Gerhard’s Reviews > Project Hail Mary > Status Update

Earth invented nuclear power, television, and even did several space launches before the transistor.

The hardest part about working with aliens and saving humanity from extinction is constantly having to come up with names for stuff.

Do you believe in God? I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know?

“Hello!” Ilyukhina lunged forward and hugged Stratt. “I’m here to die for Earth! Pretty awesome, yes?!”
I leaned to Dimitri. “Are all Russians crazy?”
“Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.”
“That’s…dark.”
“That’s Russian!”

“It’d be the biggest thing ever made by humanity,” he said. “It’d be starkly visible from space.”
I glared at him. “And it would destroy the ecology of Africa and probably Europe.”
“Not as much as the coming ice age will.”

“Humans,” Stratt said. “I want to know how this affects humans, and when. I don’t care about the mating grounds of the three-anused mud sloth or any other random biome.”

Project Hail Mary has overstepped its authority in the matter of digital data acquisition and licensing. They have, in their possession, a gigantic solid-state-drive array upon which they have copied literally every single piece of software that has ever been copyrighted, as well as every single book and literary work that has ever been available in any digital format.

I’m a scientist, not Buck Rogers.

Maybe Earth sent multiple ships with different designs? Like, for redundancy or to increase the odds that at least one of them works. Maybe that ship is the Praise Allah or the Blessings of Vishnu or something.

Evolution can be insanely effective when you leave it alone for a few billion years.