Junior High School Teacher Meets Space Alien
Software engineer turned sci-fi writer Andy Weir has
offered up a novel that space nerds will love. The proof of this is over 31,000
reviews on Amazon. His protagonist is Ryland Grace, a former university
professor of molecular biology whose heterodox views force him out of academia,
and he ends up teaching junior high school science. Nevertheless, because his
heterodox papers caught the attention of the powers that be, he is drafted into
a global program to save the earth from being frozen because a mysterious force
is draining the sun of its energy. That force is a stream of high energy
microbes called astrophage.
Grace ends up on up on a mission to a distant star
that seems to be unaffected. The mission
is a continuous series of near disasters that overwhelms the reader. The best I
can tell, the physics of what is happening seems to be correct. Along the way
Grace meets up with a spider-like space alien who breathes ammonia who is also
on a similar mission to save his planet. So much for a spoiler alert.
I enjoyed the book, but Weir put too many “perils of
Pauline” moments in his plot. It became exhausting over time. My guess is that
when the motion picture comes out, much, but not all, of that will be edited
out.
For the full Amazon URL see: Junior High School Teacher Meets Space Alien (amazon.com)
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