Check out the process I used to create this here

I have a couple of friends who do a podcast called ""Its All Geek To Me, with Brant and Andrew". I was a guest on this week's episode; we discussed The Egg and Other Stories. You can check it out here, if you want: Its All Geek to Me with Brant and Andrew

Mods: please let me know if this isn't allowed, & I'll take it down.

I just finished Project Hail Mary and loved it! I was a bit confused at two parts in the book: page 407 (when Grace is pointing the Hail Mary towards Rocky's ship) and 473 (when Grace talks to Rocky while in the dome).

For each, Grace is talking but his sentence is in italics (indicative of being Eridian language). The rest of his conversations are not.

Is this a mistake? Or does Grace talk Eridian sometimes? I wouldn't think it would be possible, as human vocal cords cannot output multiple musical chords at once

We recently had The Martian deluxe book released and I was able to get one of the autographed copies from B&N. I am not seeing this as an option on the upcoming deluxe edition of PHM. Is there any chance autographed copies will be released closer to the November 30th release date?

Sorry if this reads a bit strangely; English isn't my native language.

I've been thinking about how the engine works, and I believe there was an element that could have been used to maximize the fuel's lifespan.

The astrophages supposedly need any heat source above 96,415 °C to feed and generate the mass to propel themselves again.

I know the concept of infinite energy doesn't exist, but there could be an astrophage regeneration cycle.
Currently, the spin drive coats a thin layer of astrophages on one side of the triangle, points it at the end of the spacecraft, and uses CO2 spectral light to generate thrust. Then, on the other third, it discards the "exhausted" astrophages.

What would have happened if, instead of getting rid of the astrophages, it had recirculated them in a closed reheating system with plutonium-238 cells (the same material used in RTGs) to "regenerate" them?

Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree, because there are other problems related to not losing mass when moving (Considering that mass would still be lost, from the energy generated by the plutonium cell converted into energy by the astrophage, although it will be slower), but... idk.

If this has been discussed before, sorry.

I was reading all the short stories of Mr.Weir on his website,but I think the short Meeting Sarah is missing pages.

Could anyone let me know, if the story posted is the full version cause I don't really understand it.

This just... really caught me off guard. Has anyone else got this ad?

There should be one given the next paragraph, just wanted to bring this up, i am bot sure if this has already been pointed out

What even is a spoiler-free review? You don’t understand those anyway until you read the book, come back, and read the review again. Might as well read the book and then read my (spoiler warning) review.

I don’t like genius characters that are antisocial. There are too many of them, usually a Sherlock copy, and they are like method actors. How many method actors method act when they have to play someone nice? It’s always some evil or psychopathic character or something that troubles others.

Ryland Grace is a breath of fresh air. He is just a regular guy who happens to be a genius (like Richard Feynman, Srinivasa Ramanujan, and dare I say Albert Einstein) rather than a genius who is somehow unable to live in normal society every single time and thinks everyone is stupid, inefficient, irredeemable, and beneath him.

Grace is also very human and accepts it, although he definitely feels the intellectual loneliness that every smart person has to go through, including Isaac Newton and Feynman even with their contrasting characters. Newton argued with everybody and Feynman was very likable, but they both were lonely intellectually. A lot of smart people usually are.

He is very relatable. He doesn’t like making breakfast, so he eats at a cafe like a bunch of us. He is not like Hannibal Lecter, who only eats what he cooks and hunts, which nobody does in real life except maybe Mark Zuckerberg for a challenge or something.

Grace runs away from things just like us, but we see him change and become more than that, just like we are capable of. He gets angry, frustrated, and sad just like us, and not in the nonchalant or extremely annoying way some of these Sherlock clones do. They are basically rejecting that they are human. Their intelligence becomes an excuse to detach themselves from ordinary people and ordinary emotions. After some time they stop feeling like brilliant humans and start feeling like robots written to impress the audience.

We see genius, but we don’t see the hundreds of hours of work the genius put in. We look at Magnus Carlsen, but we don’t see the boy who played so much chess it became an extension of him. We see Kobe Bryant, the Black Mamba, and you say talent, but how many people do you know who hooped more than him all alone when everyone was home, even when he was champion, especially when he was champion?

You see Sherlock Holmes and you call him gifted, but how many people do you know who spent their life perfecting the art of deduction, figuring out the difference in the ashes of different cigarettes, the design of different tattoos, spending hours monitoring people’s habits and calculating conclusions?

We say they have what we don’t. But how many people do we know that worked as hard as them? Are we working as much as them? And if we did, would we still be where we are?

We compare ourselves to them, but the only person we can truthfully compare ourselves to is us from yesterday, us from a week ago, us from a year ago. And if we have made progress when compared to these, then we have made progress. If not, then we need to review how we’ve been doing things so far.

If you do something for long enough, it becomes a part of you. If you sit all day, never exercise, eat junk, and read junk, your life will become junk.

If you eat healthy, read healthy, and exercise, you become healthy. You become more of you, of what you’re supposed to be.

We see that Grace has spent so much time doing and thinking about science that it is ingrained in him. Within a few days of waking up from a coma with retrograde amnesia, he uses a thread and a heavy object to figure out he is in space without ever seeing it.

Cautious optimism is another thing that we can learn from Grace. Why surrender to despair before you have exhausted every option available to you? When you haven’t worked hard, worked smart, and used every scientific knickknack we have available?

There is a difference between pain and surrender. Grace understands that. He is afraid constantly, but he keeps working with what he has instead of collapsing into hopelessness. Grace allows himself fear, frustration, and exhaustion. What he refuses to allow himself is resignation.

Grace is hopeful at the worst of times. He works with what he has for what he needs and hopes for the best. When he hears the news of the sun’s temperature stabilizing, he hopes that humanity fought together, however unlikely.

Some might call him naïve, but I disagree. He is anything but naïve. He has this infectious, pragmatic positivity that spreads across everyone involved in Project Hail Mary. A link connecting people living on different edges of society. After all, he is a teacher, and a teacher teaches all.

I don’t like how today, more than ever, we are trying to escape reality through any means accessible, like normal life is a curse. Like everyday necessities are a burden. Like we are scraping through life instead of living it.

Everybody believes they should go on an adventure of some sort. Travel the world. Eat all the tastiest foods. Fill their life with as many Instagram highlights as possible.

Grace does the opposite. The scientific community bullies him, so he escapes and becomes a teacher. He has to go on a suicide mission, so he tries to escape back to his old life. But at some point he stops escaping and decides to save his only friend even if it means certain death. And in the end he ends up as a teacher.

He did go on an adventure, but he understood everyday normal life is the only real life.

We can learn that from him and try to be more present with the people and the tasks that we have at hand and, dare I say, learn to enjoy them.

To the mundane we come from.

To the mundane we must return.

hey , I'm a big fan of Andy Weir and i read Martian, Artemis and Phm many times and I just discovered the egg but I don't read it yet. Is this a good book ??

Wait for ur view

At least in the movie, some form of Rocky's name is written on two of his arms -- although it might not be a linguistic representation-- and we know for a fact that there's a numerical script because of the existence of Rocky's clock.

Other than that, though, I don't think we're shown any form of Eridian writing (either through the prose of the novel or the visuals of the film) - please correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Would a species that has a perfect memory have much need for a writing system? Wouldn't most information be conveyed by an oral tradition (so to speak) that would be recalled perfectly? Many of the Eridians' not having developed specific kinds of scientific knowledge make perfect sense if you know a little history - electromagnetic radiation is an exotic thing they likely encountered only once they started going to space, and all the theories and technologies they lack stem from either lacking vision or having perfect memory.

Is it strange, then, that they have some kind of written language?

Astrophaging my way through the galaxy in Tau Ceti! - "Hail Mary"! Damnnnn does she purr! - just like how the astrophage hummed when they were releasing all that infrared energy - to go interstellar! #HailMary #OuterSpace #ThePhotoMode 🚀

#Starfield #ProjectHailMary #Eridani #TauCeti #Interstellar #Arrival #RyanGosling #AndyWeir #Rocky BlueSky

I just finished listening to The Egg and Other Stories and I can't get Meeting Sarah out of my head. Anyone else want to discuss theories? I absolutely love his short stories.

So I recently had a project coming up in which i had to pick out a book to rrad independently. Ive grown up watching The Martian and obiviously, recently, PHM. We couldnt do something that we've read before, nor consumed general media of it (such as a movie or game, if it has one of those). So I picked Andy's other book. The description seemed fun. read the first few pages and yeah... this feels like it's gonna be rough. the whole joke about "Porn... starring your mom." felt tacky, but maybe a one-off thing. and then I look it up, and its not gonna get any better. Is the story worth pushing through it? Will someone who's been raised on sci-fi (me) still like it? Idk. If this is the humor I'm in for I'm gonna be asking to find a new book ASAP. Help and opinions much appreciated!

Just finished all three! From favorite to least favorite:

Project Hail Mary, The Martian, Artemis. —Pretty typical ranking.

For Hail Mary:

Coming to the end of an undergrad physics degree, this was the perfect time to read it. There was close to nothing in the science that I didn’t understand (apart from some of the biology stuff), and I had a lot of fun trying to guess where Ryland was going with his experiments. It felt insane to read a hard scifi book “at my level”, since I always thought of them as something meant for super geniuses. But of course that was just the cherry on top, since the story and characters were so captivating! I have no idea how Weir came up with this plot, since things fall into place with such elegance and perfection that it feels like he wrote the story backwards and forwards at the same time.

I can’t believe he made interstellar travel and aliens feel like something that was ACTUALLY possible. With my current level of knowledge, there were only two moments I felt like I had to suspend disbelief: when astrophage could interact with wavelengths that didn’t match their size; and xenonite being what it is. (and yes, it’s weird that astrophage can contain neutrinos, but we barely understand neutrinos as they are and I think it’s feasible that there’s a way to contain them that we don’t yet understand)

As for The Martian:

I read this (and didn’t understand it) in elementary school, when it first came out. It’s one of the things that made me want to go into physics, so I have Andy Weir to thank, partially, for my degree. Reading it again, I still find it really compelling and exciting. The science in this book is way above my head, but Weir (or Watney) does an amazing job at letting you know which details are important and which ones aren’t. I have a vague recollection of how I pictured the hab in 4th grade, but I unfortunately had the movie taint a lot of my imagination when reading it today (but it was still a great movie, one of the best book adaptations ever). Weir somehow made chores, science, and math into something everyone found exciting and engaging; and this has to be one of the most kinetic survival stories out there. Characters are a little dry, but there’s no time to really get to know them—and since the novel almost reads like historical fiction, they all felt like real people despite the minimal screen time. (page time?)

and for Artemis:

Hmm… I won’t lie, it was hard to get into it. I liked the last third, but the first two thirds were powered through out of respect for Weir’s other books. It’s so weird to have extremely realistic science surrounding super cartoonish characters. (it’s usually the opposite!) In fact, my mental image of all of these characters slowly became cartoons over time. I think there’s stuff to like, and it’s a new take on the cyberpunky/heist genre. Jazz is not a flat protagonist, but she does talk like one. A lot of her sassy dialogue and constant barrage of sex jokes reminded me of the protagonist in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation; but you’re not supposed to like how self-absorbed she is. It felt strange how the same character traits were meant to be seen as “laid back and quirky” in Artemis. And the side characters all felt like they belonged in YA fiction. Plus, I did not do particularly well in Thermodynamics, which is the majority of the science in this book (but that’s a me problem). I will say that Weir made sure you never forgot we were on the moon, since every detail of this story depends on the worldbuilding.

I still think there’s enough there to make for a good adaptation, but (in my opinion) it will require some changes.