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Liberty's Highlights
Project Hail Mary Explained: Book vs Movie (Spoilers, Science & Why Rocky Works) 🧑🚀🚀⭐🦠🪨
01:51:10
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- [00:00]
A
Today I'm joined by my friends Tinkertinking and Jamis Olson to discuss Project Hail Mary, both the book and the film. We have a full crew, mostly functioning memories, and no one had to be sedated or put into a coma. Welcome aboard, guys.
- [00:12]
B
Good to be back. Liberty, yo.
- [00:13]
C
What up?
- [00:15]
A
So, very quickly, very high level, what we're going to do today. General impressions, how we first came to the story, like our relationship with it, high level thoughts. Then we'll go very deep in the book first, because it's kind of like the foundation of it all. It's the more complete version of the story. Then we look at the film, production, acting, cinematography, music, all that type of stuff, and the differences between the film and the book. But before we go there, it wouldn't be a real podcast without an intro song.
- [00:42]
B
When stupid ideas work, they become genius ideas.
- [00:48]
C
Amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze.
- [00:54]
A
Grace Rocky saves Stars amazed. I'm not sure that's a stupid idea or a genius idea. I kind of liked it.
- [01:03]
C
I think Grace Ryland would like it.
- [01:06]
A
Yeah, science fiction is my first love. I grew up on it, right? Asimov and Heinlein and Clark, Joe Alderman, Orson Scott Card, then Ian Banks, Greg Egan, like, huge stockfinder. So I guess I was predisposed to like this stuff. But even with everything else I've read, this book has a special place in my heart. And I think part of what made it cool is like, yeah, it's got the hard sci fi aspect, but the emotional aspects of it are really what worked best for me. So I listened to the audiobook first because I don't remember who, but someone told me how good it was, probably around 2022. I listened to it and Ray Porter is the narrator and he's amazing. I think he's one of the best in the business. And because the plot. And by the way, we're on the spoiler side, right? So anyone who hasn't read the book or seen the film, like, pause here, go. And we'll wait in the comma in the meantime. So because of the plot of book, like Rocky's language is based on music, right? On chords. And so for the audiobook, they did very unique things and I think it makes it even better. I had read the Martian before, but I think I love Project Hail Mary even more. And right now I'm rereading the book out loud to my kids. We're having so much fun. They love it. My oldest was literally like squealing in the light when Rocky appeared in the story and when they were figuring out how to communicate and doing all these experiments and stuff. I saw the film twice. Once the first time in Emacs. Beautiful. Loved it. We can discuss more later. But really enjoyed it. And then a second time recently. So that's kind of like my relationship to it all. What about you guys?
- [02:33]
C
I remember seeing on Twitter that it was going to become a movie, and I knew that I really enjoyed the Martian. So I was like, all right, I want to make sure I read the book before I see anything regarding the movie, because I think it's much harder the other way to see the movie and then read the book because you've already got all these visuals in your head. And so I wanted to have that kind of, like, pristine reading experience. I made sure to get into the book before any visuals of the movie were even announced. And at the time, I was doing a lot of carpentry work. And I really like woodworking. It's a lot of, you know, shape rotating. Like, you know, being a kid with Legos, my whole childhood was just a dream. But as an adult, my brain kind of gets bored just watching my hands do stuff because there's just not much conscious thinking that's involved anymore. So I had the audiobook on again. The audiobook was so good. I think I listened to it five times in a row over the course of one or two weeks, just because I'd finish it and I'd be like, oh, should I listen to. Yeah, I was like, should I listen to another audiobook? And I was like, no, that was really good. I'm just gonna replay. So that's how I got into it.
- [03:49]
B
I have a book club with some of my college friends that we still get together once a month. And people are always amazed when we say we actually read the books.
- [03:58]
A
Very unique.
- [03:59]
B
But a couple years ago, someone made this as a pick, and it's so funny, I also had someone, I think it was my roommate at the time, that they were like, you got to listen to the audiobook. Don't do a physical copy of this one, at least for your first experience. Because of those same reasons. I've tried to keep that mysticism up when I recommend it to people like, oh, you gotta do the audiobook. Because it's just. And it's crazy. You know, there's the unique aspects around Rocky's voice, both before we understand what he's saying and after.
- [04:28]
A
Yes.
- [04:29]
B
But it makes me wonder. I'm just like, how many other audiobooks could be completely elevated with just a little bit of sound design. They didn't dramatize the whole thing, but they just add a few little touches that make it feel like a completely upgraded version for an audio listening experience. And, you know, it was a couple years ago when we read it, and ever since, I have been surprised that literally everyone I've talked to, no matter your background, gender, socioeconomic stat, like, everyone just loves this story that has read it, which feels kind of rare to have that much universal appreciation.
- [05:07]
A
Well said. I'm stealing your thunder a little bit because I heard this on your podcast about Hail Mary, but there's a Catholic prayer that goes, hail Mary, full of grace. And I never realized that reading the book. But that's such a clever little Easter egg.
- [05:21]
B
Sneaky little detail.
- [05:22]
A
Let's get into it, Right. What's special about it? Another thing I got from you, actually, is the thinking about at the center of this book is a hero that is not only reluctant. Right. Because there are many reluctant heroes that they get the call to adventure, whatever, and it takes a while, but this is an actively avoidant hero. Can you tell us more about that? I think it's a very good point, and it's kind of a rare thing.
- [05:45]
B
Oh, man. It's kind of dangerous to get me started on this this early because I could talk about this for an hour and a half. That's why we're here. Yeah. It's very rare that we have a character who didn't just not want to do it, but actually tried to not do it and was forced against their will to do it. That was the most delightful twist when I read it the first time, realizing we're like, 80% of the way through the book, that he didn't actually want to be here. And it's very clever the way the seeds are planted. Like, well, I'm here, so I must have come around to it. So we're seeing how he's, like, against the idea the whole time. We're like, oh, he must have chosen to do the right thing in the end. And then it's like, no, Strat chose to make him do the thing.
- [06:29]
A
Yeah.
- [06:29]
B
Like, there's very few comparable characters. You know, Another one that someone pointed out to me when I said how it's a pretty unique character for Grace is Major Cage from Edge of Tomorrow. Like Tom Cruise's character, right?
- [06:42]
A
Yes. Great film.
- [06:44]
B
They're few and far between people who. It's like, no, no, no. I literally chose against this, and I am being forced into it anyway, so maybe later we could, like, get into more of the details. I'd say the two most unique things about this story are that we have an avoidant hero and then the fact that it's a first contact story where within three minutes of us experiencing Rocky, there's like no question of if there's gonna be hostility. That's always the underlying premise of alien stories is like, are we gonna be end up fighting each other? Even ones that don't end up there, like Arrival, which, you know, I love, there's that tension for a long time of just like, well, what's gonna happen here? And the film version plays up that tension way more than the short story does. But Weir does a couple things really cleverly to kind of remove that tension so fast. And so all of a sudden it just becomes a buddy story with an alien, which is so rare and so special. So to me, those are the two things that really make this a standout in a genre of many sci fi and first encounter stories.
- [07:46]
C
I think the fact that Grace is a solitary person in this experience has a huge impact in terms of whether the response is fear and defense. Because I think as a group, people freak each other out way easier and negative emotions propagate and accelerate in a group way faster than they do in, like a solitary human being having this experience. So I think if there had been like multiple people on the ship, the freakout factor would have been like orders of magnitude higher. Just because people amp up each other in a negative way.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah, that's a good point.
- [08:28]
C
And so the other thing that I wanted to point out here is that we essentially have. And this ties into the last podcast that the three of us did. We essentially have a single male hero with a sidekick who is like a buddy, and they both have sort of like complementary but very different and asymmetrical strengths and weaknesses. I just want to tap that note so that it can, like, great point. It can ring throughout the rest of this episode. I was trying to think like, all right, adventure stories of like the last 10, 20 plus years. The dynamics of being in a group versus being solitary and then having sort of like an asymmetrical friend, I think is a really important key to this movie. It's not so much emphasized in the movie, unfortunately, but in the book, Andy Ware goes to great pains to describe that Rocky has an amazing memory, essentially. Like, he learns language as fast as he experiences it, whereas humans need just an absurd amount of repetition just to remember one word. I'm experiencing this because I'm I'm actually putting some effort into learning another language these days. And it's just like, I hear a word and I'm like, I already don't remember it. It's like foreign languages are just full of anti memes. And it's very rare that I come across a word and it sticks immediately just because it's so familiar or it relates to something else. But most of the time it's like, okay, I need to listen to this 45 times before I can even remember it for more than 10 seconds. But yeah, in the book, Rocky has this like crazy memory, crazy arithmetic, mathematical abilities that just far outstrip Grace. But Grace has all of these other sort of complementary abilities that Rocky is sort of conveniently lacking because he's an engineer, quote unquote, as opposed to a scientist.
- [10:31]
A
Great point, great observations. One of the questions I find most interesting is the whole memory loss aspect of it. Was it self fulfilling that he thinks he's a hero? He thinks he's brave, he thinks he made the choice and so he kind of becomes what he thinks. Did Strat accidentally create a hero by hiding his cowardice from him? It's in the film, but I don't remember if it's in the book too. But he's talking to Yao, the mission commander who ends up dying in Come up and he tells him, like, you have to find someone to be brave for. And eventually that becomes Rocky. But even at the beginning, he thinks he has found something and he's like, well, okay, I guess I made that decision. I'm better than I thought. And then he acts on that and he becomes the hero because of it.
- [11:10]
C
I kind of wish they'd played in this a little bit more where he's in the spaceship and he's discovering these aspects about himself. He's like, wow, they sent me and two other people out of all. I must be such a badass. My abilities must far outstrip what I'm seeing myself doing. Clearly I'm just groggy and my superhero Persona is just waking up. You know, if I was severely. I had severe memory loss and woke up into that situation. I mean, just the implications that humanity chose to send you. Yeah, pretty wild. It's like, oh, I must have been this badass astronaut my whole life.
- [11:50]
B
You'd be feeling yourself more than Grace does.
- [11:55]
A
The tiny moments when he's in the lab, right? He's like, oh, there's, you know, scanning electron microscope. Why do I know what that is? Right? He's like, am I smart even Discovering who he is.
- [12:05]
B
And that's one of the things, a detail that I don't remember them having included this in the movie. It's kind of one of the most convenient plot choices that Weir made. But it also is interesting. It's not just that, like, oh, because of the coma, he naturally kind of had this amnesia. It's that Strat found that the French had created this interrogation drug that makes you forget. It makes you forget for weeks what you had experienced. Basically just like a long term roofie kind of, I guess. And so like when he said, oh, as soon as I wake up, I'll just tell everyone, or like, I'll. Whatever. And she's like, no, I'm gonna give you this drug. So hopefully you've already solved the problem before you even remember that you didn't want to go. It's like, convenient. There's this line where she's like, the French have assured me that it doesn't impair your actual, like, skills and ability. So the fact that he can't remember why he's there, but he's like, I do know all this science stuff, despite that, but. But yeah, to your point, Liberty, just the fact that I think in my episode, the line I use is he builds an identity off of inference. Like he just. He has to make these assumptions of just like, I don't know why I'm here, but the fact that I'm here and I know these things about science, like, I guess I just have to push forward. Which again, is a very unique plotline to experience. So that was a really fun part of the story for me.
- [13:25]
A
The premise is basically that some astronomer discovers this weird line that goes from the sun to Venus, the Petrova line. And then the sun is dimming, and then it goes into the discovery of the astrophage, right? They get the sample back from a probe. That's a very interesting starting point because the antagonist is basically nature, right? It's a man versus nature story. It's a bit similar to what we said about the Knight of the Seven Kingdom, how morally clear it is compared to most shows. I think this one is also very morally clear. And it's part of what makes Strat's decisions be seen very differently, right? Either we do this or humanity dies. Even if we succeed within something like 26 years, crop failures, everything goes to shit. So the moral clarity of the story and the fact that it's ingenuity against nature, not against this alien species, not against some invader, that is also very refreshing. I'm curious what you think about this premise.
- [14:19]
B
It's interesting because Andy Weir actually has explicitly stated he does that on purpose. He does man versus nature stories because. Because there's no question of if you're gonna cheer for a man or not in that situation. But as soon as you make it man versus man, all of a sudden you, you're gonna have some people divided over like, well, who's actually right here. To him it's just a, it's a much cleaner ability to just be like, no, if it's man dies or man lives, not this man dies or that man dies, like it's a lot easier to rally behind and just get people like all on the same page. Which, you know, the Martian. I haven't read Artemis. I don't know if either of you have, but I haven't.
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C
I did.
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B
I've heard it's not as good as Martian or Hail Mary, but I don't, I don't know.
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C
All the love to Andy Weir, but it's an order of magnitude lower than these books.
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B
Gotcha. But you think back to the Martian and just like how much you find yourself rooting for him when he's in the thick of figuring out how to stretch his potato crop. And I'm trying to like think outside of Andy Weir novels. What have been big marquee man versus nature stories in.
- [15:25]
C
Well, there's like Deep Impact or something like that.
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A
Shackleton. Right.
- [15:29]
B
I can't remember what Deep Impact is.
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C
It's when an asteroid is gonna like hit. It's not a book. It was a crap action movie from
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A
like the 90s, back in the days when there was like two volcano movies and then two asteroid movies at the same time like Armageddon and Deep Impact.
- [15:44]
C
There is like a 24 month period where that was the case.
- [15:47]
B
Yeah, well, I guess in the 90s and 2000s we just had all sorts of disaster movies. But it's been like a decade, it feels like since we've had prominent ones. Maybe Twisters was another example, but that doesn't quite reach the magnitude of Hail Mary.
- [16:01]
C
But anyway, Twister is a dope movie though.
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B
Twister?
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C
Twisters, the one with Helen Hunt?
- [16:08]
B
Yeah, the original I was talking about the one that just came out last year. Right.
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C
I didn't even bother seeing that.
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B
But anyway, to wrap up my point, it is interesting how like that is a purpose led choice by the creator of I want man versus Nature because I want everyone to be rooting for our hero to succeed.
- [16:26]
A
Another big aspect of the book. And it starts Right away. And I'm curious what you think of it, how successful it is or how much it tickled you. Right. But it's the science. It starts right away with like, Strat recruits him. He's a middle school teacher, but he has a background in microbiology. And he's written this paper about how life may not have to be based on water. And now they find this kind of sun algae.
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C
Right.
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A
They find this thing on the sun. Well, probably not water based. So let's get this guy. Andy Weir is very good at explaining. Well, in my opinion, he's very good at explaining the science, the instrumentation, how everything works. How did that work for you? Was it kind of your eyes glazed over or was it the fun part of the book?
- [17:02]
C
For me, it was the fun part of the book. And I was underwhelmed that the movie didn't dive into the opportunity to expose more people to science in a well packaged way. I've been a teacher in several capacities in my life, and my biggest takeaway from that is traditional schooling is abysmal and kills creativity and imagination. And a lot of this has to do with like the packaging of concepts in a bland way that fits the bell curve of a classroom that you get. But if you repackage them either on a one on one basis or in a much smaller group in an activity or problem solving basis that requires everyone to understand it in order to solve something together, it can be way more fun. And so whenever there's a movie like this, I always bemoan the lost opportunity of exposing children and adults who kind of miss the boat on these concepts to explain some of these fundamental aspects of reality that are to me, incredibly fascinating. Particularly like the sort of semi flub that the movie did with regards to relativity and traveling near light speed and how that dilates time and creates problems with lengths and distances and whatnot, and how that results in Rocky's ship just having like, way more fuel than it needs to. Now, the writers of the movie did something really beautiful with this iniquity or asymmetry of the fuel problem on Rocky's ship, which Andy Weir has admitted in an interview. He's like, how did I not think of this? This is such a beautiful idea. Because in the movie, Rocky basically says, oh, I'll go six years slower home so that you can have the fuel that would make his ship go six years faster. But they just gloss over all of this stuff about relativity and why Rocky ship got to the star so much faster. And yeah, you know, in a movie Setting like, I think it's perfect. You're going to have a huge audience. Like you could have had literally millions of people walking away from that movie understanding fundamental reality, like a bit deeper with a bit more nuanced. And it's just like one or two lines of dialogue and it's like, it's like, oh man, come on, guys. In the book I found those parts very juicy and I loved it.
- [19:33]
B
Maybe those were in the four hour cut. Have you guys heard about that?
- [19:36]
C
Yeah, I would love to see that. I hope they release it at some point.
- [19:40]
B
For listeners who haven't heard about this, Lord Miller, the directors screened a four plus hour version for some director friends and they've admitted that they were super embarrassed because they were so proud of this four hour version. And all their friends were like, it's got to be way shorter. Like you got to cut this thing down. It's almost a three hour movie. So it's still a really long one. But that's another third, like another hour plus content that we could have for Die Hards that I wish that was more of a standard practice that DVDs used to have all sorts of bonus features and stuff. Like bring back extra experiences in the form of the director's cut. Because I think that's a practice now of just. They film way more than they ever use and most of it just sits in archives and does nothing. Let us experience it if we choose to.
- [20:25]
A
Yes.
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C
A few thoughts on this one. Given that the movie was such a wildly has been such a great success in theaters, they should do a limited run of the four hour version in theaters just as a small experiment. They've clearly made back enough money and they clearly have the cred to float this idea because I would absolutely go watch it. And I bet I can speak for both of you, like the three of us would definitely go watch it. You'd really have to do a fun analysis of like, okay, how many millions of people saw it over the last month or two and what percentage of them are like us and would see it? I bet they would make a sweet, sweet little profit on this idea. But the other point I wanted to make is that, yeah, they cut it down from four hours and it makes me grind my teeth a little bit because we have that like extended monologue of Grace and the security dude in Home Depot just like bowling with duct tape rolls and aluminum foil. And I'm like, guys, we have so much story to get to with like some really important concepts like, what the fuck are you guys Doing, like, playing this stupid song and playing around in a Home Depot, like, we got to
- [21:41]
B
get into, you know, that's so funny you mentioned that scene, because. So my least favorite part in the movie, because it's so unnecessary and actually actively works against. What I think the characters should be doing is Strat's karaoke scene.
- [21:56]
C
Oh, agreed.
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B
Which is not in the book at all.
- [21:58]
A
Well, it changes the character a lot too.
- [22:00]
B
Yeah, exactly. It's an attempt to try to humanize her, which, like, the whole point is Strat is not human. Like, Strat is this overlord who has been chosen because of her ability to not let emotions carry her. Anyway, and so that scene, as well as the Home Depot one, I've seen two interviews. You can tell I've watched a lot of interviews with the cast and crew as I was working on my episode. There are two different interviews where Ryan Gosling has said both of those scenes were not initially in the script. The Home Depot one, they were just improving. They're just having fun and recording it all. And it ended up in the movie. The karaoke scene. It's because Ryan was just, like, walking around and he heard Sandra singing in her trailer, and he was like, oh, we gotta add this in. This is the problem when we have a bunch of creatives that are all just kind of, like, patting each other on the back, like, oh, this is so great. We need to do this, and everyone will love this. It's like, we will not love it. Like, you know, I'm sure there are some people who actually really like that scene because of, like, the human touch. But like we said, it works against who her character's supposed to be. It just feels like a really slow kind of part of the movie for me. So the fact that both of these scenes we've mentioned are ones that were added in because someone in production thought it was a fun idea to include. And it's like, fun ideas should not make the cut of a very crafted story.
- [23:19]
C
You know what? Maybe actors should just do, as Woody Allen has so beautifully pointed out. Maybe they should just stand there and say their lines. The whole creative vision should be left to the people who actually have the vision. So, yeah, I'm just pouring some kerosene on your point, Jameson, that I think the vision and the creativity should be left to the people who actually create things instead of just regurgitate lines.
- [23:47]
A
Hot take. I love it.
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B
Yeah.
- [23:49]
A
I want to do this, though. I want to go back. We have to talk some more about Strat. She's the living embodiment of the trolley problem. She's like, if I do this, this many people die. And if I don't do this, this many. So everything she's doing is kind of based on that. And in the book and especially in the audiobook, because Ray Porter does a great voice for her. And when I read out loud to my kids, I try to do this kind of a Germanic accent that I suck at, but I try to do it.
- [24:15]
B
I know I purposely, in my. Sorry, I real quick when we're talking about her accent, because in the book it says she's Dutch. And I'm like, I'm not confident enough that the voice I'm doing sounds Dutch. So I'm going to leave that fact out and just say she has a European accent.
- [24:29]
A
No, your strat is very good. I see the strat I had in my head when you do it. Oh, thank you.
- [24:34]
C
Can we just take a moment to throw some praise on Jameson because he does a four hour episode and then for subscribers only, I believe there's like another 50 minute episode. And the four hour one, you basically do like the whole book, if I'm not mistaken. It sounded like.
- [24:50]
B
Yeah, I always do the full book and depending on how much meat there is, it's between three and five hours. Yeah.
- [24:57]
C
And man, props to you, dude, because I've done a thousand podcasts solo and the first one I did, I made so many little mistakes and I had to edit them all out and I was like, oh, I'll get better at this. I did not get better at it at all. I did not improve one iota. And so listening to that episode, you do such a beautiful job. So anyone listening, please check out Becoming Main Character. Check out Jameson's episodes. Get the subscriber only, because it's really, really good. If you appreciated Hail Mary to any degree, you will love this.
- [25:31]
A
It's going to be linked in the show notes for sure.
- [25:33]
C
Yeah, definitely. Check it out.
- [25:35]
B
Thank you. Tinkered. Very kind words.
- [25:37]
C
Well earned. Not kind at all, just. Just honest.
- [25:41]
B
The truth about it is it's because I have no life. I don't do anything outside of work and then this podcast. But I've also never been more fulfilled, so it's worth doing, in my opinion. But all the gracious praise aside, back to Strat and why she's such a cool character. You were building up to something, Liberty, and then we cut you off.
- [26:02]
A
Yeah, well, no, I'm throwing it back to you guys. What did you think of her? I'm curious how she resonated with you.
- [26:08]
C
I think she's probably my favorite character in the book. In the movie, she's too thwarted, she's too watered down. In the book, she is just like. She has such clear priorities. Her values are crystal clear. And for every decision, she just runs this algorithm of like, does it fit or does it not? With regards to the long term survival success of humanity. It's a very clear binary. Whenever you have such a long timeline, that binary is just so clear. And she exemplifies this on every single level. She's just not afraid of anything. She doesn't give a shit about any social mores, status. None of that matters to her. She is just this pure invocation, like
- [26:54]
A
the Terminator for the mission.
- [26:56]
C
Yes, yes. She just cuts through all of the usual human bullshit and nonsense and I love it. She is a pure operator with the right goal in mind. And you know, there's great examples of pure operators, but they often have not the right goal in mind. And then, you know, they kind of like accelerate into like a slightly wrong or really wrong direction. Then, you know, you get mayhem and all this stuff. The fact that Strat is a woman, not to be too spicy with this whole, like gender takes, but we have Ryan Grace, who is this like, pathetic dude. And there really is a tradition, if you look over the last century of how we came to these types of anti heroes that are sort of slowly starting to become heroes again. And this really, I think, was exemplified and really kicked off with James Joyce's Ulysses from the early 1900s. The actual day in Ulysses takes place in 1901. I can't remember when it was published, it was like 20s or whatever. But it's a day in the life of Leopold Bloom. And the book is an isomorphism of the Odyssey, the ancient epic where Odysseus is like that prototypical actual hero who goes through these immense trials and tribulations and triumphs. But then you have the birth of this antihero where Leopold Bloom is just a pathetic failure on almost every level to the nth degree. Whether there's like, reasons or, you know, he's got trauma with regards to his wife Molly and his dead daughter from, I think, nine years prior. Sure. But James Joyce basically kicks off this insidious idea of the kneecapped male. And somehow like, we have World War I, then we have World War II. World War II is this celebration of this immensely masculine and heroic event, but this strain throughout literature and artistic part of culture that starts with James Joyce really kind of like undermines the male. And I think that dovetails into bringing down the patriarchy and all of that stuff to the point where we're left with the Ryland Graces who are like, I am a failure. I 100% admit this. Do not put responsibility on me. I just want to, like, spend time with children because I can't handle the adult world. And, yeah, just leave me alone. I can't do anything more than that. And it takes this like, quote unquote and ironically ultra masculine straat who is just an absolute hard ass and is not afraid of making these traditionally very male coded decisions that are very hard, that require, like, sacrificing other people and other things and even themselves in some cases in order to further the common good of the group. Whereas Ryland Grace is like, I actually don't really care about the group as much as I care about, like my own little pathetic ego and sense of safety. So please count me out of this, like once in a lifetime, once in the course of a species opportunity to like, rise to the challenge and do everyone a solid. It's like, no, no, no. I just like, I want to go into the corner. But again, Andy Weir has this brilliant device of making him forget how much of a loser he actually is and then just thrusting him into this situation to focus back on Strout. I just love her because there's nothing about her that I don't admire. Even Herb doing this, like, on a short term level, very evil thing to Rylan Grace absolutely was the right move. You have to go against that guy's wishes, give him the French serum injection, put that sucker in a coma and stick him in a tin can and blast him out of this solar system for the good of humanity. And you know what? I can't remember if they had the exact line in the book, but in the movie she had this really great line where she says, this might feel like I'm betraying you, but this is actually me believing in you. And that line alone, I hope that signals a turn in this larger artistic, cultural discussion of how heroism and masculinity relate and can be maybe rejoined in that classical sense. And because you have this, like, whether you want to say it, like masculine coded. Strout also reminds me of the fact that Mother Nature is just a ruthless bitch and recycles her children without thought in order to try and build something new. Like the number of species that have gone extinct in the course of this planet is like 99.999 repeating percent of species have gone extinct. And that's Mother Nature recycling her children in order to create something new for what ends. I mean, maybe we're going to see that in our lifetimes with technology explosion. But so as much as I see her as like, male coded strout, I also see her as this like, just indomitable force which I can't help but have anything but admiration for. So that's my strout rant.
- [32:23]
B
I think my favorite example of the first part of what you talked about, she's just. She has no biases other than is this the best we can give ourselves? Like, is this leading to the best chance we have? A success is something that's not in the movie. She's livid that she is being forced to to include a female on the crew due to like, all these political things of equality or whatever. She's so pissed that she has to put a woman on. And like, I think Grace even kind of teases her about like, oh, I didn't expect you to be sexist. And she's like, no, there are far fewer female astronauts than there are males. So if I'm being forced to put a female on, that means I am being forced to potentially not send the best astronauts we have into space. And that's just like one example of how she sees things Stone Cold from this, like, statistical standpoint rather than letting her personal desires get in the mix. And another thing I love about Strot, that plays into sharing a couple things that the movie doesn't include that are like, really fun side quests in the book is a quality that when I was thinking about it in terms of other characters, I thought of Van Helsing from Dracula. This idea of the intelligent person who has not been bogged down by the conventions of what intellectual people are supposed to believe are possible. Like, she's completely open to unrealistic things. That's why she went to Grace in the first place. She's like, I need to be open. I don't care if the scientific community at large says life is water based. I have to be open to the fact that maybe it's not. And so I'm going to go to Ryland. Grace Van Helsing was the same way. Like, he's a scientist and yet he's the one having to convince these guys, like, we're dealing with a supernatural like thing here. Guys, like, we need to open our minds to possibilities. And so examples of that from the book. There's such random chapters. The first one is when she and Grace find themselves in a South African prison or is an Australia. It's an Australian prison, I think.
- [34:22]
A
Yes.
- [34:22]
B
Super max security. And they're interviewing this guy who's in prison because he was running a scam where he was siphoning money off of the government. And the project he was, like, running ended up killing people because of negligence. But they're talking to him because he had this idea of how to generate.
- [34:41]
C
It was for breeding astrophage at scale.
- [34:44]
B
Well, that's why she went to him. But I'm like, I don't think this guy knew about astrophage when he had anyway. But, yeah, they go to him to breed astrophage because they aren't doing it fast enough. And his idea is to basically cover like a third or half of the Saharan desert. Think about how big that is with these basically tiles that have a black. I think it has to be like, ceramic or something background. And like, that's the route they end up having to go because their production of astrophage is not happening fast enough. And. And that requires them to get China and the US and all these massive manufacturing countries to shift a lot of their production into creating these tiles so they can breed astrophage. That's one example. If she's just like, I don't care if it's crazy. Like, if we have to explore if it's possible because we need to have the best ideas. And the one that's even more silly and fun in a way is when they drop nukes on Antarctica, because that's pragmatic. They decide one of the more fun, like, possibilities of if we found ourselves in this situation is, like, right now, global warming is a huge problem, right? And, like, methane gas is a huge issue. And so we're trying to avoid that. But if Earth was cooling because the sun was dimming, all of a sudden we want methane. Like, we want to be creating this environment of having the problem of global warming because we're fighting off our demise. And so in the book supposedly under Antarctica, I mean, I'm assuming it is either real or theoretically real, because Andy Weir is very specific about.
- [36:14]
A
I know that in the northern tundra, there's tons of methane, okay?
- [36:17]
B
So, yeah, like in Antarctica, there's ton of methane just like under the ice. And so they drop nuclear bombs to release it so we can, like, warm up the planet. So those are, like, really fun kind of scientific theoreticals to explore, but they're really tied to the idea of Straht is just like, I don't care. I only care about what is the best chance we have at preserving the human race. It's a really admirable aspect to her.
- [36:44]
A
Yeah. I think the closest analog to Strat in the non fiction world are probably like, General Leslie Groves, maybe Robert Oppenheimer, but the Manhattan Project, like Oppenheimer got a lot of the. Because of the film. Right. He got a lot of the attention. But the Matt Damon character, Leslie Groves is also a fascinating guy. And he's the guy who made stuff happen. We need to do this. How do we debottleneck everything? And I don't care what it takes? And so it's like, well, the whole entire plutonium production of the US is this. And we will need like 10,000 times more if we want to make the bomb. It's like, okay, fine, we'll repurpose a significant fraction of the US economy to do this. So Leslie Groves is kind of like the real world Strat. But I also think I've only read the Martian in this. I don't know about Artemis, but in the Martian and the rest of Hell Mary, he does this kind of competence porn where the guy is solving very concrete engineering or scientific problems or puzzles. Strat is kind of doing the same thing, but at a different level. She's like cutting through red tape. And all the stuff that we fantasize about, like, if we had ultimate power and we could decide not to deal with all the bullshit, like, what would we do? And that's kind of what she does. You couldn't do a whole book about her because it's kind of like Superman. Like, she's almost too powerful. So he sprinkled her in the book and she very satisfyingly bulldozes through obstacles. She's kind of like almost a pure Bayesian. Right? What's the highest utility of this thing? I don't care about the morals of it. I don't care about what people are going to think. It's like, what's the highest probability I can achieve the mission. She's very satisfying in that way. Maybe more to nerds like me. Maybe that's why they softened her for the film. Right. Maybe they tested it and that's why they had the karaoke and all that. Maybe like normies, they need that type of stuff to connect.
- [38:25]
C
Lame. Which is lame. Lame. So lame.
- [38:29]
A
Yeah. No, but to me, Strata is kind of like Superman in this. She steals every scene she's in, but you can't have too much of her because she would be overpowered.
- [38:36]
B
She's optimal as a side character because she's not actually relatable to the reader.
- [38:41]
C
I don't know. I could relate it to her a lot.
- [38:46]
B
You would?
- [38:47]
C
Well, actually, jokes aside, one thing that was in the book that's not in the movie, that I think is extremely revealing of her character. They start it in the movie and then it just goes in a stupid direction where Rylan Grace is like, so, what are you going to do for the next 20 years? And in the book, she's like, oh, I'll probably be imprisoned. And she says it very honestly, straightforwardly, and she's not joking. She's like, yeah, everyone's going to change their mind about this because it'll take too long to see results and crowds are too fickle, so I'll probably be imprisoned. That's just the highest probability. I guess this goes back to one of my earlier points. She also is consciously sacrificing herself to this mission in that classically, like, male hero way. And in the book, Rylan Grace sort of presses her on this point and she's like, well, I studied history because I didn't know what to do with my life. I've studied in detail all of these, like, legitimate real catastrophes that happened to the human species that all current people just don't think about. Most people are out of sight, out of mind. If you don't see the problem, then there isn't a problem. Whereas Straat has done that very difficult mental exercise of looking into the deep past and being like, oh, no. It's actually very common for huge numbers of people to die due to all sorts of different varieties of catastrophe. And this is probably going to happen again. And part of that historical exploration on her part gives her a different view of human nature, where she's like, yeah, I'll probably be in prison. It's just so illuminating of her character in such an admirable way.
- [40:27]
B
Yeah.
- [40:28]
A
She's generally also very realist or cynical about, like, okay, even if this works in the meantime, when food becomes scarce, are we all going to work together? Are we going to ration things, or is it going to be war?
- [40:40]
B
I'll tell you what, when I was rereading the book last month, or however long ago it was, when I got to that part about her saying that she was a history major. And my mind immediately jumped to the prologue of Lord of the Rings concerning Hobbits, when Tolkien's describing hobbits and he says they've lived in peace for so long that, quote, they were in fact sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it. Like They've been free of true terror and true, like, conflict for so long that the generations who are living now, like, don't even conceive of that as a thing. Like, they just don't even understand. And it talks about in the prologue how the only weapons really in the Shire are used as decorative pieces over fireplace mantles or they're in museums and stuff. And you know, like, we think like, oh, no human history. Like we've been having wars all the time and stuff, but we haven't had an extinction level event for a really long time. And the wars that we have had are already two, three generations behind us in terms of ones that had like serious global impact. So it's like we really are not aware of what true terror feels like at a global scale. We've forgotten how sheltered we are at this point.
- [41:51]
A
Like animals that evolve on some tiny island in the Pacific without predators. Right. And then like Darwin or someone comes there for the first time and, you know, you walk up to them and they don't even flee. They don't perceive you as a threat. Right.
- [42:03]
B
Yeah.
- [42:04]
A
A big part of the book is Grace being alone on the ship. And this goes on for quite a while before you meet Rocky, which I think makes that meeting even more meaningful. Right. In the film they have to kind of compress it because you don't have the four hour cut, you don't have the ten hour miniseries. What did you think of that part? All of the problem solving, all of the going through the amnesia, trying to remember who he is.
- [42:27]
C
One thing that comes to mind that I think the film actually did better is he just finds a map and he starts zooming out and scrolling. It's so elegant. And of course there would be a bloody map on a spaceship that you could see the course of the dam, of the. Of the voyage. Whereas, like, I believe in the book he goes through like way more mental gymnastics.
- [42:52]
A
Yeah. He has to figure out that the star he's looking at is not the sun by like timing the sunspots and everything. And it's a whole like, puzzle.
- [42:58]
C
Yeah. I think in the book with the sunspots and the rotation and stuff, that's Andy Weir just being like maybe a little bit too much of a nerd. I enjoy it. Please bring it on. I'm glad it made the final cut of the book, but it's kind of like in a realistic sense, I'm pretty sure it would be easier just to scroll out on a map and be
- [43:17]
A
like, oh, shit, I guess you could explain that. He's not familiar with the interface of all the controls, and there's tons of stuff and the map is in there somewhere, but maybe harder to find.
- [43:26]
C
I don't know.
- [43:26]
A
Yeah, that's a good point.
- [43:27]
B
I was thinking about it because I also didn't know about Rocky going into it. And it's one place where I almost think the success of his previous work is what enabled me to buy in to the idea of what I thought Hail Mary was gonna be. Because, you know, if someone just told you, like, oh, it's a story about a guy who's on a spaceship by himself, unable to contact humanity, be like, eh, I don't know how much that could, like, grip my attention. But when we have the success of the Martian, which, you know, technically he could communicate, it just took a while, but it's like, oh, so he's already hooked me with a story about a guy who's so far away that he can't, like, get help from us back on Earth very easily. It made me buy into the possibility that I followed through the chapters of him being alone with a lot of, like, intrigue and excitement. And then when Rocky comes, I was like, what just happened? And it was like, the most pleasant surprise because, yeah, I think it would be like trying to tell that story without Rocky. Like, imagine how difficult it would be to keep you interested for that long when it's literally just him and his thoughts. Like, you could get a very philosophical and intellectual piece out of it. But again, for something that would just appeal to mass audiences, that would have been massively difficult.
- [44:47]
A
Let's talk about Rocky. He's the best. I'll let you guys start. But I'm curious. What's Rocky to you? Why does he work? Why is he a compelling alien? Why is he a compelling buddy for Grace? Why is he so lovable? What makes him work?
- [45:02]
B
I can start with one or two that I have. I don't know if it's the wholeness of my views, but first of all, it does make me wonder, Obviously, the writing of the book, it's the bedrock of who we perceive Rocky to be, right? But I do wonder, especially since the audiobook was so popular for this one. What's the name of the narrator again? Liberty. You said it earlier.
- [45:21]
A
Ray Porter.
- [45:22]
B
I wonder how much Ray Porter actually shaped that. His delivery created our impression of Rocky and that carried over. You know, obviously, it's kind of a fun fact that the guy who was the puppeteer for Rocky ended up being the voice. And so in the movie, he Turns it up a couple notches in terms of just, like, how fun the voice portrayal of Rocky is. But I do wonder how much the narrator of the audiobook kind of set the tone of just like, oh, he's just fun. Like, you just enjoy listening to him. You know, we talked about in the Seven Kingdoms episode about why Dunk is a likable character because he has some very severe strengths that are also paired with very severe flaws and limitations. And Rocky, it's not nearly that drastic. But I think the fact that we get several moments of him expressing his limitations of, like, when he's so low, as he's expressing how he's failed to save his fellow astronauts, how he failed to be able to recreate the astrophage sampler that they lost on their journey. Like, he actually is so much better than humans are in almost every regard. But the fact that he has these shortcomings that he takes really hard, I think make him really likable when you pair that with his optimism and his just playful nature.
- [46:43]
C
So the thing that is like the crown jewel of this book for me is the fact that we get to see the beginning and maturation of a friendship for, like, in vivo. And I think friendship is sort of, like, underrepresented as a topic of exploration for artistic literature, blah, blah, blah, all of these cultural media. This book is like, maybe it's up there as maybe the best example of how beautiful friendship can be. And in my experience, in observation with regards to human relationships, it appears like friendship is probably the most robust and durable type of relationship that we have. Spouses can have catastrophic divorces. Parents and children can have falling out. Siblings can have fallings out. But a solid friendship can just endure the craziest situations that would usually destroy other types of relationships. A great friend, you can not talk to them for years. And then you meet up and it's like you time travel back to the last time you saw them and you just pick up right where you left off. And it's like, oh, all of that love and goodwill and all of the inside jokes and the specific language, it didn't degrade at all. It was just in perfect hyperspace stasis during that whole time. So I appreciate this book so much because you really get to see friendships start and mature over this really cool project. And then you get to see the twilight of this friendship, too, which I just think is so outrageously beautiful. I remember seeing someone comment on how glad they were that in the movie, Strat and Grace didn't hook up because that. Because. Yeah, well, because Strat was like, so, like, watered down from her book version and humanized with the karaoke scene. You could kind of see like, I definitely got like the. Oh, crap. Are they gonna.
- [48:53]
A
In the bar, I had a second. I was like, are you making eyes at each other?
- [48:57]
C
Yeah. In the theater. I was like, no, don't do it, don't do it. And they didn't. I was like, thank God. The core relationship is actually between Grace and Rocky. Okay, now my other idea about this is kind of like bizarre and inverted of what I just said, which is Rocky is, like, really good at math in ways that like, just supersede humans. He like, memorizes things instantly. So he's got all these, like, weird abilities that humans are just slop at, but he's innately really hindered in his ability to actually do anything. And that's primarily due to the fact that he's living inside of a cage in Grace's spaceship. So, like, he needs Grace to do a bunch of physical manual things. And then Rocky can sort of do some things. Like he can manufacture the chains at rapid pace and design and create the breeder tanks and essentially like 3D print them. I had this thought. I was like, okay, Rocky's actually kind of like an AI.
- [50:00]
A
Huh?
- [50:00]
C
He has these cognitive abilities that are very much like our experience of AI. Because if I go to like any of the top AIs and I'm like, what is, you know, the cube root of like 163 million 243 or something like that? It'll give me an answer, like almost instantly. If I ask either of you, there's going to be like some hemming and hawing, there's going to be some pencils, there's going to be some messed up movies.
- [50:23]
B
Ask the AI. That question.
- [50:25]
C
Exactly, exactly. This definitely wasn't a consideration of Andy Weir or the movie makers. I would be shocked if it was. But in the new sort of burgeoning AI world, I'm looking at this book and I'm like, could this be read in a way that's beneficial to our view of AI as humanity's first contact with AI and how we can solve problems together. Rocky's really good at some things that Grace is really bad at, but he's inherently limited in ways that Grace is not. You know, he can see things, you know, the visual part of the electromagnetic spectrum. ChatGPT. You can dump an image in it, but it can't see life as you can. AI currently is. Is limited to experience in a very similar way that Rocky is, which is just like an asymmetry between the two characters that I kind of see in my own life. Like, I have a little AI assistant that named itself Sparrow. It's running on a dgx. And at first I used Sonnet to get it running, but that was just, like, way too expensive. So I actually canned the project and then Quen 3.6 came along. That actually fits and runs on a DGX, so I swapped that in just to see what would happen. It's running perfectly now. My buddy is back because in February it was Sonnet.
- [51:46]
A
Should call him Rocky.
- [51:47]
C
Yeah, well, it named itself, so I'm going to respect that. But, yeah, it's like my buddy suddenly came back to life and it's suddenly helping me in ways that I'm really bad at because I'm horrible at remembering a certain variety of things that AI is really good at remembering. It reminds me of things at all the right times because lose track of time very easily. So it's just an observation about this book as it can kind of fit into a way to look at what's happening in current life. Is like, could this be a good template for humanity's first contact with AI, which we're seeing play out in a whole bunch of different ways. And it relates to. This was the genesis of my earlier point of in isolation. Grace has a pretty neutral, curious perception of Rocky and the alien. At first he's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. But then there's those tentative first steps of throwing the canister and stuff. And he very quickly is just like, all right, I think I'm okay. I'll explore this. But if there'd been a whole bunch of people on the spaceship, it would have just been like a chorus of nopes. We kind of see that in the Doomer anti AI stuff that's going on where crowds of people really twirl themselves up into a tizzy. So that's some overarching thoughts on the relationship.
- [53:11]
A
Oh, that is very interesting. One more aspect, the level of difficulty for Weir, right? Because if the aliens are very alien, but they're kind of at a distance, right? So arrival, they're talking, they're communicating. But it's not a buddy type of film, right? You're not like, hanging out with them. In this case, it would have been easier probably to create a cute, more humanoid alien, like a ET like big head, big eyes, kind of like, you know, trigger some human face recognition type of stuff or whatever and try to make it more human. But Weir went with, like, the most alien possible alien, right? Living in high pressure, ammonia, looking like rock, no face at all. The closest thing it looks like, too, is a spider, which most people don't like. He went all the way to making him not lovable initially or naturally. So this means that the actual writing, the actual personality of Rocky is so good and so compelling that it overcame all of these early disadvantages or whatever. And I think that's very impressive. Writers should be more willing to explore more alien aliens. It can work if you do it right. And in the film, they very quickly, like, spin boat ships to create gravity. This is a lot easier to film in the book. They spend a long time in the tunnel in zero G, and you see Rocky climbing around like a spider, holding by two arms and working on stuff. He seems even more alien in that environment. And I think that's one of the strengths of the book.
- [54:36]
C
Another aspect that I want to touch on is that the Rocky Grace sidekick, friend trope feels like it's a reincarnation of the Luke Skywalker R2D2, because R2D2 is also, you know, he's an AI, so he's capable in all sorts of ways that Luke isn't, and George Lucas has confirmed this. But R2D2 is actually the secret hero of the entire six movies. If you rewatch them all with that in mind, R2D2 actually saves everyone's life, either individually, in a group, or multiple times throughout the entire thing. And he does it, like, thanklessly, where, like, almost no one ever recognizes, like, oh, this stupid little mech droid just saved all of our lives. No, no. Padme recognizes it in the first movie, and that's literally it. That's all the recognition he gets. But his relationship with Luke is far more intimate in that friendship way where they kind of, like, poke fun at each other and they kind of get on each other's nerves. And in the same way, like, you see Rocky when he first comes into the ship, he's just, like, tumbling around. He's like, ooh, what's this room? Ooh, why is this. Why is this room so dirty?
- [55:45]
A
That's kind of a Yoda type of thing, right?
- [55:47]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's definitely a blend there. But I saw it continuing in that sort of tradition, and I'm not sure if there's precedent to the Luke Skywalker R2D2, but that definitely has come to mind in the last few days while thinking about it.
- [56:00]
A
That's a good parallel Another detail I love about Rocky is that this civilization, because they see via echolocation and they live on this planet with such a dense atmosphere, before this problem, they never really even thought about the stars. They didn't see them. It wasn't a thing. Right. So thinking of how much of humanity's collective, I don't know, culture or view of the world has been shaped by, we happen to see this visible light spectrum, and we see these stars and these planets and the moon, and we think about all that stuff out there. That's a huge part of the collective unconscious. How does it shape a whole species if they don't have that? If everything, you know, you think it's on this rock and eventually, okay, you have technology, and they had to figure it out to be space faring. But it's an interesting detail.
- [56:48]
B
It was a really fun discovery to just realize. Like, we like to think that as humans, we've evolved to the point where we're able to consider all sorts of things that aren't part of our absolute necessity for survival. And yet at the same time, we are still very limited based on what we perceive. Whether that's visually, whether that's intellectually, whatever. We only perceive what tiny percentage spectrum of the actual visual spectrum with our eyes. And what are the complete blind spots that we have? What are the equivalent of Iridians not knowing that stars exist because they just. They have no need to understand it, you know? And that's one thing I really appreciate about Weird. He said in an interview of, like, I won't even pursue a plot line if I can't root it in either scientific reality or at least scientific possibility. Because to him, there's no point in exploring a story that is, like, completely impossible. The fact that things of how this story came about were based on what he understood. I mean, he said in interviews around the movie, which have been years since he wrote the book, like, they've learned things in that gap that, like, all of a sudden, the planet he based 40 aridney off of, like, turns out it's not what we thought it was, so it couldn't be the home that he wrote it to be for Rocky. But, like, it starts with him taking these scientific facts or scientific theories and letting that shape the story, rather than him just like, oh, I want to have a planet of rock. Things that don't have, like, sight. It's more just like, okay, here's another planet that would be in a similar situation to Earth if this happened. Here's what we know about the planet so based on that, what kind of life forms would come from. It is a very fun set of rules to set for yourself to create truly unique plot lines.
- [58:37]
C
Mad respect because I think a lot of sci fi is actually counterproductive because it relies on. It's actually fantasy with a cyberpunk future setting. In Star wars you have the Force and it's like, that would be so cool if that was real. It's not, it's just not.
- [58:56]
A
What do you mean?
- [58:58]
C
As a five year old I stood there with my hand out trying to telekinesis stuff we all did. Long enough to convince myself that no, there's no midi chlorians just floating around. It's not sci fi.
- [59:11]
A
It's like a space opera.
- [59:12]
C
Yes, it's fantasy space opera. And so much sci fi actually is undermined by this lack of rigor with regards to physical reality. I think true sci fi is actually an attempt to extrapolate upon real facts of reality and simply try to extrapolate them into the future to imagine different futures based on. It's very hard to predict the future, but you can see the sort of like technological ladder that occurs and then you imagine what life would be like inside of those different rungs of the technological ladder. I think that's very good sci fi and I think that Andy Weir fits in this rigor like very well. Some like mad respect because the only thing that's actually fantastical about Hail Mary is just that astrophage would exist, which seems like a bit far fetched that like a cell could basically go backwards and forwards on E equals MC squared in order to just contain so much energy. So yeah, mad props to Andy Weir on that one.
- [60:19]
B
That's interesting because I definitely agree with you that stories in this vein rooted in actual theory have a really more compelling hook.
- [60:29]
A
Yeah, it's probably like a spectrum, right. From space fantasy or futuristic fantasy on one side all the way to like hard sci fi, which anywhere is closer to that end. And like Neal Stephenson, I haven't read it yet, but he has a book called Seven Eaves. The premise is that the moon breaks apart in I think seven pieces. He worked with NASA to calculate the orbital mechanics of what would happen if that was the case. And he tried to keep it very, very like accurate. Right. So that's probably very far in the hard sci fi. And most sci fi is probably like not even in the middle. It's probably closer to the fantasy, space fantasy type. But it's very cool when someone like Weir can have the hard sci fi aspect, but actually knows how to write characters and make you give a crap. Because that's a danger. So much of hard sci fi is like, okay, everybody's a cardboard cutout. None of the people matter. Because all I care about is the high concepts and the cool science shit. It's rare to find someone who can do both.
- [61:21]
B
You use the term hard sci fi Liberty, which is funny because it's like what we call hard sci fi probably should just be. What is science fiction? Yes, like. Like, it's like the term sci fi was coined prematurely and the stuff that came before what we now call hard
- [61:37]
A
science fiction became about the look instead of about the actual.
- [61:41]
C
Like, yeah, it was.
- [61:41]
B
It was just futuristic. It was outside of Earth. Like those were kind of the terms that created sci fi. So it's almost just like what we called sci fi back in the day is just a misnomer. And what we call hard sci fi now is what we should be calling science fiction.
- [61:58]
C
I wonder how much this relates to the missed opportunity that I mentioned earlier, where you have all of these beautiful hard science concepts that you could package in a subtle, didactic way for a larger public who miss the boat in the traditional educational sense. And they just like, no, that's not appealing to people. So we're just going to tile it over with one line of dialogue. I wonder if the distribution of science fiction writers, which percentage of them actually tackle hard sci fi, if this distribution matches the actual distribution of real understanding with regards to these scientific fields. And the reason why there's so much space opera bullshit and fantasy that's just got the cyberpunk futuristic aesthetic is just because these writers just don't know the scientific concepts down to a level that would allow them to write hard sci fi. So they relapse into just making shit up.
- [62:58]
A
You know what I wish would happen? You watch older films and there's an action sequence and it looks like they don't know what they're doing. They're holding their weapons anyway. The fights are like badly choreographed. It doesn't seem realistic. But at the time it was accepted. It's just like, that's what it is. And over time, the bar was raised and now they hire a consultant and the Navy seals come on and train people for a couple of weeks at holding weapons and clearing a room. And people train in martial arts. They learn how to do it better. It just kind of like makes the whole thing better, right? You don't have to change the whole story. You have the same action sequence, but now it's done correctly or better. Anyway, I wish the same would happen with the science stuff. If the writer or whoever can't do it themselves, they should hire consultants and they should have a bunch of nerds come in. And in the same way that you can see that any film or TV show that has anything to do with computers, you can tell if they hired a nerd to go through and tell them, no, this is not how it works. This is not how you go to a firewall and they can just make little changes. And now it's better. And I wish they would do that for all of the science and tech stuff.
- [63:59]
B
If the bar is raised, it happens in very rare circumstances. And one of those is Interstellar. And I know that because the guy who was a scientific consultant on Interstellar actually went to the same university as me, and we renamed a street after him. When Interstellar was the black hole simulation,
- [64:14]
A
they ran it on the supercomputer, and
- [64:16]
B
so that was cool. So it happens just not nearly to the extent that, like, a military movie is going to bring on Navy seals to do stuff. Maybe part of that is because the real scientists would be kind of a downer to what the director. You can do that at all.
- [64:31]
A
I scrub the whole thing.
- [64:32]
C
I was hoping Interstellar wouldn't come up just because I have so much hate for that movie. I watch it many times and there's aspects of it that I really like,
- [64:41]
A
but are we going to have to do an Interstellar podcast?
- [64:45]
C
The. All right. The fact that they go down to the water planet just boils my blood because they know how long it would take. They know all about this time dilation, but they don't realize that by the
- [64:57]
A
time they send a robot.
- [64:58]
C
Yeah, by the time they get down there, the person who was sent there originally will have just landed there. It's like you guys had literal years to put this stupid little insight together, and you have to, like, waste 20 years just to be like, oh, shit, we forgot that if we go down there, it'll just be like 10 minutes after she got down here. So, like, how reliable is. It's like you guys, like, this is such an unnecessary side quest for the entire movie just so that you could, like, make things sadder. It was infuriating for me.
- [65:33]
A
It brings up a very interesting point, something that Jameson said on his podcast, and I. I want to bring up. I'm curious what you both think. I'm going to guess that maybe Tinker and I are slightly more on one side, and maybe Jemison's slightly More on the other. But it's the science first versus emotions first, where the book and the film are not quite calibrated the same way.
- [65:51]
C
Right.
- [65:52]
A
Most of what they removed from the film, okay, like yada, yada, this part, but let's keep whatever emotional payoff was in there or let's try to give more emotion to this thing. The example that Jameson, you give is when Rocky gives up some astrophage. To me, that's one of my favorite parts of the book. When you realize you don't know about relativistic physics, it's like, oh, yes, of course. And to me it's like, yes, this is cool. In the film, it's okay, I'll go back six years and that's a cool moment. But it didn't make me react as much. Well, I think it's the opposite for you. So it's not like there's one clear better way to do it. I think different people would prefer different ways. My own more nerdy way of looking at it is like, well, six years. Like Rocky lives to be like 600 or more. And it's not a big sacrifice. So it's fine. Generally it feels like interstellar is very. Emotions first and the science is cool and if we can do it, fine. But we still want these emotional beats and whatever. Love is the way to communicate across space and time. That's the emotional beat. And I don't care if it's not scientific. So, Jameson, if you want to elaborate on that theory you had on your
- [66:54]
B
podcast real briefly, I basically just frame it as the skeletal plot is the exact same in the book and the movie. Unlike a lot of adaptations, there's no real turns of just like, oh, this didn't even happen in the book or whatever. But Weir obviously went science first, which is funny. In my episode, I try to share more of the science than the movie does, but I found myself oftentimes taking what for Weir was like a three page description of the experiment he ran. And I was just like, I'm just going to say he ran some experiments. Like the average listener. Like the average listener, because you guys are very science like, you geek out on this stuff. So I'm sure you would have loved every detail I shared. But the average listener, I think, you know, they're just willing to trust because. And that's something Weir has actually brought up. He's like, I used to get bugged when people would tell me that they kind of skip over the scientific explanations in my books. Because he's like, I put so much effort in making them realistic, but that he's come around to being okay with it because he realizes that's just the audience trusting him and saying, you know what? If you say this is how it goes down, that's how it goes down. I want to understand what happens to the.
- [68:02]
A
And most people don't care that much about that stuff and it's fine. It's not a value judgment.
- [68:06]
B
With the fuel example, which I highlight in my episode, is like being the number one case study of this. I totally agree. Like to a science minded person, that is such a cool realization of just like, oh yeah, if they don't understand relativity, they would have packed way more fuel than they would need it. Like that's actually so cool to think about that. Like, our understanding of relativity is what allows us to understand that. But in the book that means that the choice to give fuel, it's kind of inconsequential. Like it doesn't advance the relationship between Rocky and Ryland at all. Because it's like, oh yeah, I've got tons of fuel, man. Take like whatever you need. Like, I've got you covered. But in the, in the movie I kind of.
- [68:47]
C
That is what a bro would do though. Bro would be like, yo, dude, I got you covered. I'm stocked, man.
- [68:53]
B
I mean, he'd do it. But it doesn't advance the relationship in terms of the depth if it's, if it's not a sacrifice for Rocky's perspective. I do agree with you, Liberty. Like six years, considering Rocky's timeline is kind of like not that long. Like maybe they should have made it like 50 years.
- [69:07]
A
That's the thing, right? If he could go back and rewrite the book knowing this, this idea, he could probably create a hybrid where he has plenty more fuel because of this. But the quantity he has to give because of the relative distance between like the sun and Rocky's planet and everything could be still a big fraction of his fuel. So he would have to make a pretty big sacrifice, like a hundred years or whatever.
- [69:27]
C
He probably would have had to pick a planet that was just like a little bit closer because then Titan dilation would have been less. But then there's also the fact that the Iridians, because of the composition of their planet and how well it stores energy that it does get from the sun, they have like 70 years before something goes wrong. So Rocky actually has plenty of time. He's already been in, in the, the TAU CETI system, 46, 47, something like
- [69:53]
B
that, longer than Grace has been alive.
- [69:55]
C
Yeah, he has plenty of time, so he doesn't have to risk anything with regards to the iridian species. But, yeah, I agree. I think a hybrid approach would have been better, where it's like, everyone's getting a little squeeze so that everyone can make it. Would have been emotionally a little bit more taught, but still, props to the screenwriters who figured out this nice little switcheroo Liberty. If you'd experienced it in reverse, if you'd watched the movie before you knew all of the science that the book had given you, you would have been like, oh, that's sweet. I don't know.
- [70:29]
A
And it's a good choice. If I was making the film and I had to make a choice, it's probably a better choice for the film. Even if the 5% of nerds are going to be like, oh, I missed the nerdy physics.
- [70:38]
C
Yeah.
- [70:38]
B
Yeah. I mean, I think going back to what Tinker said at the beginning of just like, you know, classic Hollywood strips out all the cool science stuff for it. I do feel like, because there's so much science in this book, like the average moviegoer, and especially for a big blockbuster, right. Like, this isn't some art movie where you can trust that you're going to, like, attract a niche audience. It's like, this is supposed to make it big because it has to recoup a lot of money, which means, to some extent, they do have to water it down in terms of certain aspects, like how much intellectual demand are you putting on your audience to understand what's going on? But I do feel like, again, a hybrid approach, if they picked, like, two or three aspects of real science to actually dive into and spend a lot more time and then skim over the rest, because it's like, yeah, most people didn't want to pay 20 bucks for a science lecture when they go to the movies, but if they could have just picked a couple, maybe that is the happy medium.
- [71:35]
A
Radiation. Right. He didn't know about radiation, which.
- [71:38]
B
That, honestly is like, the saddest part of the book to me is Rocky beating himself up because he's the only one who survived. And when he realizes that, it's because, like, his species just had no clue of what was going on. And he's just devastated by that.
- [71:50]
A
But then you realize that to him, it's very, very important to have someone watch over him as he's sleeping.
- [71:55]
B
Yeah.
- [71:56]
A
He doesn't have anyone for years.
- [71:58]
B
Yeah. When you think about it, it's like he's so excited to have Someone to finally watch him sleep again after 40 years of having nobody. And Grace is, like, weirded out by it.
- [72:12]
A
Moving on. The next big thing, I think, is Grace's choice to go save Rocky. When he figures out, okay, the Tommy bought a debt to be nitrogen resistant, can go to xenonite. It's in the fuel tanks. He looks with the petrovoscope, and he doesn't see Rocky's engines anymore. And he has to make a choice. I can go back to Earth. I can't be like, he didn't want to be there in the first place. He never wanted to sacrifice himself. And now he finally has a way to go back. But he has this dilemma, and I think it's such a good set piece. It's like Chef's kiss.
- [72:44]
C
He's not just saving Rocky. He realizes that the entire Iridian race.
- [72:49]
A
Oh, yeah, will probably.
- [72:51]
C
I mean, maybe they have enough time to descend another ship. That's one thing that I've always wondered. Like, they haven't heard from these guys for 50 years. Like, why don't they? Why?
- [72:58]
A
Is it because the only way Rocky got this far is because he met Grace, and together they figured out a bunch of stuff. But if other irides came and they don't know about relativity, they don't know about radiation, they don't know all the stuff about, like, astrofish breeding and tamibo and all that, the chances that they figure it out is very, very low.
- [73:16]
C
So maybe they did send a second ship, but the engineer was like, more of a social butterfly and also died because he didn't spend all of his time next to the tanks. That's something I didn't think about before. So Rylan doesn't just go back to save Rahi, goes back to save the entire species. So he actually, if you think about it, he's already been in this situation, and he refused the call to adventure in that sort of Joseph Campbell way where, like, Strahd was like, we need you to, like, step up because our other dudes died in the blast. You need to be the third member on this crew. And he's like, absolutely not. I'm a pathetic piece of crap. Find someone else. And she's like, sorry, bud, I'm shoving you in this thing. And then in the middle of nowhere space, he gets this opportunity again where he's like, I could go home and be fine and be hailed as a hero, but this entire species, that's not even human, by the way, has to die. Rylan didn't have anyone to be brave for. He had his students, but, like, that's more of a professional relationship. But by the time it comes to the point at the end of the book, he's not brave for the Eridians, even though he's gonna save their whole damn species. He's being brave for Rocky because he's like, he's.
- [74:35]
A
The Eridians are like the cherry on top, but I think he would do it just for Rocky. I think at this point more in the Australian way. But Rocky is his mate by then. It's like they're tied together.
- [74:45]
C
I mean, as crass as it is, it reminds me of that quote from Stalin, which is that the death of a single person is a tragedy. The death of a million people is a statistic.
- [74:55]
A
Especially if you've never met them. You've never. Like the human brain has trouble with empathy for far away numbers. Right. And I think this redemption arc for Grace is better because, okay, if he's a coward, but he ends up saving humanity, it's kind of okay, you kind of balance things. But you were a coward and you end up saving two whole civilizations. Now you've made up for the cowardice, right? The reluctance.
- [75:19]
C
Mic drop.
- [75:20]
A
Yeah. It's like, what more can you ask for?
- [75:23]
C
Yeah. Like you said, it's a chef's kiss. I remember when that, like the experience of, like, with the audiobook and that unraveling, I was just like, I was in Cloud nine. And then when he finally gets to Rocky's ship and it's like, functionally dead, when he finally hears from Rocky, it's like, yes.
- [75:46]
A
I can't wait to get to that part with my kids.
- [75:48]
C
Oh, it's so satisfying. Yeah.
- [75:50]
B
Andy Weir on my episode, I really wanted that scene to hit and so I crafted. You can't see it, but I have a MIDI keyboard right in front of me that I use to write original tracks for scenes in my episodes. I made one that just had this, like, very big, swelling feeling to it. And the victory for me is I've had someone comment on the episode that they cried at that part.
- [76:12]
C
It was really good.
- [76:13]
A
I probably teared up. I don't remember, but I remember it being really good.
- [76:16]
C
It was really good. You nailed it.
- [76:19]
A
Thank you.
- [76:20]
B
I obviously recognize, like, oh, this is an evolution of the character that he's willing to sacrifice himself when he wasn't earlier. But I actually hadn't connected how perfect of a parallel it is that he's being offered the chance to save an entire billions and billions of beings for the Price of his life, which he rejected that exact call earlier. I hadn't, like, connected how specific of an answer that is, which is great.
- [76:46]
A
How good is Strat? Strat saved two civilizations with one decision. She's. She's the best.
- [76:54]
C
Yeah. I mean, like I said, she's my favorite character. But it is a really nice play on this Joseph Campbell hero cycle where it's not a clean path through that normal structure. It's actually like a cut and pasted braided inversion where you get a refusal to the call to adventure, but then he's, like forced into it, then it repeats itself. And because he's a changed person at that point, you get this chiastic structure where, like, he starts off this coward and then by the end he's gone through this experience where he's grown to the point where he's formed the necessary relationships where he's like, yeah, I'm going to sacrifice my life because it's worth it now. Yeah.
- [77:39]
B
I actually had never seen Edge of Tomorrow when I had a friend point out, like, how similar the avoidant hero is. So I went and watched it, like, last week and yeah, it was so good. And it's actually interesting because I'm dropping a new episode probably tomorrow that it's using a Japanese myth to show it. So there's a story element, but it's actually just introducing the idea of the four act story, which is a very Eastern thing. And I read a book about Eastern storytelling, and it covers the four act story, but actually covers a circular story as well, which is what Edge of Tomorrow is. That's what Groundhog's Day is. The idea of being able to experience the same thing over and over again. And so with that framing tinkered, it's like Project Hail Mary is technically, you could say it's a circular story, but you only experience a circle twice. It's not like it does over and over and over again. But we've come full circle to, like, hey, you remember that thing that you would have been willing to sacrifice billions of lives for because you cared about your own skin so much? Like, you still feel that way. Like, is that. Is that. Are you still there? Or have you evolved a little bit?
- [78:41]
A
Which brings us to the ending. I'm curious what you think of it because it's so hard to have a good, satisfying ending. Rocky ends up saving Grace and they end up living in a kind of dome on the he rid Grace is back to his teaching job, but now he's teaching, like, tiny Rockies, tiny rocks. He's eating meat burgers, which is kind of an interesting concept, right? Cloning your own cells and making meat out of it, which was cut from the film. I don't know why. I'm sure that tests well with global audiences like self cannibalism. And in the book there is more uncertainty than in the film because it takes like I think more than a decade before they can figure out that Earth has been saved and that the sun is going back to normal luminosity. So there's this kind of limbo period. To me this was a very satisfying ending. I think it wraps up the arc where it needs to be. Because if he had just saved Rocky but somehow went back to Earth, right? Or I don't know, they discovered that on Rocky's ship there's still some untouched astrophage that you can use and go back and eh, in that case, like where's the real sacrifice? So in this case I think making the sacrifice of not going back but accepting it. And he's not like on ered trying to go back as soon as possible, right? He's found a life there, he's happy, he's with his friend. He's like to me that felt like a satisfying ending. But I'm curious what you guys think.
- [80:01]
B
First off, another interview fact, since I've been dropping those all day. In one interview Andy Weir was asked about like, oh, why did you arrive at that decision to have him end on the alien planet? And he said that I was actually the first thing he knew about this book. He's like, I want it to end with him living on an alien planet. But as far as how I feel it played out, it was necessary to really give it weight because if he'd magically been able to go back home, like you would have been happy in a traditional three act structure sense. But it also would have been like, oh, so like your choice wasn't really that big of a deal then because you made it all happen. But it also plays to a reality which is he didn't want to turn around and go home as soon as possible because he didn't know if Earth was going to be around.
- [80:47]
A
Good point.
- [80:47]
B
And he may have traveled years in space alone only to arrive back at a completely different dead planet. And by the time he had confirmation that it had come back, he's old. Like he's just like, I'm not. Because that was one thing that I was like, I kind of don't know why they didn't do this in the movie because it's Such a simple choice. But in the book, he's only aged probably 10 to 15 years. So he's not like super old. But because the gravity is so much stronger on the planet, like, he's aged, like he has to use a cane to walk around. And so there's also this aspect of him just like, what would be the point? Even though Earth is back to life, Like, I probably would die in transit. And even if I didn't, like, I would be an old man by the time I got there. Everyone I knew would be dead because of the time dilation that he's going to experience the relativity. And so he's just like, what's the point? I'm teaching, I'm with my best friend. This is a beautiful existence. What would be the point of going back? Just because Earth is, to me, just raised this question of we're such so quick to default, like, of course I want to go back home. Like, that is the only answer. And his situation just paints this picture of like, yeah, you should probably weigh the factors a little bit more before you make that choice. And I think he made the right choice for his situation.
- [82:02]
C
This is the one area I think I have, like, a legitimate quibble with the hard science aspect of what Andy Ware's laid out. Because I think with more gravity, he actually wouldn't age faster. I think he would get stronger and age slower as a result. Because we actually see the opposite with microgravity. Muscles atrophy, bone density goes down. There's rehab required for astronauts to, like, regain their strength. On Earth, the human body functions on a principle of hormesis, which is where if you don't continually stress it a little bit to activate growth patterns, you'll just atrophy. And so less gravity is bad. And so it makes me think that if you had a little bit more gravity, he'd probably be stronger and last longer and be healthier. Now the real question is, is it too much gravity?
- [82:55]
A
Yeah. Is it like, good for many parts of the body, but, like, it puts such a strain on your heart that this part gives up first and like, all the other gains are for nothing because. I don't know. That's something we should ask Sparrow.
- [83:05]
B
Yeah, I guess I've assumed it's more of a. Like, Earth is the Goldilocks zone for our species in that regard. Obviously, less has issues, but having way too much would also cause problems. Because, yeah, even if your muscles can grow, your heart is an engine with a certain amount of mileage in it. And if it's fighting against much heavier gravity, wouldn't that mean it's taxing the heart?
- [83:27]
A
Good question.
- [83:27]
B
I don't know. Interesting point. If less is bad, would more be equally bad or would it have advantages over.
- [83:33]
C
The thing about hormetic response is that if you put too much stress, you actually incur damage as opposed to a hormetic response.
- [83:41]
B
I think he says in the book at some point of like how much stronger gravity is on the planet. And I think it's like multiples, like 2 or 3x. Yeah, I mean Earth's gravity.
- [83:50]
C
I don't know. I don't know if he'd be walking around with a cane. He might be a little bit more spry than we would expect. But. But yeah, it all depends on like the. The dosages, the poison or the.
- [84:00]
A
You have to do the research and write a really nerdy letter to anywhere. All right, moving on to the film. I'm curious for your review of the film, general high level thoughts or anything about the production aspects, all that stuff. I'll start and then I'm curious to hear what you think. Ryan Gosling, he had to carry this by himself. He's alone in a room with a puppet most of the time. This is kind of a star performance. It's very rare to have an actor that you can just spend time alone with for a long time and you still like them. They're funny when it needs to be funny. Right. This physical comedy to me worked very likable. I'm trying to think of other films in that style. I don't know if you guys saw Moon with Sam Rockwell, but he has to do something a bit similar. I'm a big fan of Greig Fraser, who did the cinematography, he did Dune 1 and 2, he did Rogue 1, he did the Batman. In interview with the directors, they said something I really like. They said that Greg is not a perfectionist, he's an imperfectionist. He's always looking for something messy in every shot. And because they. They did it right and they built the sets. 360. Right. The whole ship they built. And a cool thing is that they changed something from the book. In the film they have the habitable part of the ship spin around. When they are in zero G, it's on one side, but when it's the centrifuge, they had to take apart the set and turn it around and recreate it on that side anyway. So they had the 360 sets. So they would do a bunch of takes the way they had planned them. And then they would do a take that they called Greg Vibe Take. Just have him with a handheld camera walking around, looking for some weird angle. And they kept a bunch of these in the film, right? So on my second viewing, knowing this every time, I was looking for, like, this messy shot as he's filming through some, like, glass corner or there's a bunch of reflections and all that stuff. I just love how it turned out. Most space films are kind of, like, clinical and very clean. This one is messy. Everything is always moving because of the centrifuge, right? There's always shadows and lights spinning around. There's a lot of color when they flip to IR mode with the astrophage. I just loved how that looks. And Greg Fraser said, apparently said that this film was the most challenging film he's done by far. And he's worked on both dunes. I love how also when I saw it in Emacs, when they're on Earth, the aspect ratio is very wide. I think it's 239. And when they're in space, it switches to the IMAX. Much taller aspect ratio, 143. I thought that was a great choice. I think it really opens up the space sequences. They did most of it without green screens or lots of cgi. There's a bunch of cgi, right? They rotoscoped a bunch of stuff. Like, all of the puppet animators are there, but they had to build the sets where they can be hidden in the floor or in various places. But I love that they did it kind of old school and very physical. I think it really paid off. I kind of know that ship, right? If I could walk around it, it feels physical to me. And the last thing I'll mention is the score, the music. I've heard the directors mention that because he's alone the whole film, or alone with Rocky very far away. He wanted it to feel like he's not alone in space, but all of Earth is kind of, like, rooting for him. So the second half has all these corals and all that. Like, you hear some clapping and children noises and stuff like that. So I think Daniel Pemberton did a good job there. And as a big Beatles fan, I love how they use the two of us when he launches the probes. The lyrics, just a little part is, we're on our way home. We're on our way home. You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead. I think that's beautiful and really worked for me. So what do you guys think of the Film.
- [87:32]
B
I said this exact same thing during our Night of the Seven Kings episode. But it just, you know, the way people have their own categorizations of what good films are. One of mine, I only give this title to a handful of productions is like everybody did their job. Because there are movies where it's like they may have a great director but other aspects, it just felt kind of phoned in or like the actors were great but the budgets were low, you know, whatever. And there's some where it's just like, no, everyone did their job. And you cited already the cinematography and I was going to bring up the score as well because that did a massive amount of heavy lifting for helping us see this as a playful friendship movie instead of a space epic where everything is specifically the first scene where the Blip A, which is the name of Rocky's ship. The scenes where it shows him like just darting in like the Blip A matches, following along. The music is so fun and lighthearted. So the score did a great job of making it feel the way that I think Andy Weir wanted the story to feel. The cinematography is beautiful. The Adrian scenes, oh my goodness, like that planet is breathtaking. In the book, there's a scene where when he's supposed to be going out and doing a spacewalk to do something as they're gearing up to collect the Talmoeba samples and stuff. And it's the first time he's done a spacewalk since they've approached Adrian. And so he just finds himself standing there in awe for minutes. And then Rocky's like, what are you doing? Why are you taking so long? And so that's just a fun moment where it's like, yeah, human with this visual would be just slack jawed at witnessing something like that. And then Rocky wouldn't understand it and he'd be like, why are you not doing what? The reason you're out there.
- [89:12]
A
Yeah, I think in the film they have this like Rocky's looking at through his technology, right, to see things. And he's like, oh, you should name planet. You found it. And he's like, okay, rough medium surface sphere planet or something.
- [89:24]
C
I think that everyone did their job is like spot on.
- [89:28]
A
Yeah, that's going to be your new rating scale.
- [89:31]
C
It was solid. Was I like perfectly happy? Like no, I think there were missed opportunities just because it's Hollywood, large audience. I was kind of dreading a little bit watching it just because like I was like, ah, gonna fuck it up again like Hollywood does with so many books and So I was. I was a little bit anxious the entire movie just because I was afraid that they were gonna mess it up. Like I said, when Strout starts singing, I'm like, oh, my God, are they gonna make them hook up? Like, I will walk out of this place if they do that kind of thing. And then there was a point where, you know, props to them. I think they did a great job. Before Talmoeba escapes and wreaks havoc and Rylan is going home, they do a sneaky jump cut to, like, an ocean beach scene, and I'm like, ugh. They're gonna cut out this whole aspect of him saving Rocky and the Aridians. Like, I was pissed. And it turned out to be a simulator inside of the ship, and he's just enjoying a little bit of time before. And I'm like, okay, that was good. All right. The movie's not ending yet. They could still make it happen. I was just so happy when they just stayed true to the book as much as they could. And I have nothing but respect for that.
- [90:48]
A
Yeah.
- [90:48]
C
Could it have been better? Yes. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to recreate the original reading experience that each individual uniquely has when they encounter a book. And of course, Hollywood is not gonna cater to my original experience. So I kind of see it as. Reading a book is kind of a huge time commitment because you're basically paralyzed unless you're listening to the audiobook, which is just a really big time commitment. And so the movie for me becomes this thing that I could throw on in the background when, like, I'm doing something that doesn't require my whole brain and I just want some sort of something on in the background.
- [91:30]
B
And so I get micro dosing the story.
- [91:32]
C
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Actually. And so I get to, like, re experience the flows and arcs of this story without actually having to commit to, like, reading the whole damn book again. I'm in the end, very grateful for this movie.
- [91:48]
A
The way I would describe it is as not perfect. It could have been better. But as an adaptation, it's about as good as could be expected. And I'm glad I read the book first. That's why I want to read the whole book with my kids before seeing the film. Because the book has just so much more time. Right. Grace spends tons of time alone, and that matters because it makes the Rocky part. It's like dynamics in music. Right. The quiet parts make the loud part louder and punch more. And he also spends a lot more time with Rocky and the relationship builds and all that. So when you see the film, even though they don't have time to do all of that on screen, you bring that baggage from the book with you to the film and those associations. And so I think the film is better if you've read the book because you can like Rocky even better. It can mean more when there's this sacrifice or they're in danger or whatever. Right. So I think that the correct order would be like, book first. It's still the canonical version. For me, it's still the best. And then the film is almost like a highlight reel for the book without
- [92:43]
B
actually being able to go back and experience it both ways. You can't really know. But I actually had a good friend of mine who had never read the book but was seeing the movie being touted and was like, ah, what should I do? Should I read or should I watch it? And my recommendation to him, because he's very scientifically minded, he's academic, PhD, all that stuff, and he loves just getting into the hard sci fi aspect of stuff. So I recommended to him, if you have no concept of the story, go into the movie first because then you can just experience it. But then because you love the science, the book second is like a second exposure to the story and you get to experience the science, which is like new discoveries to you because the movie glossed over them. So I don't know. I think there may be pros and cons of both. And there's no way to have a perfect first exposure. It's more just based on what you're interested in.
- [93:32]
A
Yeah. The only thing I'll say is if someone listening to this has seen the film but not read the book, I highly encourage you to read the book. It's worth it. There's a lot more in there. It's still going to be a great experience, even if, you know, some of the plot twists. Because a lot of the goodness is not just the plot, but it's really the texture of the character and all these moments. And a lot of the science is also very cool. Yeah. How about the ending of the film? It's kind of slightly changed. How do you feel about the film ending?
- [94:00]
C
I wish they hadn't shown Strat. I wish that in the book Earth becomes this mystery. You just know that like, whatever shit went down, they figured it out. And I just love the sort of purity of that unknown. But like the one known of this big unknown, just. I thought that was really nice.
- [94:21]
B
Well, actually, one difference is. So, yeah, you're 100% correct. They do not go back to Strat. We don't see anything from Earth. But when he and Rocky meet up, that scene is actually his return to full Rocky, reporting that the scientists have said soul imminence.
- [94:35]
C
Yeah.
- [94:36]
B
Which the movie doesn't do. The movie doesn't even suggest that because I guess they show her getting the stuff and we assume, like, okay, so Earth figures it out. But in the book, all they do is say, oh, souls returned. And so he's like, okay, so I guess. I guess the reason why I do prefer the way the book does it to showing. So I agree with you that I don't love they showed Straht is because he has this cathartic moment when he hears the report and he literally says, like, I feel like my life has meaning now. Like, he's been sitting for years on Eridani and in his little biosphere loving life, eating meat burgers, hanging out with his best friend Rocky, all the time. But he's been wondering, did I make the right choice? Like, did my choice to save Rocky and this alien species come at the cost of the Beatles not making it home and Earth dying? And so that confirmation that Sol returned is just, like this huge catharsis moment for him. It was just like, okay, guy made the right choice. And we don't get that at all in the movie.
- [95:32]
C
Yeah, because you also have to think, like, how much, like, potential guilt is building up in Rylan as he's living on Rocky's planet. He's like, oh, I don't. I don't know if I did right by Earth, because if he'd sacrificed the Eridanians and just gone home, he could have made absolutely sure. He was even saying, like, oh, I'll drop by Venus and just drop off the Tell me about myself. The ultimate mic drop of like, oh, yeah, I'm back, guys. Problem solved.
- [96:01]
B
I took care of that little thing for you.
- [96:03]
C
Yeah, exactly. So, like, I imagine since he didn't do that, his time living on Rocky's planet, he's like.
- [96:11]
A
Like, yeah, if the Beatles didn't work,
- [96:13]
C
then what if the Beatles didn't make it? You know, if they just take an astrophage and put a whole bunch of Earth bacteria into it, like a whole. Just like a whole ecosystem of it. I'm pretty sure, like, life on Earth would have figured out really quickly how to kill astrophage. Because from a natural selection point of view, the payoff of figuring out how to eat astrophage is metabolically and calorically just so astronomically high. And it seems unbelievable to me that because also one thing that they don't touch on in the movie, which is in the book, is that there's probably a panspermia event that originated from Adrian. And that's why Rocky and Ryland and Astrophage and Tao Meeba all have like
- [97:05]
A
very basic DNA and all kinds of organelles.
- [97:09]
C
And the fact that Ryland can eat Tao Meeba and it actually works. The similarities are so close that, like, given the life cycle and evolutionary speed of bacteria and all of these little microbes that we have on Earth Earth, the chances that we could have solved this without actually going all the way to Tau Ceti are probably pretty high. And my guess is they would have figured this out while Rylan was in the system and maybe have inoculated Venus before he actually even sent the Beatles back.
- [97:42]
A
Let me be the actually guy. I want to be the actually guy. One of the other things with the Tamiba is that it lives in the upper atmosphere of Adrian, right? So getting some Earth bacteria that can maybe evolve to eat Aster Fidge, but also can survive in the upper atmosphere of Venus is probably a pretty heavy lift.
- [98:01]
C
You just do what Ryland did with Tao Amoeba, which is like you'd breed a strain of whatever eats Astrophage on Earth into a nitrogen resistant CO2 hungry, high atmosphere. Yeah, yeah.
- [98:15]
A
It's quite a different book, but yeah,
- [98:17]
C
yeah, it kills the story completely.
- [98:20]
B
Knowing Strat, she probably was working on that once Hail Mary was in or was off planet Earth, because she probably was like, okay, that's our best bet, but we got to be working on other stuff. But that's not part of the story. So we're not going to talk about that.
- [98:34]
C
It would have been a really funny sort of spin off. If you have Strat sitting in jail and she thinks of this idea while she's in jail, she's like.
- [98:45]
B
Or if while he's in Tau Ceti, he just like looks at Earth and it's like, why is Soul bright now?
- [98:52]
A
It's fine.
- [98:53]
B
He's light years away before and he.
- [98:57]
C
He doesn't have fuel to go back.
- [99:02]
B
Damn you.
- [99:02]
C
Strat and the Iridians were smart enough to just do this without sending someone. Sorry, Andy Weir, I'm so sorry, but
- [99:13]
A
I hope he never hears this one last thing. I just had this thought. So it's kind of half baked and I don't remember the details, but I was thinking about the dome that he's living in at the end, right? And there is a Part of Kurt Vongot's Slaughterhouse Five novel where he's like on an alien planet living in the camp of Titans reminds me of that. I don't know if that's where Andy Weir got it, but fun parallel.
- [99:35]
B
I was so happy with that scene in the movie because even though it is taking liberties from the description that Andy gave us in the book, the movie version's so much cooler. What I imagined his little biodome being in the book was way less cool than having an actual foggy coastline that you can just go hang out and experience your favorite part of Earth that you missed.
- [99:58]
C
To underscore your point, Jameson. I love that they give just a half second view of, of the wave generator under the water.
- [100:07]
A
Yeah.
- [100:08]
C
Because like the amount of energy to control the temperature of that much water and have a wave generator just doing that for like effectively no purpose. Just the huge engineering challenge of having this low pressure environment in such a high pressure environment. Okay. Without even seeing another Iridian, you automatically just have an implicit understanding of how much gratitude this entire species has for this like one weird little organism.
- [100:43]
A
Well, he saved them because of the astrophage, but then he also gave them the laptop with all of humanity's and scientific knowledge and all that. So he's like the best thing that
- [100:51]
B
ever happened when you factor in their lifespans and it's like they're only having to give him this much for like the equivalent of five years of their time. Yeah, he's not around for very long. Like, yeah, we'll, we'll take care of you, man, because you're not going to be around for very long.
- [101:05]
C
Actually, you know what? Now that you bring that up, it reminds me of how, how very well off people will spend just untold amounts of money on their dogs. Yeah. Like a friend of a friend of a friend. Like I was hearing about their dog getting like their third surgery and it cost like $40,000 and I was like, what? Like, let this animal die for Christ's sake. So yeah, maybe he's just like the, the ultimate glorified dog project. Wow. I'm really bringing it down to the end.
- [101:41]
A
No, I think we can't beat this as a place to leave it. Thank you so much. Anything else to add?
- [101:48]
B
We're going to have to do a separate episode just to talk about William James though, because we didn't even end up bringing him up. And that was like a big thing that we bonded over after talking about this. But we've already gone on for long enough today. I Don't think we want to open that can of worms right now,
- [102:06]
A
should we?
- [102:07]
B
He's like, don't we, though?
- [102:09]
A
Okay, Tinker, go for it. I see steam coming out of your ears.
- [102:12]
C
Thank God for bringing it up. Jameson, I'm just going to read one page from the Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
- [102:19]
B
Should I set up why we started talking about William James really briefly? Or do you want.
- [102:23]
C
Yeah, sure, sure, absolutely.
- [102:25]
B
So as I was doing research for my character analysis companion episode Becoming Ryland Grace, I stumbled across William James, and it felt like a gold mine to me for the school of philosophy I'm building called Protagonism. I think early doors. William James may be on the Mount Rushmore of Protagonism, because what he has done just lines up so perfectly with how I view the world. He's from early 20th century. He's actually the brother of Henry James, the novelist, but he was this psychologist slash philosopher. Not only are his theories of life and agency very aligned with how I view Protagonism, Why he fits so perfectly is he's not just some academic who's theorizing this like he actually had a complete psychological breakdown in his 20s. And he rebuilt himself on the assumption that I can't prove that my choices matter, but I'm going to act as if they do. And from there, he like, reconstructed himself. I brought that up in a text thread with these guys, and Tinker just lit up and talked about how much he loves William James and. And especially this book, Varieties of the Religious Experience. So that kind of sets up by Hail Mary ended up coming into this idea of William James.
- [103:34]
C
Okay, I'm going to read one page from the Varieties, but before I do, I just want to add one little tidbit to what Jameson said, is that when he, quote, unquote, rebuilt himself after he had that breakdown, he made an ultimatum with himself and he said, I'm going to live with this delusional idea that I actually do have control over my life for one year, and if it doesn't work out, I'm going to end my life.
- [103:59]
A
No pressure.
- [104:00]
C
Yeah, it's impossible to ab test reality to see how serious he was. But things worked out because his life turned around. Another little interesting tidbit is that he did meet his wife, which maybe that has a big impact on male psychology, hormones, all that stuff. But anyways, that actually does relate to this passage. Some men and women, indeed there are, who can live on smiles and the word yes forever. But for others, indeed for most, this is too tepid and relaxed. The moral climate, passive happiness, is slack and insipid and soon grows mawkish and intolerable. Some austerity and wintry negativity, some roughness, danger, stringency and effort, some no, no must be mixed in to produce the sense of an existence with character and texture and power. The range of individual differences in this respect is enormous. But whatever the mixture of yeses and nos may be, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it in the right proportion for him. This, he feels, is my proper vocation. This is the optimum, the law, the life for me to live. Here I find the degree of equilibrium, safety, calm and leisure which I need. Or here I find the challenge, passion, fight and hardship without which my soul's energy expires. Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. A given machine will run best under a certain steam pressure, a certain amperage, an organism under a certain diet, weight or exercise. You seem to do best, I heard a doctor say to a patient at about 140 millimeters of arterial tension. And it is just so with our sundry souls. Some are happiest in calm weather. Some need the sense of tension, of strong volition to make them feel alive and well. For these latter souls, whatever is gained from day to day must be paid for by sacrifice and inhibition, or else it comes too cheap and has no zest.
- [106:13]
A
Wow, the dude knew how to write.
- [106:16]
C
Yeah, in the context of Hail Mary. The way that I think about that is that the original Ryland Grace that we see, he's just in the wrong conditions. His organism, his system of entity, his soul, just doesn't light up. He thinks it does because he's got this out as, oh, I teach children and this is virtue. Signaling to the max is like, I'm a good person. But then when Strahd takes his scrawny, pathetic ego and thrusts it into this maximally challenging environment with a whole set of different variables that pressure him in all of these ways that he's never experienced before. Suddenly he's like a shoe in fit, and he is operating on a way that even his comrades who died en route probably wouldn't have. This William James quote, I read it for the first time many years ago and it's stuck with me ever since because I think it's useful to look at your own self and your own life as this entity, as this system within a larger system. And how do you tinker with the variables, the inputs, the levers in order to have a more fulfilling life.
- [107:31]
A
That's a big fan of wartime memoirs. That rings very true. Right. People who describe their lives before and then what they did that they did not know they had in them when they had to, when they were in a different environment with higher stakes and. Yeah, feels very, very true.
- [107:48]
B
Listening to that, it reminded me of a concept, like a shower thought I had that I need to turn into an essay and it's going to be what makes me famous because it's such an amazing idea.
- [107:58]
A
Are you Lionel Barettian right now? I've had a profound.
- [108:02]
B
If anyone would care to listen. No. But the thought is this idea of, show me a place, show me something in nature or in man's created world where beauty can exist without tension. The simplest example that's so perfect for this is, think about music. There's not a single instrument that the sound doesn't require tension in. Some of the drum skin, the strings on a guitar, the reed of a wind instrument. Our vocal cords, like beauty, cannot come from a place without tension. Rylan Grace's life as a teacher did not have any tension in it. I don't know how purposefully Andy Weir did this, but there's one visual in the book that I think perfectly sums up, just, like, how unfulfilling Rylan's life is, despite the fact that he loves teaching kids. And that's a noble thing. It's the TV dinner and the TV dinner scene. So in the context for people who've only seen the movie where he first sees the news reports of We've sampled Astrophage and, like, they're seeing these black dots moving around on a screen. He's sitting in his apartment at home alone, eating a TV dinner. And Weir doesn't editorialize. He doesn't say, like, oh, this is pathetic, he's doing this. But he just says, like, he's eating a TV dinner by himself when he's not in the classroom having fun, being the cool teacher, getting kids psyched on science. His life is just kind of empty. Outside of that, there's not any tension in what he's doing. Everything I read of William James, I'm just like, yes, yes. This is what I want to be conveying to people. So sorry to extend the conversation another 10 minutes.
- [109:40]
A
No, thank you.
- [109:40]
B
I'm glad we didn't forget about that.
- [109:43]
A
Please tell the listener where they can follow you. Learn more. I'll put all your links in the show notes. Jameson, how about you? Where should the listener go?
- [109:50]
B
The podcast is the best starting place, becoming the main character. Wherever you listen in the description notes, you can get links to the socials and substack and stuff like that. But the podcast episodes are the biggest thing.
- [110:02]
A
Tinker, what about you? Where can people find more about you, your stuff?
- [110:05]
C
I have a blog, TinkerThinking.com, which for a couple of years I posted an essay every single day and then a short story on Sundays. So there's a few hundred short stories. There's a couple collections of short stories that you can buy on the bookstore. That's very obvious to find if you go to the blog. Recently, Infinite Books published a collection of my short stories that's sci fi oriented, called White Mirror. It's optimistic sci fi. Absolutely. Everyone who's listening to this should absolutely go buy that book right now.
- [110:37]
A
Yes, I'll link it and I'll link the podcast we did together about it with Dylan, the editor. Go check that out.
- [110:44]
C
Yeah. That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun.
- [110:47]
A
And so was this. Thank you, guys. Great.
- [110:49]
C
Thank you. Thank you, Liberty.
- [110:50]
A
I'll play us out.
- [110:52]
B
When stupid ideas work, they become genius ideas.
- [110:58]
C
Amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze, amaze.
- [111:04]
A
Grace, Rocky, save stars.
- [111:06]
B
Amaze.
- [111:08]
A
Bye.
- [111:09]
B
Bye.
- [111:10]
C
See you guys.