The Egg (2009)

I can't recommend this author enough. Project Hail Mary and The Martian are amazing works of science fiction. Project Hail Mary is actually amazing as an audiobook.

Funny coincidence - I just finished the Project Hail Mary audiobook this morning and loved it.

Any recommendations for the next audiobook?

I went into Project Hail Mary knowing nothing beyond it was from the author of The Martian. It may have been the most enjoyable reading experience I've ever had.

I enjoyed The Martian (novel and movie) but I didn't care for Artemis or Project Hail Mary. I thought the characters and dialogue were fairly weak, even though the underlying ideas were clever. Also I thought that "main character amnesia" was a frustrating plot device (in PHM).

Overall, his authorial voice reminds me a lot of YouTube hosts? Perhaps that's just the cultural moment we're in.

Mickey7 is pretty good if you enjoyed Project Hail Mary. Alternatively, the Murderbot series.

I can 2nd the murderbot series.

Also there bobiverse series is great IMHO

I'm in the back third of Project Hail Mary now. Same. I went into it blind and it's great. I did have to take a break in the very beginning just because dealing with my own existential crisis was enough that I didn't need a fictional one ... lol?

Artemis was good too.

Then why are you in this thread

Just finished Mickey7, lot's of fun. I gotta see the movie now.

LOVE the Murderbot series, highly recommend.

I will never fail to be amused by people here and on Reddit who spend their calories diving into discussions about things they don't like to tell people they don't like them.

If they actually take the time to write a thoughtful critique, that's one thing. But just saying they don't like something really doesn't add to the discussion.

On the vein of similar books, in the late 80s, early 90's a read a science fiction anthology that had more or less the same exact story as Mickey7.

Humans discover a place (I think on Mars), built by Aliens, but it's a deathtrap. So they send someone in to navigate the deathtrap using a clone, and a sort of remote control (something like Avatar).

Each time the clone dies, the person piloting it survives, but has gained the memory of what went wrong, and can try again (kind of like Edge of Tomorrow).

The point of the story is the very end, when the pilot makes it fully through the space.

Has anoyone every heard of this storay and know the name/author? (Bonus points of you know the anthology as well)

I like his concepts, and his stories, but agree about the characters. Every single one of them talks like a snarky sarcastic white dude. All the side characters in The Martian, the teenage girl in Artemis, and the rock alien in Project Hail Mary, all speak in the same voice, that of a jokey middle-aged dad.

I answered my own question! It's called Rogue Moon (1960) by Algis Budry, and was in the anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two

His stories are always extremely clever and he has an insane sense of rythm. But I hate his style, it reads like a giant Reddit post. My wife asked why I kept complaining about this book I couldn't put down.

You are absolutely correct, Mary is amazing as an audiobook. Loved both his books.

I had similar feelings for PHM, but it was hard to put a finger on why. I enjoyed it well enough to make it to the end, but I think I have a limited appetite for his "authorial voice". I read it directly after The Bone Clocks and remember thinking I missed David Mitchell's "voice" and wishing there were a way to experience books through another author's voice. Outside the copyright concerns, this could be an interesting use case for AI, a cover band for literature. It's definitely the only way we'll ever get Wes Anderson Star Wars

Some other recommendations depending on what you liked about The Egg/Project Hail Mary/The Martian:

If you liked explorative / conceptual Sci Fi, more for the thought exercise than anything else:

- Exhalation by Ted Chiang. A collection of scifi short stories that are quite thought provoking. Some sprinklings of religion in some of them.

- The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. A classic, also a short story collection. Golden age scifi.

- Project Hieroglyph. A collection of authors that partnered with Phd students to write short stories based on their research papers. Great concept with great stories.

If you liked Andy Weir's focus on engineering/building:

- Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. A man uploads himself into a Von Neummann probe and replicates himself to play Factorio among the stars.

- Destiny's Crucible by Olan Thorensen. MC gets sent to an alternate earth in a technological past, and attempts to re-introduce modern technology and build industry.

The main thing keeping me from the murderbot series is the value prop. They are incredibly short which doesn’t play as well with a credit based purchasing system. For seven credits I get a little over 20 hours of content. Project Hail Mary is 16 hours for one credit.

18 years ago you wrote an essay which shares the general premise with this short story: https://charmonium.com/infinite-reincarnation/

What exactly do you mean by "plagiarizing" here? Sharing the basic idea?