If you like movies with hot basic boys doing science magic then you’ll love Andy Weir. The Martian had Matt Damon as Mark Watney and now his next novel, Project Hail Mary, is coming out as a movie starring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. Join the Pagenerds on our spoiler heavy adventure into stinky spaceships with dog-sized spiders (crabs?) as we figure out whether Ryland Grace could actually save Earth, or whether he would have just accidentally boiled the oceans instead.

Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch

Pagenerd is a sci-fi book club for people who suck at book clubs. You can read along if you want, but we’ll tell you what happens and have some fun figuring out the science, plot and characters along the way. In each episode we pick a sci-fi novel — current or classic — and explore its world and characters, discussing what it would be like to exist in that novel and how well it's realised on the page. 

If you do want to read along then you'll find a full list of what we're reading for upcoming episodes at pagenerd.com.

Pagenerd is Sarah Stockdale, Tommy Guy, Richard Vieweg and Andrew Corway. Jay Cockburn is the producer.