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.
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.
Can I recommend then Becky Chamber's Wayfarer Series (4 books). What a refreshing change.
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.
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 chapter where he deduces where he's from based on what units he uses when he thinks about distance is incredible.
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?
What a brilliant book.
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