Jacob Szymanski

Note that it's also available on Audible.

Red Sail is the host of My Life in Books on AMI-audio.

He comes on the show once every two weeks to talk about all sorts of stuff.

Red, despite knowing that you are not especially a reader of science fiction, I hoisted this one onto you because I really wanted to talk about it.

So, what do you think of Project Hail Mary?

It's kind of got that Star Trek tinge to it where it's about the best of humanity and what humanity can accomplish if we come together and be smart about things.

It's a hopeful way of looking at the future.

But Project Hail Mary, I think what you're hitting on is that it has a real...

joy to science.

And, you know, and it really does a good job at exploring the concepts of developing a hypothesis and testing it and drawing conclusions based on evidence and rejecting ideas that aren't based on evidence.

I don't know if you agree with this, but I find that this book, Project Hail Mary, is

it has an episodic feel to it it has a formula to it where you're where rylan grace the main character is presented with a problem he calculates and then attempts the solution yeah and it that is science ultimately you present a problem you come up with hypotheses to fix that problem or to discover what the problem is in the first place

And then you attempt to fix it based on your tests that you've done using experiments and that sort of thing.

And it takes place over quite a bit of time.

I'm not usually someone who appreciates the formulas like these.

It works in this one because science is a formula in and of itself.

And as someone who's kind of idealistic, I'm like, yes, put this out there.

Get people understanding the value of science for what it is, because science is not political.

It's a method of discovering truth.

And this book is an evangelist for that without being preachy.