[Cross posting from my personal blog: https://spiralprogress.com/2024/10/28/the-shallow-bench/]

Project Hail Mary follows Ryland Grace, a disgraced academic turned high school biology teacher who gets selected as part of a crew of three tasked with saving all of humanity from an impending alien threat.

Not even in sci-fi does a premise this absurd get presented without explanation. What does PHM offer?

“They found a collection of genes that give a human ‘coma resistance.”

“The main problem is this: On average, only one in every seven thousand humans has that genetic sequence.”

“We wouldn’t be able to send the most qualified people. We’d be sending the seven-thousandth most qualified people.”

In real life, I work in a complex and niche field that my skill set only very tangentially qualifies me for.

Periodically, I’ll meet people who ask how I ended up there. They’re not trying to be mean, it's more like [...]

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.