Red Szell

And so he went to use his prodigious intellect, scientific intellect, to enthuse high school students.

And I'll be completely honest with you, had I had a teacher like Ryland Grace teaching me O-level physics, I might actually have passed the subject rather than just gone, oh, I'm only getting stuff wrong here.

It's...

I think Andy Weir's doing a bit of social commentary here, and I love the fact that there's an element of slapstick to this book.

When Ryland gets stuff wrong, he falls flat on his face.

or he gets injured, or he burns himself, like the best chemistry experiments at school.

And it's a reminder that we grope our way towards solutions.

We don't always sprint there.

It's a really good formula.

And I don't want to jump ahead too far, but when Ryland does have to start communicating with a non-verbal person,

form of extraterrestrial life he actually point he he manages to do so because as he points out the language of science is universal

The language of numbers is universal.

We might not all have the same base that we count in.

It might not all be base 10.

But he is assuming that all forms of life will, if they've managed to get to space, have had to develop a scientific...

It's harmony.

It's polyphony.

And Ryland is able to use his computer to recognize the different harmonies and polyphonies and start creating an alphabet.

And they are obviously swapping words.

in inverted commas, for the objects that each other is holding up for the other to inspect.