Red Szell

I'm immensely grateful that you hoisted this one on me.

I did actually enjoy watching The Martian ages ago, partly because it had very, very good audio description, actually, and because my wife is a sci-fi nut.

So it kind of helps that, you know, I'm not just subjecting her to detective stories all the time.

But I actually got to project Hail Mary before she did because she's been busy at work.

And I was hooked.

I did think it was going to be one of those books where I'd just be kind of snatching parts of it.

in between reading other books for work, but actually I put everything aside and I listened to it over the course of a weekend and was hooked from beginning to end.

It's pretty granular in the science department, which is not my strong suit, I have to add, but it's world-building, it's imagination, and it's just...

It's clever speculation.

It's extrapolation from what we can now do with science and what we might be able to do to science if circumstances were holding a gun to our head and the world actually had to pull together rather than pull itself apart is fascinating.

So I came away thinking what a great and very hopeful book it is.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, science is nothing if not trial and error.

And I think possibly one of the great problems in 21st century education is that schools are so desperate to try and get kids through exams that they forget that part of the learning process is

is getting stuff wrong.

It's failure.

That's so true.

And I think it's fascinating that Andy Weir chose Ryland Grace, his protagonist, as a high school science teacher.

He's a disgraced scientist who was told that his ideas were wrong with a capital W.

And he was drubbed out of the scientific community.