Jacob Tender

"I have a new home, but it does not count. Home is where my friend is and there I never go."

I'm very fond of this story, its writing, and Truman Capote's personal narration in this 1959 recording which was used in the 1966 TV play depicting the story.

“Being stupid isn’t permanent.”

I’m late to the party, but I’m glad I came because Project Hail Mary is a good time.

There’s been a steady string of real sciencey sci-fi stories about Astronaut scientists in the last 15 years. Andy Weir publishes The Martian. Alfonso Cuarón makes Gravity. The brothers Nolan write and release Interstellar. Andy Weir publishes Project Hail Mary. Martin MacInnes published In Ascension. It’s a good time to be a geek for space.

I’m curious about how they’ll adapt this for the screen. I imagine the first third of the book will be heavily abridged. The real meat and potato from a tube kicks in later with a bit of tedium around the 90% mark.

The narrator of the audiobook sounds like the narrator of A Christmas Story and I couldn’t shake that for most of the book. He did a great job with the script though.

Good book!

Some really beautiful art that occasionally crosses into “too much” activity, leading me to wonder what’s actually happening.

Out of the Shadows asks the question: What if the event bridging Alien and Aliens is the storyline of Aliens?

I thought I’d check out the Dirk Maggs dramatization for this one after the paperback failed to grip me a few years ago. Laurel Lefkow deliver’s Lebbon’s Ellen Ripley impeccably. Rutger Hauer’s Ash fails to capture the character at all. The choice to keep him around as a malicious AI is nearly as bad as the heavily accented delivery. The whole thing sounds like a video game cutscene.