Techno-Thrillers discussion

October 2025 Book of the Month (BOTM): We had a tie on the favorite authors theme, so went with both of them, as I usually do.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (2021)


One of my favorite authors, best book of the 2020s, and in my opinion, the best techno-thriller book of all-time. A movie adaptation is coming out in March of 2026. The trailer misses the tone among other things, but I imagine it will still be good, and suddenly, the masses will get that this is a great book. Going to reread to confirm whether it really is the best.

Publisher's Summary
A lone astronaut. An impossible mission. An ally he never imagined.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and Earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

Imagery
These are some of the images I used for the group while we were reading this book.



This group image is just a close up from the cover for Project Hail Mary. It’s an astronaut floating in space … sure, and it conveys part of the setting of the book … but it isn’t obvious where this scene comes from. Does he spend time outside the ship? There is a scene where rather precariously they are trying to collect a sample of the astrophage. That might be it. Someone on a web page speculated that’s what it was. I’m not sure that would be the most iconic image, but any iconic image would probably be a bit of a spoiler. Incidentally, the trailer for the movie is a massive spoiler. I suppose they didn’t want people showing up and being “too” surprised. But, I consider the trailer a disappointing spoiler for the book.

Update: No one dangled on a tether sampling astrophage. Someone did venture off their ship (with a large tether) near the end. I choose to believe that moment was worthy of the cover.



This is a stained glass portrayal of Mary, mother of Jesus, praying, and … it’s an ode to our book of the month, Project Hail Mary. Mary would never pray to herself, or say the Hail Mary prayer, but … the rough visual association is still there. Look, it doesn’t have to fully “make sense”, so much as catch attention and cause people to check out the group, or amuse those of us already in the group.



Prior to this, I had a picture of Doug Flutie throwing the Hail Mary. This is the iconic image of a Hail Mary in the sense of a last ditch effort, which is the sense in the name of our book of the month, Project Hail Mary. It covers a space-based mission that involves an incredible longshot strategy ... that despite the odds seems the only conceivable option to contend with the problem at hand.



This play happened during a football game between Boston College and the University of Miami on November 23, 1984, the day after Thanksgiving holiday in the US. Thanksgiving is on a Thursday ... the majority of Americans have Thursday and Friday off work ... and at the time, the trend of Black Friday shopping for Christmas was not the full tilt frenzy that it was in the 90s or 00s. People had a bad taste from the shopping hysteria of 1983 for trendy Cabbage Patch dolls that were all the rage and difficult to find for a Christmas present. That was the first true frenzy I recall where some shoppers in some cities pushed and shoved each other in a mad dash as the stores open doors on Friday, and people rushed in to get the last remaining dolls available at sale prices. There was a bit of a backlash in 1984, with somewhat of an anti-shopping mood after the over-the-top advertising and frenzy of 1983. It seems relatively more people had stayed home in 1984, foregoing the shopping, and so more people were watching the football games of the day. I watched this game live. On the last play of the game as the clock ran out, with Boston College trailing by 4 points, quarterback Doug Flutie threw a massive pass to the end zone and the receiver and defense all jumped in the air for it. The receiver caught it to win the game. Doug Flutie is 5'10", just a bit small for a football player at that level, and yet he threw the ball 63 yards, some say against the wind. The chances are very low, ... just throw the ball as hard as you can, say a prayer, and hope for the best. You could throw it shorter, but the defense will be waiting, or do a hook & ladder, ... rugby style. The odds of all the options are low. The notion of a Hail Mary play existed earlier in history, but that was before television. This game, in contrast, was a big game on national television on a holiday, with many viewers watching, and has become the de facto image of a Hail Mary working out. But, American football doesn't have global appeal, and this is pretty poor quality picture that doesn't pop so much as the stained glass image.

Is Project Hail Mary the best techno-thriller of all time?

If not, then what book is the best?

Post your thoughts here, … and I encourage you to also weigh in on our various techno-thriller book ranking lists here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I say it’s the best.


I might further qualify that by saying it’s the best singular book. There aren’t many explicit series in the techno-thriller genre, but I’d say the Aggressor series, as a whole, is the arguably the best series reading. You can buy it as a series, getting all fives books at once. They were clearly marketed as a series, with a unifying common look to the covers, and released in quick succession. They’ll be the same size and look nice arrayed on the bookshelf … though I’m a audiobook guy. Today, there is still no paperback “box set” per se.


Tom Clancy’s various Jack Ryan and John Clark books are more of an implicit series. They weren’t released in chronological order and all have different cover art styles and sizes. If they were published today, the publisher (he had more than one) would have exerted more influence (for better or worse) and released them as a box set. Perhaps they will create such a set some day. If I had to compare the first several Clancy books to the Aggressor series … that’s a tough call. I might go with the first several books by Clancy, but unfortunately, Jack Ryan isn’t in all the John Clark books, and Red Storm Rising (my favorite Clancy book) is a totally different and incompatible hypothetical timeline. So, it doesn’t form one united pristine chronological series. If you just take Jack Ryan, and don’t include Without Remorse, or Red Storm Rising, or Rainbow Six, … then that series isn’t as strong. Maybe I go with Aggressor.


So then, if you start cherry picking or taking random bundles of books by an author, the question becomes who is the best techno-thriller author? Now, Crichton comes back into play, since most of his books were unrelated standalone books. How do compare an author with a couple great books to an author with many books but not so many great books. Well, … we’ve got a list for favorite authors too.

In any case, there is a lot of good reading to be had here. Read them all, feel free to change your mind as you go, and as you age, and as the quality of books progress, and have fun all along the way!

Started. 25% in. Such a good audiobook performance. Still tracking as my favorite techno-thriller.

I think it won an Audie award. Yes—just checked—it won an Audie award for the best audiobooks of 2022.

2022! can't believe it was that long ago. Andy Weir needs to crank out another one.

OK, finished again. Yes, still my favorite technothriller of the 2020s, 21st century, and all time. This time, I felt the weight of excessive science deliberation more so. Sure, lots of success does come after a series of failed alternatives you tried first. A genius trekking forth in the unknown does not have apriori or congenital knowledge of all things and does not make all decisions correctly at light speed as stupid books and stupid movies and stupid shows often portray, completely missing the mark time and again trying to portray intelligence. Just like solving an IT issue, it is often just a quick succession of trying several approaches that gets the problem solved, instead of encyclopedic knowledge of things you’ve never seen before. So, having the character try and fail is important to show, but it gets old. Can’t do it all the time. Still a 5 star book, and still probably the best technothriller, but not as high of a 5 star as I initially thought.

If you read Project Hail Mary, please update the relevant listopia lists to show where you think it ranks relative to other techno-thrillers:

  • Technothrillers: Favorite Authors
  • Technothrillers: Best of All Time
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 21st Century
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 2020s

Also, I thought this book was so good it should have been best Fiction (not merely Science Fiction) of 2021. Instead, Malibu Rising won that award. They wouldn't even list Project Hail Mary in the general fiction category as an option. As usual, Goodreads sees the error of its ways 5-10 years later, or not at all. In this case, Project Hail Mary is now the top read of 2021. There is a heavy youthful female bias on such lists. Men just don't read as much, nor as much fiction, nor do they participate in any such kind of online media admitting to reading a book whereas women wear it with a badge of honor, and young men are now all about video games. Malibu Rising speaks of a ritzy beach side community with a colorful cover and of course it's the kind of escape women are going to read. But, the women I know who've actually read Project Hail Mary--not many of them mind you--do think it is a great book.

  • Best of 2021

I'd also like to see it be the best of the 2020s decade. There are some terrible books leading at the moment. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue isn't as terrible as most of them, but still isn't as good as Project Hail Mary. I've read many of the top 10. Unfortunately, it will probably take this upcoming movie for enough people to try the book, ... if they don't screw up the story in the movie. The trail is already a huge spoiler--shame on them--and it stars Ryan Gosling. Perhaps Ryan Gosling will bring women out, though it is pretty damn far-fetched for him to pass as a man with a PhD, nor an intelligent man--those aren't necessarily the same thing.

  • Best of the 2020s