As he says in this interview,“My favorite part of writing is the research, and the math, and the figuring all that stuff out.” “The largest nuclear reactor on Earth makes about eight gigawatts. It’s obvious how happy random science stuff makes him - and that enthusiasm is infectious (not Astrophage-infectious but pretty darn close). It’s obvious how wonderfully nerdy Andy Weir is. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.” “I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe.” And yes, he also will need to science the shit out of it. For life that needs the output of the Sun it’s not good news. In Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace wakes up from a coma with a bunch of tubes sticking out of him (including that spot where the sun don’t shine) and realizes that he has no memory of what happened - and eventually, through a bit of complicated science, realizes and remembers that he’s the sole survivor of a mission that’s the last ditch chance to save Earth from a star-eating microbe ( “Evolution can be insanely effective when you leave it alone for a few billion years.”).

“Yes.”In The Martian, Mark Watney woke up with an antenna sticking out of his chest and realized he had to science the shit out of it if he wanted to survive on Mars. “The whole world put you in charge of solving this problem, and you came directly to a junior high school science teacher?” (Yeah, this book’s protagonist tends to sound like he’s 85 - he’s just not a foul-mouthed sort of a scientist):

By golly*, I am so gosh-darn* happy right now. “I’d have to do the math to know for sure but - I can’t help it, I want to do the math right now.”This book is half science experiments, half wacky buddy comedy - and it just works so so so well! That nerdy glee I felt on every page of The Martian is back full force.

Project hail mary paperback