Booklog 46/2022: Lois McMaster Bujold: Borders of Infinity - Vorkosigan #5

This is a re-read via Audible, read by Grover Gardner.

Borders of Infinity is a single book with framing device encompassing three Vorkosigan short stories/novellas: The Mountains of Mourning, Borders of Infinity, and Labyrinth. In the Mountains of Mourning, Miles, then only twenty, must solve the murder of a baby in the superstitious back-country of Vorkisigan Surleau where despite all efforts to stamp out the killing of 'mutie' babies at birth, the old practice still happens. Miles is the man for the job since at four feet six with a twisted spine, he looks like a mutie himself. In Borders of Infinity Miles gets himself incarcertaed in a Cetagandan prison camp in order to rescue one specific person, and ends up rescuing a few thousand. In Labyrinth, Miles and the Dendarii are on a mission to Jackson's Whole to liberate a genetic engineer and his tissue samples which have been stored in the calf muscle of super-soldier, Taura, eight feet tall with fangs.

Booklog 47/2022: Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary (Audiobook)

When Astrophage – a tiny alien lifeform – begins to swarm, effectively reducing the power of the sun, all the spacefaring countries on earth band together to build the Hail Mary to make a desperate one-way trip to Tau Ceti, the only star in the near galaxy that seems unaffected. It’s a suicide mission to try to prevent an extinction-level threat to humanity. Three astronauts are placed in a medically induced coma to sleep off the four years of the journey. It’s not without its perils. Ryland Grace, a biologist formerly in academia, but now a high school science teacher, awakes unable to move, speak, or remember and gradually works out where he is and what is mission is. Unfortunately, his two crew-mates have died at some time during the journey, so Grace is on his own. Gradually he begins to recall memories of events which led up to him being an astronaut. Fortunately, Grace is smart. Just like Andy Weir’s The Martian, he has to science-the-shit out of the situation. That’s where the comparison with The Martian ends, because it turns out that Grace is not alone. Enter Rocky, an honest to goodness alien, vaguely spider-like in shape (but bigger) with five arms and a rocky carapace. The alien communicates by musical chords. He (it) perceives the world around him with a kind of sonar and has no eyes, but gradually, even though they can’t survive in each other’s habitat/atmosphere, the two achieve a level of understanding and friendship. Rocky - the last survivor of his own mission to save his species from the Astrophage, turns out to be a brilliant engineer. There’s a lot of fascinating science in this book. I’m no scientist, but I’m assuming it’s more or less accurate. The relationship between Grace and Rocky is fascinating, and the solution to the Astrophage problem will save both their worlds. I consumed this via Audible. The narrator, Ray Porter, is excellent.