Phil in SF started reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth …
aka @kingrat@sfba.social. I'm following a lot of bookwyrm accounts, since that seems to be the only way to get reviews from larger servers to this small server. Also, I will like & boost a lot of reviews that come across my feed. I will follow most bookwyrm accounts back if they review & comment. Social reading should be social.
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82% complete! Phil in SF has read 23 of 28 books.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth …
Reluctant hitman Henry Thompson has fallen on hard times. His grip on life is disintegrating, his pistol hand shaking, his …
Joe Reacher interrupts the drive of a promising officer in War Plans. When she stops her car, Joe Reacher executes her.
Jack Reacher is briefly assigned a post where he has to oversee the investigation of who killed the officer. Something is fishy when the local cops nab a recluse with no military background and claim it's a robbery gone wrong.
Will he ever figure out it was his brother? Yes. Yes he will because he's Reacher. He's a pure distillation of competence porn.
Interesting memoir from paleobotanist Hope Jahren. She intersperses short chapters on plant life with vignettes from her life and career. Interesting because she clearly imparts a love for science as well as relates the shittiness of being a scientist. Other than when she identified the minerals that make up opal as the same mineral used by a tree to create nearly impervious seeds, Jahren does not dwell on the actual scientific process she's pursuing. It's mostly the tedium of creating things needed for experiments, the unfortunate discarding of specimens she tried to smuggle out of Ireland from an impromptu collection, and similar tales from being a scientist. I got a great sense of what her life as a scientist is like, but very few details of the actual science. I'm not sure how I feel about that, as I wasn't quite prepared for it. Extremely well written.
Evander Myrick is the daughter of revered Queenstown police officer Evander Myrick, now a resident in a memory care facility. She's a former police officer herself, now starting a private investigations business. She's hired to find out if the wife of the mayor's nephew is cheating on him. She's wants the job because the mayor's connections will get her business for years to come. Just as she's about to report that nothing much is happening, the wife is murdered and the nephew has killed the murderer.
The villains are mustache-twirlers. They are also intent on monologuing their crimes to Evander. She is intent on not fucking recording them when they monologue. Or even investigating. Of course, neither are the police. So the big baddy is going to get away with it!
But then, the Lex Luthor of Queenstown inexplicably decides to make a run for it even though they are …
Evander Myrick is the daughter of revered Queenstown police officer Evander Myrick, now a resident in a memory care facility. She's a former police officer herself, now starting a private investigations business. She's hired to find out if the wife of the mayor's nephew is cheating on him. She's wants the job because the mayor's connections will get her business for years to come. Just as she's about to report that nothing much is happening, the wife is murdered and the nephew has killed the murderer.
The villains are mustache-twirlers. They are also intent on monologuing their crimes to Evander. She is intent on not fucking recording them when they monologue. Or even investigating. Of course, neither are the police. So the big baddy is going to get away with it!
But then, the Lex Luthor of Queenstown inexplicably decides to make a run for it even though they are winning. Thus sealing their guilt. OK, they're leaving town and getting away. But then... they turn around and come back, also for no reason except the author needs to have a big confrontation with the big bad guy.
But then, right after that her father (yes, he's there for the confrontation) remembers her name for the only time in the book. This is the emotional piece that Evander needed to feel complete, despite that never really being part of the emotional chasm that is our main character. Lots of other stuff is melodramatically and emotionally wrong with her at strange times, and usually when a side character that Evander has no reason to unload on, is present.
The plot is only coherent as a series of movie scenes where nothing lines up between them. I have no idea why this got a featured blurb in the Washington Post. This is not for readers. It's for someone who wants B-movie scenes in a book.
The telex is brief and to the point: One active-duty personnel found shot to death ten miles north of Fort …
The telex is brief and to the point: One active-duty personnel found shot to death ten miles north of Fort …
An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh …
ugh. the author is doing the thing in 1st person where we don't get to hear the important thoughts that would reveal information. just the protagonist's side thoughts.
"i knew that fragrance. I'd smelled it on two different women. one must have given the perfume to the other. i got the message contained in this coat. a communication meant for me alone from an adversary i hadn't realized i was fighting."
The Semaphore Society imagines a world where people who cannot communicate easily with "normal" (for want of a better word) people due to such maladies as lock-in syndrome find an online community where they communicate with each other through drawing. Good premise. Uninteresting plot.
Slippery Slope imagines a universe where body parts can be replaced & upgraded and sees how this plays out on a school playground where a bully can beat up another kid and steal their tongue (for instance). It ends with some overwrought hand-wringing from a bullied kid who turns the tables.
Good Numbers explores the concept that employed people might be expected to be good at their jobs and have "good numbers". Yes, capitalism expects people to be productive for the benefit of others. This doesn't have anything particularly interesting to say about it.
152 years ago an unlikely event that ends a war between humans and alien Felen. Five people unconnected to the human government show up as the Felen besiege the center of human government with the first person able to communicate with the Felen, and negotiate a peace. Now, the crew of science research vessel Gallion finds itself in a time rift with the crew of the Jonah bearing the "Fortunate Five" who negotiated the peace. The crew has to get themselves and the Jonah out of the rift without changing their timeline.
Despite a lot of disasters thrown into the way of the cast, it never really feels like they won't succeed. The real question is going to be how they will succeed, with preserving the timeline or without? Ensemble of characters most of which are fleshed out well enough, though their backstories do lean a bit on how trauma …
152 years ago an unlikely event that ends a war between humans and alien Felen. Five people unconnected to the human government show up as the Felen besiege the center of human government with the first person able to communicate with the Felen, and negotiate a peace. Now, the crew of science research vessel Gallion finds itself in a time rift with the crew of the Jonah bearing the "Fortunate Five" who negotiated the peace. The crew has to get themselves and the Jonah out of the rift without changing their timeline.
Despite a lot of disasters thrown into the way of the cast, it never really feels like they won't succeed. The real question is going to be how they will succeed, with preserving the timeline or without? Ensemble of characters most of which are fleshed out well enough, though their backstories do lean a bit on how trauma formed them.
Ren Hutchings has another book coming out in the same universe, and I'll pick it up.
Content warning Spoilers for the whole novel — this is more of a discussion than a review.
This is a difficult novel. At its core it's exploring the core question of the social contact: what do we owe each other?
This is explored from the perspective of wildly differing productive ability. A generation of genetically-improved people are smarter, more productive, healthier, and much longer-lived than the rest of us, all derived from not needing to sleep. At the same time, the world is being economically transformed by the recent development of small, reliable, safe cold fusion reactors — meaning that there is just so much less work needed for everyone to have the necessities of life.
And in between fear and economic anger and other sundry effects, a major subgroup of these sleepless form their own commune based on an utterly bananas-level extreme philosophy that the productive owe the unproductive absolutely nothing. To the point that when a member of their community is injured and acquires a disability which interferes with their ability to work, they are summarily executed.
Look, I just don't know what to do with this. The libertarian anti-socialist perspective here is just cartoonishly evil. There's not even an interesting debate to have, and in fact the novel does not meaningfully address any of the genuine questions about socialism or different productivity at all. At the same time, there's another conceit (cold fusion) which should cause us to question what the value/importance/utility of work is when there is so little labor needed to provide for everyone.
The key tension, the key philosophical question — what do the productive owe the unproductive — is almost completely sidelined with cardboard-cutout arguments which don't address anything. In the end, this transforms the novel from being an exploration of the issues to being just an exploration of some people who hold incredible power and bizarre views. I picke this up again because I thought it would provide an interesting perspective on contemporary economic questions. It does not.
this does not come out until July