Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
We had a pretty good turnout for our first book of the month vote. To be honest I did not anticipate the problem of there being a tie. I took the liberty of flipping a coin which came out heads for Project Hail Mary. In the future I might have to come up with a better method of tie breaking. I’m figuring this out as I go and it is all just for the fun of it anyway so please don’t take this too seriously.
I intend to read this book over the month of September and then near the end of the month I will create a discussion thread for it where people can discuss it without worrying about spoilers. Follow along if you want to.
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- Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir - 20 votes
- Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky - 20 votes
- Neuromancer - William Gibson - 17 votes
- Hyperion - Dan Simmons - 13 votes
- Leviathan Wakes - James S. A. Corey - 13 votes
- A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine - 11 votes
- Wool (Silo Series Book 1) - Hugh Howey - 10 votes
- Red Rising - Pierce Brown - 4 votes
- 22/11/63 - Stephen King - 1 vote
It’s a decent book, but there were some things which bothered me.
The hero is similar to the Martian, all-knowing MacGyver type, always optimistic, likely author’s alter ego. The character seems hollow. This unending optimism and humour spoils the atmosphere for me. Universe is a dark, dangerous place, I want some of that in sci-fi books …
I also disliked the easiness with which the hero was able to learn to communicate with Rocky. I guess it was necessary to progress with the story, but figuring out a communication with aliens might be way more challenging because their whole way of thinking would be likely different (e.g. Arrival).
Out of the rest of the books, my favorites (roughly in this order) are Hyperion, Wool, Neuromancer, Children of Time.
Red Rising is IMHO rather a YA fantasy than sci-fi.
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Yeah, I’ve watched The Expanse, and it’s kinda weird for me to read what I’ve already watched. I prefer to read first, watch later, otherwise the TV imagery influences the reading too much and there isn’t so much space for imagination.
The books are FAR FAR better than the TV show (which was better than most adaptations). It is WELL worth reading in my opinion. Edit: Forgot to mention that there is a lot more story in the books as well. The closest point where the show ends, there are one or two more books and they are bangers.
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While this wouldn’t be as bad for the Expanse than some other series, skipping would miss out on a lot of little things and characters that either didn’t exist or were combined with others for the TV show. Either way it is still worth reading, but reading them all is superior.