Project Hail Mary: A Novel

Chapter 2

Cool thing about pendulums: The time it takes for one to swing forward and backward—the period—won’t change, no matter how wide it swings. If it’s got a lot of energy, it’ll swing farther and faster, but the period will still be the same. This is what mechanical clocks take advantage of to keep time. That period ends up being driven by two things, and two things only: the length of the pendulum and gravity.

Chapter 6

I have no idea how much time it took. Or, rather, I have no idea how much time I experienced. When you get going near the speed of light, you experience time dilation. More time will have gone by on Earth than I have experienced since I left Earth. Relativity is weird.

Chapter 12

Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.

Chapter 16

“Are all Russians crazy?” “Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.”

Chapter 26

“For fifty thousand years, right up to the industrial revolution, human civilization was about one thing and one thing only: food. Every culture that existed put most of their time, energy, manpower, and resources into food. Hunting it, gathering it, farming it, ranching it, storing it, distributing it… it was all about food.

Vocabulary

Valise - a small traveling bag or suitcase

Desiccated - having had all moisture removed; dried out

Panspermia - the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment

Ignobles - not honorable in character or purpose

Roiling - make (a liquid) turbid or muddy by disturbing the sediment