If you thought The Martian was intense, let's just go ahead and raise the stakes.

We break down the movie version of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, comparing the film with the fun technical problem solving of the original novel. We take a close look at how the movie brings the "astrophage" threat and and action to life, more importantly, whether it is possible to have your hair tousled 100% of the time.

We dig into which complex scientific explanations were streamlined for Hollywood pacing and which "science-ing the heck out of it" moments remained intact. We also evaluate Ryan Gosling’s performance as the amnesiac-turned-savior, Ryland Grace, comparing his onscreen energy to the internal monologue that made the book a bestseller. Whether you’re a die-hard Rocky fan or a casual viewer who just loves a good space movie, this episode highlights the hits and misses of the transition from page to screen.

We wrap up by answering the ultimate questions: is the movie worth watching? Is the book worth reading? Settle on in, enjoy, and fist our bump.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord
• Or you can watch our episodes on YouTube if you prefer video

As always, no spoilers until the end when we give a heads up before getting into the full plot discussion.

Similar books and movies we recommend:

• The Martian (book and movie)
• Story of Your Life (novela) and Arrival (movie)
• 2001 (book and movie)
• Solaris (book and movie)
• Roadside Picnic (book) and Stalker (the movie)
• Children of Men (book and movie)
• Edge of Tomorrow (movie) and All you Need is Kill (book)
• War of the Worlds (book and movie)
• Dune (we love eyebrows)

This episode is sponsored by STARLØK by J.T. Michaelstar: https://www.starløk.com/

If you want to jump around, here are the timestamps for the episode:

• 00:00 Intro and review
• 02:26 Sponsor – STARLØK by J.T. Michaelstar
• 03:04 Differences in the movie
• 8:13 Jokes vs cheesiness
• 10:15 How long can you look at Ryan Gosling?
• 12:16 Ever-tousled hair
• 16:27 Read or watch first?
• 17:53 The Martian
• 18:33 Story of Your Life & Arrival
• 19:46 2001 20:56 Solaris
• 22:03 Roadside Picnic & Stalker
• 23:54 Children of Men
• 25:30 All You Need is Kill & Edge of Tomorrow
• 26:38 War of the Worlds
• 28:16 Annihilation
• 28:56 Dune (we love eyebrows)
• 30:11 POST SPOILERS discussion

We had so much fun revisiting Mid-World for this episode – it’s the first series that brought us together as book nerds twenty years ago, and it’s absolutely just as good as the first day we read it. So thankful it helped tie our friendship together, and laid the foundation for meeting all the rest of you Hugonauts all these years later!

The Dark Tower defies (or bridges) genres, with elements of sci-fi, fantasy, western, horror, and more, all rolled into one legendary package. And Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, is an incredible main character, and we’ll never forget the rest of the Ka-Tet either. And the ending – we won’t spoil it here, but man do we like thinking about this ending (it’s one of the most polarizing in all of literature). You may be picking up on the fact that we kinda like these books.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord
• Or you can watch our episodes on YouTube if you prefer video

As always, no spoilers until the end when we give a heads up before getting into the full plot discussion.

Similar books we recommend:

• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey
• Book of the New Sun series - Gene Wolfe

This episode is sponsored by The Rising and the Fall of Hell by Sean Miller

If you want to jump around, here are the timestamps for the episode:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:58 Our review (5/5)
• 03:35 Sponsor – The Rising and the Fall of Hell by Sean Miller
• 04:09 About Stephen King
• 07:26 Incredible character writing
• 08:56 A 20 year series
• 10:30 Should we be reading on drugs?
• 12:38 Cody hates Star Wars
• 15:52 Every genre combined
• 18:02 Our favorite books in the series
• 19:39 The King Multiverse
• 21:10 The Dark Tower movie
• 22:03 Inspirations from other fiction
• 27:44 Similar books we recommend
• 31:27 POST SPOILERS discussion

We’ve got 15 books and series here, so there should be something to love for almost every reader (although we need some traditional fantasy page turners – send us some recommendations in the comments please)! Plus, at the end of the episode we each rank our personal top 3.

We intentionally excluded YA and military sci-fi books, although those are often also page-turners - look out for episodes about each of those soon!

Brent’s brother, Alex, joined us for this episode, and brought us a whole new batch of books (and frankly a couple new subgenres) to enjoy. LitRPG / progression fantasy just keep getting more popular, and we can see why – the books we’ve picked up have all been so, so fun to read (although it probably helps we’ve been reading Alex’s recommendations so far, the best of the best from the hundreds of LitRPG books he’s read).

No spoilers anywhere in this episode.

• Join the Hugonauts book club on discord
• Or you can watch our episodes on YouTube if you prefer video

This episode is sponsored by Quinto’s Challenge by Peter McChesney

All the books we recommend, plus timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:48 Sponsor – Quinto’s Challenge by Peter McChesney
• 03:26 Silo by Hugh Howey
• 5:06 Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic
• 7:19 Murderbot by Martha Wells
• 9:10 Beware of Chicken by Casualfarmer
• 12:26 Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
• 14:49 Mark of the Fool by J.M. Clarke
• 18:18 Project Hail Mary and The Martian by Andy Weir
• 19:40 Iron Prince by Bryce O'Connor
• 22:33 Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
• 24:04 He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon
• 28:47 Daemon by Daniel Suarez
• 31:07 The Perfect Run by Maxime J. Durand
• 33:39 The Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor
• 36:24 Eight by Samer Rabadi
• 38:37 Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
• 46:18 Rankings: Top 3 page turners