There’s this childish grin that’s been stuck on my face for the last couple of days, and I can totally pin it on this book.
A man alone in infinite space
In “Project Hail Mary,” we follow Ryland, a man who suddenly wakes up in a spaceship and can’t remember anything about himself or how he got there. But there’s a much bigger problem—he’s holding the fate of the entire human civilization in his hands.
But he doesn’t know this yet.
And everyone else on the ship is dead.
One of the things that struck me the most is the ‘mess around and find out’ scenes in both timelines. Ryland is always working with something completely new to him. What I loved about the process is that if something works the first time, you’d better sleep with one eye open because something really strange is going to happen and mess things up again. And it seems like Andy Weir understood this.
And the science is true—it makes total sense.
This isn’t one of those sci-fi books that throws out real physics just to keep the plot moving. And it’s more fun when things make sense, even though it’s fiction, because it gives us some reference points and also a logical way to connect with the story.
Two storylines
The story is told in two alternating timelines: one is present day, with Ryland trying to figure out what’s going on and what to do about his situation, and the other is a string of flashbacks leading up to his mission.
Two-timeline storytelling is a tricky business. It’s really hard to hit that narrow channel of balancing both timelines together in perfect harmony, and Andy Weir nailed it. The flashback timeline doesn’t disrupt the main timeline at all, and he pulled off some interesting characters in those flashbacks as well.
Alien life with an uncommon perspective
First contact with an alien, if done right, is a very fascinating sci-fi trope, and Andy Weir absolutely does it right. I love that he went for something completely different from the traditional idea of what an alien might be like.There are two big questions in that whole ‘first alien contact’ arena: (1) Why are we unable to make contact with aliens yet? And (2) Why haven’t they contacted us? One of the interesting theories that Weir plays with is that either the aliens aren’t interested in us, or their intelligence isn’t compatible with reaching out to us. A good analogy for this is that we don’t go to the Amazon rainforest to see some cool-looking ants that are only native to that particular area. You know they’re there, but it doesn’t make sense to make the trip.
The point is that we’ll only meet life forms that have similar intelligence to us.
And Andy Weir makes this happen.
And the interactions between Ryland and Rocky are priceless. The way they study each other and try to figure out a way to communicate is so interesting and hilarious—which I think is the biggest reason this book became a huge success.
Too much science?
Now, when it comes to the negatives, the main thing I want to bring up is that I can see some readers having a hard time with the science. Personally, I really enjoy reading the scientific descriptions—they make the world more real for me. But I remember seeing this complaint about “The Martian” in the past, that the novel had too much science in it. I haven’t read “The Martian” myself, but I can see how some readers wouldn’t want to immerse themselves in quite this much science.
Update: I was completely wrong about this. Turns out, people loved the science. I wrote about how I changed my mind in this blog post:
A man changing his mind
There’s a common and rather simple footprint to all the stories that are successful—whether it’s a book, a movie, or any other art form that narrates a story. It works best when it’s not overly emphasized. There could be some interesting things going on in the middle of the story, but at the end of the day, the backbone of this story—or almost any story that’s won people’s hearts—is this:
At its core, this book is about a man who changed his personality to become a better person.
This is a story about a man who didn’t want to take responsibility, even when the entire world was at stake. A man who was willing to give up his whole career just because some of his peers weren’t treating him nicely. Eventually, he accepts his role in life and changes his mind, willing to die not just for his own species, but for a species he has just come to know about.
“Okay, if I’m going to die, it’s going to have meaning. I’m going to figure out what can be done to stop Astrophage. And then I’ll send my answers off to Earth. And then … I’ll die.”
And, like always, that premise works.
Other Quotes From the Book
“What if Eridians have a life-span of 2 million years and waiting a century to reply is considered polite?”
“Intelligence evolves to give us an advantage over the other animals on our planet. But evolution is lazy. Once a problem is solved, the trait stops evolving. So you and me, we’re both just intelligent enough to be smarter than our planet’s other animals.”
“Broadly speaking, the human brain is a collection of software hacks compiled into a single, somehow-functional unit. Each ‘feature’ was added as a random mutation that solved some specific problem to increase our odds of survival.”