While, overall, I enjoyed it, I had two problems with Project Hail Mary:

1. How would a race like Rocky’s, without sight, become space-faring? If you can’t/don’t experience the awe-inspiring, view of the heavens, how would you become curious about it or develop technology to explore it?

2. While The Martian was an exhilarating mental exercise of “sciencing the shit out of” difficult situations, Rocky was a deus ex machina that could just, sort of, magically provide solutions to such situations. There’s an insurmountable problem? Rocky engineers a fix. No explanation - little description of how he does it - none of how he figures it out; that’s just what he and his kind evolved to do, so there it is.

While, overall, I enjoyed it, I had two problems with Project Hail Mary:

1. How would a race like Rocky’s, without sight, become space-faring? If you can’t/don’t experience the awe-inspiring, view of the heavens, how would you become curious about it or develop technology to explore it?

2. While The Martian was an exhilarating mental exercise of “sciencing the shit out of” difficult situations, Rocky was a deus ex machina that could just, sort of, magically provide solutions to such situations. There’s an insurmountable problem? Rocky engineers a fix. No explanation - little description of how he does it - none of how he figures it out; that’s just what he and his kind evolved to do, so there it is.