one of my favorite tropes of all time is when the author tries to replace curse words with a more ‘family friendly’ alternative or invent new words for worldbuilding purposes but they use existing words that make the whole thing unintentionally hilarious out of context
The Kingii is an emergency life preserver that you can strap right to your wrist that inflates in seconds and brings you straight to the surface of the water.
People who don’t want to read The Martian in case the science is too complicated should be informed that it contains the lines “The best way to store the ingredients of water is to make them be water”, “It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft”, and “If I cut a hole in the wall of the hab, the air won’t stay inside any more”.
I love this fucking book
“I’ve said the words kilowatt-hours-per-sol so many times they’ve lost all meaning so I’m going to call them pirate-ninjas.
“So I need to generate nine hundred pirate-ninjas…”
there’s an entire chapter dedicated to him wondering how the cubs are doing while he’s stuck on mars, dying
I like the part where the guys on Earth are like “He thinks we all gave up on him, and that he’s completely alone. I wonder what he’s thinking about right now.”
And he’s like “How come Aquaman can control whales?”
Mark Watney is such a great example of how to teach to laymen. Andy Weir wrote a book about a man who basically gives the reader a 369 page science lesson and it’s literally never boring or too complicated or patronising. He uses language that is accessible to the reader, removes technical jargon, adds in humour and all without belittling the reader or making them feel stupid for being given the simplified explanation.
imagine Leo being sick, and the other members taking advantage of the fact that he’s to tired to move so that they can feed him and tuck him in and stroke his hair and just generally be as affectionate as they want with no consequences