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.
👽🚀
- 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
jazz hands
Some humble proposals for a few other sci-fi options for the next round that are a bit fresher than Gibson and Asimov (not that I don’t love the old guard!):
- Venomous Lumpsuckers by Ned Beuman - winner of this years Arthur C Clark award for science fiction, a dark satire environmental disaster page turner touching on cryptobros, greenwashing, carbon credits and short selling late stage capitalism. Hilarious, but be warned: optimistic, it ain’t.
- Terraformers by Analee Newitz - another extremely welcome breath of fresh air by Newitz, a sci fi epic spanning millenia also focused on environmentalism and capitalism with her refreshing approach to non-human sentience and fluid sexuality (Check out her “Autonomous” too if you haven’t already!)
- A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - beautiful prose and descriptions of a colorful and diverse cast of misfits on a worker class intergalactic highway construction ship. Some of the best descriptions of characters I’ve seen lately and some really interesting aliens.
- Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi - imo MUCH improved offering from Scalzi over Red Shirts but still his characteristic pop-culture drenched page turner. One of the most face-punchingly terrible antagonists in recent memory.
- Exhalation by Ted Chiang - incredibly evocative and thoughtful collection of short stories
Great book, I’m looking forward to the movie adaptation as well
Don’t make the mistake of making this your first audio book, it will ruin all other audio books for you.
Ray Porter (the narrator of this one and the Martian) is a freaking treasure. Easily the best I’ve stumbled across.
There’s 2 versions of the Martian, but IIRC Porter didn’t do either. I think it’s r c bray and the star trek kid, is it whedon?
Just started listening to it as a wind down. It’s Wil Wheaton.