The Chinese come to the rescue of NASA and the movie literally concludes with one of the American heroes fist-bumping a Chinese astronaut on a joint mission back to Mars. It's a sad reminder of how bad the new cold war has become in just a few years.

2015: :wholesome: We can explore space together! :solidarity:

2022: President Xi is going to invade Taiwan at any moment LAUNCH THE NUKES NOW! :guts-rage:

:sadness:

  • TheCaconym [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It perfectly straddles a line between being appealing to redditors and being enjoyable to regular humans.

    From the same author, Artemis was OK; but Project Hail Mary was above The Martian, and also extremely entertaining. They're easy-to-read books that are fun - not much more than that but that's perfectly fine.

    • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Exactly! The Martian was a very comfortable read, just a dude trying to survive against ridiculous odds through his own ingenuity, while the world works together to assist him. It's such a positive, enjoyable story.

      • CommunistBear [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The audiobook version of The Martian was fantastic since it was iirc mostly audiologs in the first place

    • il4vayWRYW0SDoqKfBua [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      ugh i hated project hail mary, the insufferable bazinga I FING LOVE SCIENCE affect that was barely repressed in the martian comes out in full force

      • TheCaconym [any]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I get that; I was cringing more than once. But if you can tolerate that: the book is still very fun IMO.

        • il4vayWRYW0SDoqKfBua [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          i could not tolerate it, i really loved the martian and even enjoyed artemis well enough but project hail mary just seemed to be a distillation of all the worst parts of the author's previous works