The novel “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir was published for the first time in 2021. It won the Dragon Award at the 2021 Dragon Con and the Japanese Seiun Award.

Ryland Grace wakes up in a bed, with a series of life-support systems connected to his body. He doesn’t even remember his identity, and his first thought is that he was in a coma. Two bodies in beds in the same room indicate that this isn’t a hospital, and his perceptions of gravity suggest he’s aboard an accelerating spaceship.

Slowly, Ryland Grace starts recovering his memories, albeit fragmentarily. He remembers being a teacher, a profession he chose after a negative experience as a biology researcher. He also recalls being involved in a project aimed at finding a way to save humanity after the discovery that the Sun is emitting less energy, a phenomenon caused by strange microorganisms.

The novel “Fiasco” (“Fiasko”) by Stanislaw Lem was first published in 1986. It was translated into English by Michael Kandel.

Angus Parvis pilots a highly powerful robot on Titan in search of missing persons, including the famous pilot Pirx. Due to an accident, Parvis is forced to resort to vitrification, an emergency procedure that puts him into hibernation, knowing that no one has ever managed to awaken a vitrified person.

Many years later, an expedition is set up to travel to a star system from which signals were received indicating the presence of a civilization. During preparations, some vitrified bodies are brought aboard the spaceship, but only one manages to be brought back to life through a complex operation, and the man who is awakened suffers from amnesia. Nevertheless, he becomes part of the crew that sets out for the planet Quinta.

The novel “The Forever War” by Joe Haldeman was published for the first time in 1974. It won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards as the best science fiction novel of the year.

In 1997, William Mandella is a college student when the war begins with the Taurans, the mysterious aliens humans encountered when they began traveling in interstellar space. Conscripted into the space force created to fight the Taurans, he’s trained, conditioned for war, and sent on a mission.

Along with the other soldiers, William Mandella embarks on an interstellar journey. Special space-time “shortcuts” allow fast travel from one point in space to another, but these are specific locations. From any of those locations, the journey is at sub-light speed, which means traveling for years, though subjectively, it’s much shorter due to time dilation.