Is a novel written by the same guy who wrote The Martian that they made into a Matt Damon film. It has the same kind of space survivorman sprinkled with humor feel to it, but this one gives a our hero an alien roommate to get to know.

A lot of sci fi novels portray aliens as mystic, mysterious, almost magical. These aliens are behind humans in scientific progress but way better at math and steam punk 1950s style engineering.

Both earth and the closest exoplanet to 30 Eridini have the same problem: a microbe capable of traversing vast interstellar distances by converting mass into infrared emissions has infected their solar systems like space algae and begins to block a significant amount of their stars’ outputs. This Astrophage threatens to turn both worlds into ice cubes in not very long.

Doctor Grace meets “Rocky” in the Tau Ceti system where the astrophage originated, both being the last survivors of their respective crews. They get to know one another and then they launch into a scientific determination to figure out why Tau Ceti is immune to astrophage dimming its luminosity while they ask questions about the origin of life on both their worlds and the nature of this wonderful but horrifyingly indifferent to life universe we live in that seems to abound in life anyway. It’s a thrilling read if you’re into that.

I cannot disentangle the Mormonism in my childhood from my fascination with science. Science period was always my favorite, and I wanted it in my head and to know how it worked with my religion so that I could have it all without pissing anybody off or socially harming myself or making God madder at me than usual. Something about the way I am made compels me to seek understanding from all sides of any issue that seems important or that fascinates me, not to empathize necessarily but to get all the data there is to have on a subject I am captured by. Along the way, I end up being captured by enough different subjects and learning so much that I find ways to empathize with my fellow beings in my own way. Then comes a contradictory longing for a world where people care about the things I care about and also a longing to be part of the world I live in. I wish those two worlds were the same, but they’re not. And I had to figure that out more alone than most who ask questions like that. No one ever sees this drama raging inside me, and for most of my life I didn’t have the ability between my social ineptitude and the way my vocabulary was twisted around the book of mormon to explain it to anybody.

Something approximating my natural mood and mode of thought from day to day is captured in Andy Weir’s novels. I’m a natural scientist, I think, although it goes beyond numbers and physics into the humanities. I spend every day learning something new, and I retain a lot of it. I have questions that impel me, and I know when I hear an answer. How the universe works, how humanity ticks, and why I was encouraged to obtain as much education as possible only for everyone to spite the end result. I learned how to get principles into my head, how to articulate my thoughts, and how to teach people from the church. My forms of thinking are distinctly Mormon, but sadly I had to to elsewhere for a fullness of the truth. Nobody in my little corner of the world was more distraught about the collapse of my testimony than I was initially.

As I learn about an entire fictional race of thinking beings evolving independently around a star just sixteen lightyears away and how they discovered the same scientific truths humanity uses to make star ships, it tickles the part of my brain where I first stored the thought that all spirit is matter and heaven where God lives and heaven where the stars hang out are the same heaven. God has a body, right? That means he lives in space somewhere out there: my child brain grabbed that thought and hugged it tight, because I was so alone and yet I loved astronomy and science class. So much of what goes on in other people’s heads will always be a mystery to me, but I’m good with school subjects and my religion told me God was a scientist. I wanted to be like him and dwell where he dwells and do what he does in the simple hope of meeting a being like me someday. Not that I’m a god. I mean: someone who comprehends my being and understands my experience through similarity. I don’t get to have that here on earth very often.

All my searching for God has taught me the search is vain. If there is one, I don’t think he or she or it bears any resemblance to the way we imagine it. It certainly isn't YHWH, because I understand how that idea evolved through history and at various stages took a form or another that modern worshippers of every sect would call blasphemous. But I did learn how to triangulate truth by a process of elimination, and I also learned that connection is better sought with real people in this timespace if it is to be found for me anywhere at all. I still believe that whatever happens after death, the only real thing we take with us is whatever degree of intelligence we honed on earth and that those of us who loved learning for its own sake will have so much more advantage over those who didn’t. I also know that if God lives, he must know some of the things that I know and nobody who fails to comprehend said things can possibly have access to God that I don't.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2022 04:16AM by Cold-Dodger.

Andy Weir is a great ambassador for science, isn't he? I loved his book, Project Hail Mary, and might read it a second time at some point. I also enjoyed the movie, The Martian. I love how he weaves real-world science into his novels.

When you talk about trying not to "make God madder at me than usual," I think that is very relatable for people who have struggled to get away from a controlling relgion.