Project Hail Mary (not religious)

    Project Hail Mary is a book that takes science fiction to a whole new level, written by Andy Weir. He is also the author of The Martian. I have listened to the audiobook version of Project Hail Mary once or twice, but that was a few years ago. It's so fascinating, that I have decided to experience it again, but I am reading it this time. The audiobook version of Project Hail Mary is over 16 hours long, which is very lengthy from my experience.

    Since it is practically impossible not to spoil anything, I'll do so only for the beginning of the book, just enough for Project Hail Mary to start sounding very interesting. The first sentence of the first paragraph is the following: "What's two plus two?". The man, who is the main character and the narrator, was very tired, and something unsensible came out of his mouth when he tried to answer. The voice kept asking "what's two plus two?" until finally the man, gathering all his will power, was able to answer, "four." The man also realized that he had no idea where he was, or who HE was. There are many wires going into various parts of his body, so he assumes that he was in a coma. After falling asleep and waking up a few times (I'm skipping lots of details here), the man tried getting out of bed. WARNING TO READER (especially male readers): when the man tries getting out of bed, or right before he tries getting out of bed, there is an EXTREMELY uncomfortable scene. I URGE the reader skip over this/these paragraph(s)! I'm still traumatized from hearing that one line many years ago (I skipped it when reading this time). After successfully getting out of bed, the man suddenly had a flashback. He was eating breakfast, and then he read an article on his phone about a visible red line, which was stretching from the Sun to Venus. It also said that the Sun's brightness was diminishing, and this was attributed to the red line, nicknamed the "Petrova line". 

    Over the next few chapters, the man has more flashbacks. He finds out that his name, Ryland Grace, and that he was a junior high school science teacher. He also finds out that he is on a spaceship, with a mission to hopefully stop the dimming of the sun. The journey is many years long, and he was in a medically-induced coma so that he didn't have to "be" that whole time. His flashbacks make up a sort of parallel storyline. Both in the present and in his flashbacks, Ryland does lots of research to find out what is going on. But after flying in space for a long time, he finds something unexpected...

    In my opinion, Project Hail Mary is one of the best or the best book that I have ever read. It's an awesome burst of science fiction, and various ideas and concepts that you can dwell on for an eternity. Aside from the beginning the book is never boring, with exciting things happening constantly. The book goes into a lot of sciency details, but there are footnotes and an appendix explaining some of them. 10/10

-Lenny