly organize voting cliques on e.g. Reddit (to say nothing of what's happening in private), and the new system is extremely exploitable. But I think that's beside the point. The issue is the outcome. The…
100 Books like Project Hail Mary (https://shepherd.com/books-like/project-hail-mary) : - Travels with Charley : With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. - Invisible Women : Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and…
I liked Project Hail Mary (and Artemis, and The Martian) but I thought it was a little too heavy in the programmer narrative style. I won’t spoil anything in case someone reads this comment who hasn’t read it, but a large section involving establishing a communication protocol really wore me down from the story. The big revelation about how he got there also felt nearly translucent in how obvious it was when it was revealed. I hope he writes a couple more books though, if I can ever get some grandkids outta my kids, Weir’s books will be in their collection for sure.
The Walter Issacson biography quoted Kip Thorne as saying if Einstein didn’t come up with relativity, likely no one would have for 30-40 years after. Which is insane and totally sensible. This theory had nothing to do with any observation or conundrum we could measure back then or even today except the weird discrepancy in Mercurys orbit. Truly a great genius with unparalleled originality. Somehow beats newton for this reason imo. Great spoilers for the book Project Hail Mary below so stop reading if you’ve not finished it (and why havent you?): it was such a brilliant idea in that book to…
If you didn't like the 'painful detail' in The Martian, you will positively hate Project Hail Mary. Much more of the 'painful detail' as you call it with much less interesting characters. If you loved The Martian (like I did) and enjoy lots of random science-ish tangents and pseudo-engineering problem solving, you'll find stuff to like in this book. But it is a too long, worse written version of The Martian, with a less interesting protagonist. Weir tries to make the story more interesting by adding an extra mystery to solve (the main character wakes up with amnesia and has to piece together…