Andy Weir – Tyson Adams

Book review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The universal jazz hands.

Scientists around the world have discovered two things: a band of radiation (Petrova Line) and the sun is dimming. It soon becomes obvious that the two are related and the problem is getting worse, potentially world-ending worse. Rayland Grace, a high school teacher and former astrobiologist, is enlisted to examine a sample from the Petrova Line and discovers a new lifeform: Astrophage. Can the world and Rayland save the planet?

So let’s get this out of the way upfront: I loved this book.

My problem with reading Andy Weir books continues. Ever since I first purchased a copy of The Martian, I have failed to read a Weir book without it disappearing and requiring me to buy another copy or (in this instance) borrowing from the library. I’m sure there is a valuable lesson for me to learn about reading books as soon as they are purchased, but my TBR pile laughs at the mere suggestion of this idea.

A new twist to this adventure was accidentally ordering a Spanish version of Project Hail Mary from the library to replace my ~~stolen~~ permanently borrowed copy. My passable English (I still don’t have a good handle on American despite my best efforts) and primary school level French was not quite up to that particular challenge.

Weir continues his protagonist sciencing their way through one catastrophe after another disaster style of story with Project Hail Mary. He has a formula of sorts and it works. Even if some of it can feel a bit contrived or an obvious part of the Weir formula at times (my wife made a good point about some similarities between Weir’s protagonists).

My highlight from this book was the character of Rocky. This situation could have been handled any number of ways. A lot of authors would have gone for a much more scared, nasty, or aggressive route, but Weir went for nice and compassionate. Which, in turn, drove a more interesting plot – with the nice addition of some Wittgenstein inspired language problem-solving.

I’m looking forward to having Weir’s next book stolen from me.

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Blog Topic, Reading, Sciency, Video

Book vs Movie: The Martian – What(ney) the Difference?

Let’s talk about space pirates in What’s the Difference?

The Martian restored my faith in hard sci-fi. I think it is fair to say that hard sci-fi has the habit of taking everything interesting about science and fiction and throwing them out in favour of writing down the boring stuff. Andy Weir took the interesting parts of science and fiction and combined them.

This combination was rewarded with millions of fans handing Weir money for his book and Hollywood saying “Yes Please! We’ll even cast someone charismatic as Mark Watney, like a pre-crypto-bro Matt Damon!”

After reading the book twice – that’s a long story involving someone always stealing my copies of Andy Weir’s books – I was ready for the movie. It really looked like they’d do a solid adaptation. And they did. Kinda.

My only real disappointment with the movie was the struggle of the last act was smoothed out to focus on Watney getting into orbit. While I can understand that decision, it felt like it left out some of the tension and struggle in favour of a climactic action scene.

Shows that good adaptations can be done.

Blog Topic, Book review, Reading

Book review: Artemis by Andy Weir

Artemis by Andy Weir

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You know you’ve been reading too much fantasy when a sci-fi book refers to their currency as Slugs and you just assume they use terrestrial gastropod molluscs as money.

Jazz Bashara is barely making ends meet in Artemis, the moon colony. After a series of bad life decisions, she is living poor and having to hustle to survive. Then Trond Landvik offers her a lot of money to do something shady, a crime that could change her fortunes. Of course it will go smoothly…

Before Artemis was released I tried to get my hands on an Advanced Review Copy. I loved The Martian, the first hard sci-fi novel I’ve enjoyed in decades, so I was really looking forward to Andy’s follow up. Unfortunately, I missed out and had to buy the paper edition when it arrived in stores. My fortunes didn’t improve. Everyone in my family decided they needed to read my copy of the book, so over 6 months later I decided I’d have to get another copy, this time the audiobook read by Rosaria Dawson. No one stole this copy. Yay.

This is obviously a very different novel to The Martian. The narrative format, the main character, and the antagonist are all far removed from the Mark Watney diary about a man vs nature adventure. Instead, Jazz is more akin to a likeable antihero, one who has to use her big brain to solve the continuingly mounting problems.

While this was never going to be comparable to The Martian, this was another very entertaining novel from Andy Weir.

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Humor, Pics, Uncategorized

The Best Comedian On The Planet!

The audience were a bit remote.

My review of the book.

Differences between the book and the movie.

Fun Articles, Reading, Video

Book to Movie: The Martian – What’s The Difference?

This instalment of CineFix’s What’s The Difference? covers one of my favourite books: The Martian by Andy Weir.

As you can see from the breakdown, the film was a very faithful adaptation of the book. I thought the casting was spot on – can you believe some people didn’t think Matt Damon could get Watney’s tone right? – and they didn’t dumb anything down. Probably why I enjoyed both the book and the movie so much.

For me the main difference I noticed was the curtailing of some struggles in order to serve the larger plot and not have a 3 hour run-time. The continuous stream of problems that Watney had to McGyver his way out of really brought the “science the shit out of this” aspect to the fore. Most notable was the rover crash after the sandstorm. But for the movie you can see why they would cut that scene: it would have taken a fair bit of screen time, it would have detracted/distracted from the build-up to the big finish, and they’d probably have been tempted to go all Michael Bay with the crash. Car crashes have to explode: movie rule.

So if you haven’t read the book or watched the movie, do both ASAP.

Science-the-shit-out-of-this

Book review, Reading

Book review: The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Potatoes and Pirate-Ninjas: the reason you will read this book.*

I’m late to the Mark Watney appreciation society, since I only heard about this book as a result of the movie trailer. I guess at least I didn’t find out about the book after watching the movie and wondering if it was based on anything. The blurb essentially sums up the novel “Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first man to die there.” There you go, premise done.

To say I enjoyed this book is an understatement, as I usually hate novels that try to be hard sci-fi. I mean, if I want to read a physics text book I’ll grab the one on my shelf, not some of the “plausible” made up stuff that hurts my needless exposition aversion gland. So to find a hard sci-fi story that manages to be so entertaining was no small feat. The humour was a big part of the reason for the enjoyment. I felt that this addition was very important to not only the characterisation of Watney the space-nerd – because nerds are normally only funny to laugh at – but also in how too many novels would have taken the same premise far too seriously.

So now I’m looking forward to the movie. This should adapt very well to the big screen, and Matt Damon seems like a great choice for Watney. Hopefully Ridley Scott won’t go all Prometheus with The Martian and we’ll have a great adaptation.

Edit: The wonderful From Quarks to Quasars posted about the Real NASA Technology seen in The Martian. Check it out to get your geek further on.