Astrid Hawk
I'm giving this 4.5*, because I think it's not quite a 5* - not quite one of my all-time favorites - but certainly stands above what I've recently marked 4*. I loved the relationship between our two main characters, and I definitely enjoyed the ingenuity in the premise of this - how Weir came up with a somewhat scientifically-plausible situation that put Ryland out in space far from Earth, and then kept building on the science he made up to create plausible problems and puzzles on top of that. And of course it's fun watching Ryland figure out how to work out these puzzles and solve all these problems using just the materials and knowledge he has on hand.
The first half of the book read like conversations I used to have with my best friend in high school. One of us would come up with a question - "what would happen if X came in contact with Y?" or "what would you do if you were stuck in XYZ situation?"- and then he'd ask me additional questions to goad me on while I tried to reason out a logical answer just based on principles of physics (and later, principles from our college engineering classes). We typically didn't ever get to the point of actually pulling out a calculator or pencil and paper, but sometimes we did just to get a feel for order of magnitude of things. I loved the early parts where Ryland is trying to figure out where he is and what he's doing, and is reasoning it out based on the little information he has on hand plus his knowledge of math and physics.
For those who complain that there is a bit too much math... there is actually 0 on-page math. I actually found myself wanting more of it. I took astrodynamics in college (I have an aerospace engineering degree with a space focus... astro, as we called it then, is kind of essential :) ), and I wanted to see the orbits, insertion paths, and escape velocities sketched out and calculated. I wanted to actually see the math that resulted in the constant tallying of grams of fuel being used. If Weir has a calculation notebook lying around somewhere that he used, I'd totally read that version of the story.
Weir does take a few significant scientific shortcuts in this book - which of course happens all the time in science fiction, but I'm not used to seeing from Weir. The one that stands out, and which I can discuss without spoilers, is that he relies heavily on a fictional material that his main character has named xenonite, which is apparently a substance made from xenon in solid form that has practically mythical qualities. Xenonite can't be cut or dented by any of our earth-built tools; it can be shaped into just about anything; it can be used to create almost any kind of surface including transparent surfaces; it can withstand a huge range of temperatures and pressures and pretty much the entire periodic table of elements; it can bond to any earth-rendered metal or composite material. And our characters go through xenonite like it's an infinitely renewable resource, without much consideration for how much of it was actually brought on board to begin with. It's a bit of an odd juxtaposition against the rest of the materials mentioned in the book, which are typically assigned quantities or volumes or some kind of limit. Xenonite feels limitless, both in what it can do and its availability.
I think perhaps my favorite element of the book was the first contact element - how Ryland goes about discovering properties of extraterrestrial life and figuring out how it works and how to communicate. Are the various life forms realistic? No idea. Probably not really. Maybe the unicellular ones are plausible. The multicellular ones are likely more imaginative. Either way, it's fun reading about how Ryland encounters them and tries to figure out what he's dealing with.
And of course Rocky. On his own, Rocky is probably not a compelling character, just as Ryland really isn't (in fact, the flashbacks to Ryland's life on earth, and especially his interactions with Stratt and other scientists got a bit dull for me). But Rocky and Ryland together are great to "watch", as they learn to work together and develop a real friendship.
I don't know if I'll ever re-read this, but it was definitely a great ride and deserves the hype.
I'm giving this 4.5*, because I think it's not quite a 5* - not quite one of my all-time favorites - but certainly stands above what I've recently marked 4*. I loved the relationship between our two main characters, and I definitely enjoyed the ingenuity in the premise of this - how Weir came up with a somewhat scientifically-plausible situation that put Ryland out in space far from Earth, and then kept building on the science he made up to create plausible problems and puzzles on top of that. And of course it's fun watching Ryland figure out how to work out these puzzles and solve all these problems using just the materials and knowledge he has on hand.
The first half of the book read like conversations I used to have with my best friend in high school. One of us would come up with a question - "what would happen if X came in contact with Y?" or "what would you do if you were stuck in XYZ situation?"- and then he'd ask me additional questions to goad me on while I tried to reason out a logical answer just based on principles of physics (and later, principles from our college engineering classes). We typically didn't ever get to the point of actually pulling out a calculator or pencil and paper, but sometimes we did just to get a feel for order of magnitude of things. I loved the early parts where Ryland is trying to figure out where he is and what he's doing, and is reasoning it out based on the little information he has on hand plus his knowledge of math and physics.
For those who complain that there is a bit too much math... there is actually 0 on-page math. I actually found myself wanting more of it. I took astrodynamics in college (I have an aerospace engineering degree with a space focus... astro, as we called it then, is kind of essential :) ), and I wanted to see the orbits, insertion paths, and escape velocities sketched out and calculated. I wanted to actually see the math that resulted in the constant tallying of grams of fuel being used. If Weir has a calculation notebook lying around somewhere that he used, I'd totally read that version of the story.
Weir does take a few significant scientific shortcuts in this book - which of course happens all the time in science fiction, but I'm not used to seeing from Weir. The one that stands out, and which I can discuss without spoilers, is that he relies heavily on a fictional material that his main character has named xenonite, which is apparently a substance made from xenon in solid form that has practically mythical qualities. Xenonite can't be cut or dented by any of our earth-built tools; it can be shaped into just about anything; it can be used to create almost any kind of surface including transparent surfaces; it can withstand a huge range of temperatures and pressures and pretty much the entire periodic table of elements; it can bond to any earth-rendered metal or composite material. And our characters go through xenonite like it's an infinitely renewable resource, without much consideration for how much of it was actually brought on board to begin with. It's a bit of an odd juxtaposition against the rest of the materials mentioned in the book, which are typically assigned quantities or volumes or some kind of limit. Xenonite feels limitless, both in what it can do and its availability.
I think perhaps my favorite element of the book was the first contact element - how Ryland goes about discovering properties of extraterrestrial life and figuring out how it works and how to communicate. Are the various life forms realistic? No idea. Probably not really. Maybe the unicellular ones are plausible. The multicellular ones are likely more imaginative. Either way, it's fun reading about how Ryland encounters them and tries to figure out what he's dealing with.
And of course Rocky. On his own, Rocky is probably not a compelling character, just as Ryland really isn't (in fact, the flashbacks to Ryland's life on earth, and especially his interactions with Stratt and other scientists got a bit dull for me). But Rocky and Ryland together are great to "watch", as they learn to work together and develop a real friendship.
I don't know if I'll ever re-read this, but it was definitely a great ride and deserves the hype.
