Show notes
Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is or why he’s there, and Earth is dying behind him. Alex and Lindsey saw the Lord and Miller adaptation on about five hours of sleep, having read Andy Weir’s novel a year earlier. Full spoilers for both.
They get into Grace’s cowardice and the amnesia as an accidental control group, stripping away the self-defeating story he tells about himself to reveal what he does when he can’t remember he’s supposed to be a coward. Also Rocky as a character built without a face, and whether the film earns your affection for him. Eva Stratt’s ethical problem: she believes in Grace more than he does, and takes away his choice anyway. Plus what the Eridians’ perfect recall costs them in curiosity, and whether that resembles working alongside an AI.
Book vs. movie: the scab scene the film cuts, the terrarium funding politics, and whether the Stratt romance exists in the novel at all.
Also: the Kardashev scale, optimistic sci-fi as a genre, a Midwestern goodbye, the pods named after the Beatles, and the origin of this podcast’s name.
Cry count and ratings at the end.