Writer Andy Weir clearly has a type. After stranding a guy all alone on Mars in his novel The Martian, Weir has now stranded a different guy on a spaceship in his new novel Project Hail Mary (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). Though as he explains in this email interview, the new guy isn’t entirely alone on that ship.
For the last two years I’ve kept a log of all the good books I read, regardless of when they were originally published. You can read my 2015 list by clicking here, and 2016’s by clicking here.
And since I’m nothing if not predictable, I decided to repeat this process for 2017.
So, here’s a look at the best novels, short story collections, and other books I read in 2017.
Three years after releasing The Martian — six if you count when he first self-published his debut novel about an astronaut who’s stranded on Mars — writer Andy Weir is taking another trip to outer space with his new novel, Artemis (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). But while you might expect this book to be about an astronaut who’s accidentally stranded on, oh let’s say Venus, or maybe Mercury, Weir has actually taking a left turn and veered this new sci-fi tale into the realm of the crime novel.
For many writers, penning a story about an astronaut stranded on Mars would ultimately lead to some such sci-fi elements as little green men or an ancient civilization destroyed by some unknown danger.
But in his first novel, The Martian (paperback, Kindle), Andy Weir is taking a different approach; a more realistic one that eschews sci-fi tropes, and makes this more of a thriller and a disaster movie in book form.