Project Hail Mary

This book opens with a man alone in space, surrounded by corpses, with no idea who he is or why he’s there. So, basically: your standard Monday, but with astrophysics.

Ryland Grace wakes up mid-crisis and does what every good scientist does—he panics a little, then starts running experiments. From there, it’s a masterclass in problem-solving under pressure.

The protagonist, is an engineer-turned-reluctant-savior whose greatest weapon isn't a laser gun—it's curiosity. His brain works like a debugger with emotions: input, observe, hypothesize, experiment, iterate. If you're a strategic thinker, you'll love this book not for its science—but for its process. It’s like watching Sherlock Holmes in a lab coat, in space.

And then there's Rocky.
Rocky is an alien that looks like a spider mated with a toolbox and speaks in musical tones, but he’s more emotionally available than most humans I know. Watching Rocky and Grace become best friends through sheer intellectual brute force is oddly heartwarming. Their entire relationship is built on math, engineering, and mutual respect—which, let’s be honest, is probably the healthiest friendship in sci-fi history.

The science is dense but digestible, like a TED Talk with jokes. Every chapter is a logic puzzle wrapped in duct tape, and Grace solves them like a caffeinated Apollo 13 engineer on a deadline.

What makes this book so good isn’t just the stakes (which are, casually, the survival of Earth)—it’s the relentless optimism that if you throw enough brainpower at a cosmic problem, you might just make it home. Or, at the very least, make a really great alien friend.

This isn’t just sci-fi. It’s engineering porn with a heart.