by Andy Weir
4.8 · 4 reviewsOne man, no memory, and the entire human race riding on whether he can solve the problem killing our sun in time.
A man wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no idea who he is, how he got there, or why two corpses share the cabin with him. As his memory trickles back in fragments, he pieces together a staggering truth: he is humanity's last hope, flung across the solar system on a mission that almost certainly ends in his death. Something is dimming the Sun, and Earth has only years before the planet freezes.
What follows is part survival puzzle, part cosmic detective story. Armed only with his wits, a science teacher's instincts, and the gradual return of his past, the lone traveler must improvise solutions to problems no one has ever faced, with no backup and no margin for error. Then the mission takes a turn he never could have prepared for, and everything he thought he understood about his journey shifts.
Equal parts nail-biting thriller and joyful celebration of curiosity, this is a story about ingenuity under impossible pressure, the unexpected bonds that carry us through the dark, and how far one ordinary person will go when the stakes are literally everything.
First published in 2021.
4 reviews
This is comfort food for science nerds. Every chapter ends on a hook, the stakes are enormous, and yet it never loses its sense of wonder or its humor. I finished it in two sittings and immediately wanted to start over.
If you loved the problem-solving energy of The Martian, you'll be right at home here. My only quibble is that the constant calculations occasionally slowed the momentum for me, and I found myself skimming a few of the longer technical passages. Still a tremendously entertaining ride with a protagonist you root for the whole way.
I expected a clever space survival story. I did not expect to get this emotionally attached. Without spoiling anything, there's a relationship in this book that completely won me over and had me grinning and tearing up by the end. So much heart underneath all the engineering.
I went in knowing almost nothing and I'm so glad I did. The way the story unspools through flashbacks while he solves one crisis after another kept me up way past my bedtime. The science is dense but Weir makes it feel like the most exciting puzzle in the world. Easily my favorite read of the year.