We are two weeks into the month of September now. I think this might be a reasonable amount of time for some readers to have completed this book if they started early this month. At least I finished it last week. I’ll leave this thread pinned for the rest of the month and next weekend I’ll create the poll for the next book of the month. That poll will end on the last day of the month and the cycle will continue.
Feel free to include as many spoilers as you want in your comments as the post itself is marked as containing spoilers.
I’m hoping someone else could get started or else I will have to. 😅
Jazz Hands ♫ ♪ ♪ ♬
One of my favourite sci-fi books of all time. I managed to have nothing spoiled and was stunned by the direction the book went in. Loved it.
My sister taped over an illustration showing the spaceship on first page as that is in itself a spoiler.
I keep recommending the book to everyone while not saying anything about it, since it’s best to discover everything on your own.
I always love to go in to a book completely blind, but OMG, I was so glad I did with this one.
I listened to it on a long drive recently, and really enjoyed the audiobook version. The voice actor did a good job, and I liked the chords with the alien voice. The last 20% we were listening on the edge of our seats.
And then, a few weeks later, it’s… fine. I like to call books like this “Good Time Fun”. It probably won’t be remembered in 100 years like other more timeless works, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun if you just go along for the ride.
Another commenter suggested Young Adult, and that’s exactly what it feels like. There’s challenges, strong emotions, a bit of a a twist or two (pretty easy to see coming), clever creativity, Science To The Rescue, and Friendship Conquers Everything! You know, Good Time Fun!
John, Paul, George, Ringo and Jazz Hands
The real story wasn’t what was in the book it was the 🎵🎶🎵🎶🎶🎵 that we made along the way
I am unsure if it is possible to write about meeting an alien species and not have sixteen people and their cousin not poo poo the whole thing. That said, I loved the way Mr. Weir had me rooting for the alien main character more than the human. Fun Sci-fi read. Somewhat Scooby-Doo, but I expect that with Weir and am totally ok with it. There is nothing wrong with feeling good about a science fiction book.
It’s just straight up “fun”. I really enjoyed it, but would never suggest it’s one of the sci Fi greats, and is defensible among the greats.
That said, I’ll reread it in a year or so, and recommend it to non tech/nerd friends looking for a sci Fi story
Oh, the audio book is excellent. I can’t imagine it any other way
The Audio book was FANTASTIC. It’s a bit goofy and plays a little loosy goosey with some of the “SCI” part in Sci-fi. I also recommend this to anybody looking for a book recommendation, it’s an easy read and entertaining.
It did however highlight a very interesting challenge that the movie is going to face.
In the book Grace sets up a translation system for communication initially but after a while just simply understands what is being said. In a book/audio book format the reader will only understand the words grace understands and because of the format we accept the limitation and don’t really think about it.
How the heck are they going to make an alien who speaks in chords understandable for the audience in the film?
Probably have him build an audio device he wears that runs his translation code. Then never mention it again
That or subtitles, like how han solo just chats with aliens in the cantina, each speaking how they speak
Hire Ray Porter to voice Rocky. Lots of movies have parts where they magically switch to English.
Hunt for Red October, Avatar, 13th warrior, and more.
From what I’ve heard Emma Stone is playing Rocky.
Yes a lot of movies do magically switch to English but I am unaware of any where the actual language itself and learning it and misunderstanding it is a major plot point. I’m sure there must be I just can’t think of any.
Avatar 2 does that exact thing early in the film.
I noticed that Andy Weir’s publisher has made a deal to make the English language version of the audiobook of this an “Audible Exclusive”. Pretty gross. It means you can only buy it from Audible, and you can’t even get it from a public library.
I only listen to his books as audiobooks and I refuse to pay audible prices. I listened to the sample and it didn’t hook me like the Martian or Artemis so I guess I go without
First I know that everyone loves to hate on Amazon and rightly so. Second I am also aware that there are apps that allow you to use audio books from public libraries which is great resource that everyone should take advantage of if they can.
I guess the question I have for you is how quickly do you go through audio books? If it’s only 1 or 2 books a month Audible isn’t that bad.
For me $15 a month for audible has me more than covered for the audio books I listen to. If I do end up finishing my current book before the next credit of the month there are plenty of podcasts and free audiobooks to listen to to tide me over, or I can go back and re-listen to a past book.
Personally I believe that Audio books should ALWAYS cost significantly more than the original book. The amount of work that goes into an audio book recording is mind boggling in some instances and I am willing to pay to make sure publishers will still provide audio books as options.
wether or not someone should be taking the option of making it a Amazon exclusive is a challenging question. Someone probably laid down a stack of cash with some graphs that said this is our user base. You will get the majority of your plays here anyways and we are willing to pay for it. Does that mean less opportunity overall for readers? Yes. Is it also possible that this ensures a better pay day for the Author, Voice Actor, Editors and Engineers? Also possibly yes. I have no issues with creative getting paid for their work.
listen at work so I can easily get through 3 or 4 books a week. Audible has never been a reasonable value proposition to me as someone who consumes 40-60 hours of audio content a week at 2x speed.
I’ll continue taking advantage of cheap or free content, unlimited subscription services, piracy and text to speech AI software until audible can actually compete with those options at a reasonable price point. So yeah, I will listen to this book at some point. I’ll be damned if I pay $15 for a single book when I can get an entire unlimited subscription to any other type of media that is far more expensive to produce. Audible is a terrible value in the current media landscape and that has nothing to do with hating on Amazon.
I’m happy for Andy to be able to make a living writing, but keep in mind his origin story with the Martian was self publishing on a website for free. His fans asked for him to make it available on Kindle simply for a better, easier format and he listed it at the minimum price. Now that he is an established author the industry realized they can profit off of him, they want to milk us for all they can.
Let’s not pretend audible is putting a fair share in the hands of the creators here. I’m sure Andy and everyone else is doing well for themselves but it’s gone far beyond funding the artists.
Your points are fair and you definitely consume a lot of content compared to me (at least where audio books are concerned). If you are OK with piracy then there is no real need to discuss cost and value. Nothing is going to match the value of free. For me Audible is a good value because I won’t pirate media and their is enough content there (a token a month combined with included free content) to keep me occupied basically forever.
The thing that I can’t figure out qnd no one has been able to explain to me is this: If no one pays for content or is only paying a small amount for unlimited access, how are the artists and content creators going to make a living?
In an ideal world every creator would be able to crowd source their success like Andy did/slash Brandon Sanderson does but I feel like a lot of smaller artists would never gain enough traction to be found by a broader audience.
Other people have pointed out possibilities like Patreon but if I subscribed to the lowest teir of every creator I follow I would be paying an absurd amount of money each month. Probably waaay more than I could afford.
The one thing that I do to try and support artists is that if I find myself consuming their content on a larger scale compared to my other stuff I will find a way to purchase physical media from them. Be it a book from Andy, A vinyl record from Devin Townsend, or a chalk bag from Magnus Midtbo. That way more of my money goes to support them as directly as possible. Piracy and unlimited subscription models just don’t fit the way that I consume content.
If you have other ideas on what we can do to properly support content creators, get exposed to smaller unknown creators from around the globe, and get rid of money going into the hands of giant corporations I am all ears.
Libraries have existed for centuries and somehow books are still being sold. Philosophically I believe information should be free and piracy is functionally the modern equivalent of libraries.
Piracy is a service and access problem. When the only subscription you needed was Netflix to get all the best content I didn’t pirate TV. That landscape is changing rapidly and I’m back to flying the Jolly Roger for any shows or movies I might want to watch. I’d genuinely prefer not to pirate if it means supporting the creators, easier access and a fair price.
That said I do support creators I like and I’ve happily spent money on everything from YouTube memberships, patreons, Kickstarters, podcasts, etc. I tend to prefer ways of supporting that cut out the egregious publishing industries, in fact that’s a large part of how I became a fan of Andy Weir in the first place.
As far as discoverability goes, I think it’s easier than it’s ever been, we’re far past the need for publishers to get content out there when it comes to indie books, music, videos and games. Though I do agree it can be hard for people starting out. There has to be a perfect storm of quality + viral success, but that’s not much different to landing a publishing deal.
In a perfect world I’d like to see an open standard for multimedia. I should be able to browse for media on a protocol similar to federation or HTML, where I can connect to that protocol with a media browser of my choice, and the monetization is set by the creators instead of the platform they’re hosted on. That’s a bit of a pipe dream, I know, but it’s always felt strange to me that I need a dozen different locked down apps for each service when I’m functionally consuming the same type of media across all of them.
At the same time we are inevitably moving toward a future where automation will render obligatory employment obsolete and impossible for everyone, so we will need to figure out how to take care of more than just artists. I do think that would play a massive role in how we look at copyright all together.
Uh, such a tease! I was scrolling through Lemmy when I came across this article. As the first half of the cover image entered my screen I got all hyped seeing Andy Weir’s name, thinking it’s a new book announcement. Then I realized it’s Hail Mary.
Great book. I think Weir’s genre of choice is: slightly self deprecating, really smart specialist is left alone in the face of great adversity and works to overcome it using science and creative thinking. And you know what? I’m a fan of that genre.
Some people complain it’s just the character from The Martian in a different story. Well I liked that character so I liked PHM. Same concept, different medium is Zelda breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. Maybe it is a giant extension of the first game but that’s exactly what I wanted in the first place.
Andy Weir made a short story for Amazon in the book “Forward”. I am still trying to source it cause it seems like an exclusive to Amazon e-books. Came out on 2021.
After being mostly disappointed by Artemis and The Martian I was quite wary of this one. Perhaps my expectations were more reasonable this time around, but I think it was also a better book. Considering how those other books were trying their hardest to stay within a reasonable level of scientific accuracy and plausibility I was completely surprised that there turned out to be an alien in this one. An intelligent sentient species no less. He also just kind of showed up out of nowhere and I was in disbelief that that was the direction the story was going for a bit.
Like someone else mentioned I did find the book to be a bit too much “for all ages” kind of thing. Like it was intentionally written so that it could some day be a PG movie for both kids and adults. There is nothing wrong with this of course it is just not my usual thing. I did find it a bit eye rolling at times how great this supposed average teacher was at any kind of science and alien communication. Rocky was clearly the best character in my opinion. If he wasn’t there to offset the whole lone savior idea like The Martian I don’t think I would have enjoyed this book.
The science bits were a bit too sciencey and not enough fictiony for my tastes, but I don’t think it is Weir’s style to try and make up his own fictional science. Almost all of the science was just real science and math. I think the only thing that was pretty much entirely made up was the idea that something like astrophage and its neutrino harvesting amoeba could exist. I did like the details given for everything Ryland and Rocky were doing.
I kind of wish he actually managed to get back to Earth. It felt like a bit of a cop out for us to never fully see the impact to Earth. We know that at least somebody survived, but I wanted to see the scale of the damage. Anyway I liked this book more than I expected and I’ll more than likely read whatever book Weir publishes next.
Unrelated, but your desk is beautiful!
I read the three body problem trilogy at about the same time, it was so nice to have collaboration between aliens in hail Mary as opposed to the dark forest universe.
I thought it was great sci Fi, and I’m excited for Andy Weir’s next. Love his sense of realism.
Oh man the Three Body Problem. That there is quite the interesting series of books. It’s one of the few that I go back to on a regular(ish) basis to re-read.
The last hundred or so pages were rough. I had to stop and read a book about trees to get through it.
It was an awesome series all in all, but man, did it get dark. So you re reading should I just make sure you’re doing ok?
I enjoyed this one, a bit less than the martian but more than Artemis. Like the other two, it is a book that’s easy to read and a page turner, his humor resonates pretty well with me. However having read three books from Andy Weir, they all feel very much the same and I get a little bit of “one trick pony” vibe from his books because they’re so similar.
I enjoyed the concept of the book. I didn’t like being constantly reminded that Ryland Grace was a teacher as if I couldn’t remember that between chapters. There was way too much of this beating me over the head with simple science and reminders of things that happened earlier that it took me out of enjoying the story.
Yeah it was like that all over. The characters are more or less wooden planks and it feels like the reader is being treated as a kid. A bit 2010 and later Discovery Channel. I still personally really enjoyed it but I can see it’s shortcomings
OMG i love that book
I found it entertaining but a bit shallow in terms of dialog. It felt aimed at the younger crowd. Don’t get me wrong it was most definitely a fun read.
I have to say that I just don’t get the hype about this book.
Project Hail Mary is really targeted at a middle grade reading and maturity level. I would have happily given it to our kids to read in middle grade (as I did The Martian).
It’s a Robinson Crusoe meets a buddy in space boys-own-adventure tale (although Weir insists on male gendering a hermaphrodite when ‘they/them’ is well understood). There are clear indications that the story was told to pull in immature readers - starting with the ludicrous scene where Grace has spent days waiting for zero G without stowing any of his lab equipment or supplies.
It’s a compellingly written ‘work the problem’ read but anything beyond high school science concepts isn’t really there. Once again, I feel like we’re seeing more overhyped STEM based on concepts that haven’t advanced beyond what a mid 20th century bachelors degree would cover.
It held my attention as an easy read while fighting a bug, I can’t see picking up another of his books for myself.
There are a few very odd ‘too much information’ references to sexual relationships and use of alcohol that seem almost awkwardly placed to bump up the level, but there’s not really enough in there to even warrant the ‘school edition’ treatment that ‘The Martian’ got. Otherwise nothing stretches past middle grade emotional maturity.
All told, I was expecting more.
Well, for the majority of the book you’ve only got two characters and one of them is an alien so that does limit things a bit, but yeah despite touching on a lot of high-school science topics the premise of the book itself is pretty basic.
Still enjoyable, but not as deep/complex as say maybe something by Vinge, Tchaikovsky (the author, not the musician), or maybe Friedman.
TBF I cheated on this one and did it partly by audiobook while getting chores done. Porter does a pretty good job of conveying the emotions of the main character which IMO does add a bit to the engagement
Project Hail Mary is such a better book than Artemis.
The theory that he was under pressure to publish his 2nd book after the success of The Martian, so he just put out Artemis may hold water. Lol
I actually enjoyed Artemis. Its nowhere near The Martian, but still a good book in its own right.
I’ll add some Artemis love here. I was disappointed by the comparably lower success because I was very ready for a sequel. I loved the dynamic that was established between the main character and the ruler of Artemis - it kind of reminded me of Vimes and Vetinari. I do feel that Hail Mary was better though.
The line that really made me laugh from Artemis is one of the last where the director says “and if you want to make babies, somebodys gotta get fucked”. I love how Andy just throws shit like that in his books. A mayor may think that, but they arent supposed to say it.
I have only one thing to say about this book: “Good good good!” ;)
jazz hands
🎶 🎶 🎵 🎶 🎵 🎵 ✨ 💗
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