☰

Top

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir, 2021

Published: 2021.07.26

Home > Book Reviews > Andy Weir > Project Hail Mary

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry, 2021

★★★★ (of 5)

 

Summary

From the author of best seller The Martian (later a film by the same name, starring Matt Damon), Project Hail Mary is in the same category: very “hard” science fiction. Much like The Martian, this books focuses almost solely on a single character — this time middle school science teacher Ryland Grace — who is caught in a perilous circumstance from which only extensive scientific knowledge can save him.

In the near future, scientists discover a single-celled extraterrestrial organism that’s reproducing uncontrolled on Venus and absorbing solar energy at a rate that will soon prove catastrophic to humanity. Due to Dr. Grace’s background as a molecular biologist, he is called in by an international task force to help study the ET life form. Once the task force decides to build a space craft and send it to nearby star Tau Ceti to look for solutions, Grace (through a series of believable events) becomes one of the crew of the starship.

The book is written in the first person, from Grace’s perspective, beginning when he awakes from a medically induced coma as his starship enters the Tau Ceti system. He has no memory of where he is or why he’s there, and has no idea why the rest of the crew is dead. Bits of memory come flashing back as the story progresses, giving both Grace and the reader insights at convenient times. Grace uses scientific thinking and whatever he finds on the ship to survive, figure out what he’s supposed to do, and do it. Maybe the best part, though, is his relationship with (small spoiler ahead!) Rocky, the nonhuman sentient life form he encounters during his time around Tau Ceti. (Rocky is also the sole survivor of his crew, which came from a different star system for the same reasons.)

 

Praise

(I am NOT a scientist, but...) To my mildly educated layperson’s mind, the science bits of this story seem very well done — especially as compared with many modern portrayals of science in pop culture. I tend not to spend my reading time fact-checking everything, but the few things I did fact-check were accurate enough (and some of the space travel-related items, I already knew). The way Grace constructs and operates experiments (which might sound boring to many) was actually fun to read and visualize. He does make mistakes, as is expected for a desperate human with few resources all alone in an alien star system, but he eventually catches them and explains why they were mistakes.

I thought there was a good balance between the current storyline and the flashbacks of memory, as well as between peril and success.

 

Points Off For...

The book isn’t perfect. For example, it switches between present tense and past tense — present tense for all the parts where Dr. Grace is at Tau Ceti, and past tense for his flashbacks. Weir likely did that intentionally, to give the reader a sense of when, but I doubt I’ll ever grow accustomed to present tense prose.

There are a few scientific — or at least technological — shortcomings. One already mentioned by Mary Robinette Kowal (president of the Science Fiction Writers Of America) in her Washington Post review is the glaring lack of checklists, given that checklists are almost like a religion for aviation and space travel. The simple existence of such checklists would have solved several of Grace’s issues instead of him having to be so darn clever all the time.

There were also a couple of uncomfortable moments (Kowal also mentions these), like when Grace calls his alien friend “he” because the only other pronoun he can think of is “it”. A middle school science teacher? In the 21st Century? Can’t think of “she”? (Just to name a very common pronoun that isn’t he or it.) And the head of the task force (the only fleshed-out female character in the book) has a little speech about how the entire crew should be heterosexual men. Yes, Grace challenges this opinion, and yes, it turns out to not be the case in the end, but writing these lines and the flimsy explanation for the book’s only female character was a choice.

 

Conclusion

The book was fun to read. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction or even fiction in general. It feels like Weir is building a small niche sub-genre just for himself, which is fine: I think the world needs more fiction books about people who solve problems and avert catastrophes using only scientific knowledge.

 





comments powered by Disqus