Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

 A man awakens in a strange room with two withered corpses, and no memory of what has happened. He doesn’t remember anything. It turns out he is in a spaceship, closing on a strange star. The ship is filled with scientific equipment, including an '8000x' magnifying microscope (there is no such thing and there can’t be such a thing; laws of physics prohibit it. And that doesn’t mean an electron microscope, it is mentioned as a piece of equipment.)  He starts to remember glimpses of the past. The sun has been dimming because it is being obscured by a strange one-celled organism that uses the co2 of Venus to reproduce, and which travels to the sun with a matter-energy 'drive' to get energy. (I doubt that even if all the co2 in Venus were used to produce those organisms and put into the sun, it would have any noticeable effect; the sun is big and Venus is really tiny compared to it). He slowly remembers that he used to be a science teacher who destroyed his career by postulating that there could be alien lifeforms that are not water-based. (I don’t understand why that would be such a controversial suggestion - there certainly have been speculations just like those, and published articles). As he is supposed to be the only expert in the world on that subject (hah!) he is in charge of the initial examinations. As he makes a groundbreaking discovery on the nature of the organisms, he is transported via several plane and helicopter rides to a secret base, before he has a chance to share his information (very, very stupid). In space, he encounters an alien whose home planet is facing the same destiny as the Earth. In no time they learn to speak to each other (hah!). They then solve one engineering problem after another with the ingenuity of the human and the magical engineering ability of the alien.

The book is entertaining - in some ways. On the other hand, it is very irritating and filled with stupidities and scientific mistakes. (Freezing apparently kills all germs - the same error was made in 'The Martian'. If only it were so simple). The writing was pretty average at best, and the plot was rather railroaded: problem, solve it, the next problem, solve it, and so on. The book is quite different from the others nominated and doesn’t really have any 'literary' merit. It was entertaining, and if I were thirteen years old, I would have really, really loved it. Now I am a bit baffled as to whether I like or hate it. It won’t be one of my top choices. 

476 pp.