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If there’s a movie based on a book, and you plan to both see the movie and read the book, what order should you do it in?

I think most readers would say you should read the book first, but a friend makes a compelling, brief argument for seeing the movie first: the book will have so much more to it than the movie. You watch the movie to get the broad strokes and read the book the appreciate the details.

With “Project Hail Mary,” I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done before: I read about half of the book, then watched the movie, then read the rest of the book. I loved the movie, thought parts of the book were great but much of it was “meh.”

The friendship worked, the physics didn't — a review of the novel "Project Hail Mary," by Andy Weir

Parts the novel “Project Hail Mary,” by Andy Weir, were compelling and even moving. Those were the parts that involve interactions with the characters and advancing the plot, particularly the warm friendship that grows between the human hero and alien Rocky.

I found the speculative technology and science less compelling. I know that it was meticulously and scientifically worked out, but it all read like Star Trek or Doctor Who technobabble to me and I found my eyes skating over pages and pages and pages without taking in anything I’d read.

Overall, I found the book enjoyable and even gripping in parts, but I don’t know whether I will read another Andy Weir book. I am not the audience.

There was one hugely implausible element to the book: The premise that all the nations of the world might come together to save the world against an invisible threat. Given how many people still believe Covid was a hoax, I fear that’s not how it would work out.

I had the same problem with the otherwise brilliant Last Policeman trilogy by Ben Winters, which is a series of police murder procedurals set in a small Massachusetts city during the final six months before an asteroid is due to strike the Earth and wipe out all life. Everybody in the world knows the asteroid is going to hit and the novel is about what you’re going to do when you know the world will come to an end in two years. I don’t remember any of the characters in the novel saying the asteroid is a hoax — astronomers go on TV to announce the news and everybody just believes it to be true.

Arsenic and Lace: The trial of the Yorkshire Witch. The true tale of Mary Bateman, the villainous Yorkshire Witch, who sold spells and enchantments to the desperate in the late 18th Century. Tim Hartford is joined on the Cautionary Tales podcast by Maddy Pelling, co-host of the After Dark podcast and author of “Hoax: Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment.”

My TV these days is deeply middle-aged. Reruns of Buffy, Stargate, Grimm, The Mentalist, Justified, Inspector Morse and the occasional Golden Girls episode. Last night, we watched the series finale of Grantchester.

I think maybe the only new show we’re currently watching is “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” which is essentially a reboot of a TV series that debuted midway through the Johnson Administration.

My TV these days is deeply middle-aged. Reruns of Buffy, Stargate, Grimm, The Mentalist, Justified, Inspector Morse and the occasional Golden Girls episode. Last night, we watched the series finale of Grantchester.

I think maybe the only new show we’re currently watching is “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” which is essentially a reboot of a TV series that debuted midway through the Johnson Administration.

2001 profile of Vernor Vinge, the brilliant science fiction writer and computer scientist. By Katie Hafner at The New York Times:

A linchpin of his thinking is what he calls the “technological singularity,” a point at which the intelligence of machines takes a huge leap, and they come to possess capabilities that exceed those of humans. As a result, ultra-intelligent machines become capable of upgrading themselves, humans cease to be the primary players, and the future becomes unknowable. Dr. Vinge sees the singularity as probable if not inevitable, most likely arriving between 2020 and 2040.

Vinge passed away in 2024, after a struggle with Parkinsons. I wonder what he would have made of AI today. Would he have thought we were truly on the verge of the singularity? Would he have thought we had already passed it? Or would he have thought it was all a Ponzi scheme?

Via Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr — thanks!

I read three print books and have no big thoughts about it.

I have done nearly all my book reading as ebooks since 2010. However, I was unable to find ebook versions of the “Funny Papers” trilogy by Tom De Haven, so I bought print versions.

The experience reading print books after years of electronically was … fine.

It confirmed I prefer ebooks, not for any grand philosophical or esthetic reason, but just because they’re more convenient.

But faced with the same choice again — wanting to read a book that is not available as an ebook — I’ll get the print book in an instant.