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Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Relativistic speeds are a plot point in Andy Weir's recent book "The Hail Mary Project". You might know him from the Martian a few years ago.

Scott Manly did a Youtube episode on all sorts of weird propulsion mechanisms that people have come up with over the years a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEZv_OXA_NI. There are some interesting concepts in there. Including the anti matter based concept discussed in the article. Particularly fusion looks like it might get us some interesting amounts of delta v.

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> Relativistic speeds are a plot point in Andy Weir's recent book "The Hail Mary Project". You might know him from the Martian a few years ago.

Just read the book and can highly recommend it. One of the good thing about it is that the main protagonists are nice, curious and friendly. No backstabbing, suprise turns of evilness to create suspense. A pleasant read.

Can confirm, it is a really good read. I especially liked that the protagonist really does things a normal person would do despite the extraordinary circumstances. I wish hollywood could take notes.

It’s why The Martian is one of my favorite movies (and book, of course). No evil, conniving, contrived antagonist designed to be hated. It’s just everyone working together against the most unforgiving antagonist of all: the universe itself.

I don’t want to watch movies or read books where people are just awful to other people, I can open the newspaper on any given day to find that.

> I don’t want to watch movies or read books where people are just awful to other people, I can open the newspaper on any given day to find that.

I am 1000% with you on this. The success of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones are mystifying to me. I get enough misery and awfulness from the news.

> No evil, conniving, contrived antagonist designed to be hated. It’s just everyone working together against the most unforgiving antagonist of all: the universe itself.

Can I recommend then Becky Chamber's Wayfarer Series (4 books). What a refreshing change.

> It’s why The Martian is one of my favorite movies (and book, of course)

It's funny because even though the book was so loved because it was so rational, and human's actually acted how humans would act in that situation, Hollywood STILL couldn't resist making tweaking the end slightly to make it over the top and impractical. Thus we ended up with Mark Watney flying around like Iron man in space with a hole is his space suit.

Still a great movie though. But a better book.

The martian was a fun read and undoubtedly a classic. I personally dont mind a well thought out antogonist who is very human.

Engineers with a lot of resources tend to be my favorite villains. Anyone who genuinely, earnestly believes they're going to solve a big problem and has just become laser focused on that to the exclusion of all else: that's a touchpoint I can relate to for a sympathetic villain.

For that I just have to think back to every new-CTO lead replatforming effort at any previous job. Ok, they weren’t evil, but the outcome was the same.

sure. however, i don't want to consume wholesome media where people are nice to each other but the writing or directing is absolutely terrible and uninspired, ruining the niceness - and having been exposed to christian young adult fiction, i found that it was awful low quality rubbish, in the vast majority of cases, sadly. it turns out that reality includes awful people, and well written books will tend to be written realistically and therefore end up containing these people or situations, and are generally better, due to contrasts and complexities thus created, etc...

A normal *smart* person. Which is even more rare.

The chapter where he deduces where he's from based on what units he uses when he thinks about distance is incredible.

Haha. Yeah the early chapters really set a brilliant tone. I thought the smart bit was implied. I would think if we were going to send someone to another star system to research how to stop our species from dying out - we'd send someone of the intellectual elite at the very least, "kicking and screaming"

What a brilliant book.

You're absolutely right from a narrative sense.

I meant that writing a believable normal person is hard. Most people are normal.

But writing a smart person is hard, because you often just have to have them solve problems faster/remember more/have information that the reader doesn't.

Project Hail Mary did a wonderful job of showing that a smart person doesn't necessarily think "The same, but faster", but that they think differently and deliberately

As a Canadian living close to the US border, that section was relatable. Using both units (metric and imperial) depending on scale has always felt unique to my geography/age.

I'm also Canadian and thought the very same thing!

I also really liked how he dialed in: - Okay, so I use X unit when I thing of A, and Y Unit when I think of B.... But what kind of person am I that I know those values off the top of my head?

All of Andy Weir's books are really good. There is even a surprising one that's fun. Also recommend Saturn Run, by John Sandford, while we are on this topic.

I never miss an opportunity to plug my favorite Andy Weir short story - The Egg. It's very short and very good.

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

And in Kurzgesagt video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

> There is even a surprising one that's fun.

Which one do you mean? I didn't like Artemis that much.

Cheshire Crossing.

I loved the Martian and Project: Hail Mary but Artemis was a disappointment.

> No backstabbing, suprise turns of evilness to create suspense.

Spoiler alert, kind of.

In their defense, it turned out to be the right thing to do.

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson also has a plot built around time dilation.

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