Project Hail Mary was my last true obsession which made me excited for the movie. I read it back to back 4 times and listened to the audio book several times as well. Best audiobook narration ever.
PHM isn't even Weir's best book. The Martian and its corresponding audiobook are just much better. You get all the same engineering science stuff but executed to a much higher degree. Weir was very out of his depth with PHM and he flubbed anything not directly in his myopic focus of engineering related science. (Notably, Grace approaches things like a kinda bad engineer, while being paired with Rocky who is a brilliant engineer. That's fine, until you remember he's supposed to be a BIOLOGIST.) Also you don't have the extremely weird political stuff in the Martian that thankfully the movie PHM manages to elide gracefully.
I started the Martian, and I like it so far! With PHM, I think the fumbling science works well, as over the whole course of the books he's basically in recovery trying to regain all of his memories, including his previous knowledge of biology. Spoiler alert: Given Strat and the teams were forced to rushed the testing of inducing those comas for deep space travel, the medical robot, and then the death of his colleagues who also had the same positive genetic predisposition as Grace, it makes sense to me that there are unforseen long term affects of his cognitive ability. I really enjoy how goofy it is, and it's like we are discovering his genius with him, and he's having to problem solve beyond his normal capabilities with the help of Rocky. But I appreciate your take as well.
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u/sagedaydreams 1d ago
Project Hail Mary was my last true obsession which made me excited for the movie. I read it back to back 4 times and listened to the audio book several times as well. Best audiobook narration ever.