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Novel Review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, 2021, 476pp
TLDR: An All-American super-duper biologist grade-school teacher saves his own life by McGyvering in space with a buddy.
This is Andy Weir's third book. His first and most famous book was The Martian, which is about an All-American varsity maverick boy-scout botanist hero who gets stuck on Mars and must solve one problem after another with science to keep himself alive. That book finishes with a scene in which the main character launches himself into space in hail-mary football pass fashion.
This book is totally different. It's about a boy-scout varsity All-American xeno-biologist hero who who is underappreciated by the establishment and has become a super-duper know-it-all grade-school science teacher. He finds himself alone in the orbit of Tau-Ceti (not Mars) thanks to a hail-mary football pass to put him INTO danger (hence the name of the book), so I think you can see how this would be wildly different. Also, our hero here, Ryland Grace, is really friendly and never swears - the guy in the Martian was much more sweary, as I recall.
And one more difference - Ryland doesn't have to do all that dramatic life-savey science stuff alone this time - he gets a buddy! And a pretty good one, too.
From here on, beware of mild spoilers.
The first 150 pages is a bit of a slog, I have to say. The writing is is easy enough to get along with and at first Ryland has lost his memory, so there's an interesting puzzle to keep the reader engaged. But I found myself gagging on Ryland's cloying and saccharine outlook and self-congratulatory manner. There's a fair bit of "Oh my Gosh! This is it! First contact! I'm the guy! I'm the guy who meets aliens for the first time!" and "It proves I was right! The Goldilocks zone is bull-puckey! You don't need water for life! I should be more focused on the ... 'save all of humanity' thing, but gosh darn it, I can spend a moment to be happy about being right when everyone said I was wrong!" And then of course there's the football: "Some quick math tells me the cylinder will take over forty minutes to reach me. I have that long to get into an EVA suit, go outside, and position myself on the hull for Humanity's first touchdown-pass reception with an alien quarterback."
So yes, Ryland is always happy. He's very self-congratulatory. And he's also dang good at pretty much everything! Except the few things his bestest alien buddy is better at, 'cause otherwise we wouldn't need him in the story. So yes, even more so than in the Martian, the our viewpoint character in this novel is an insufferably keen, overachieving, wish-fulfillment character.
The other thing about the first part of the book is the mystery . Where exactly is Ryland, and why is he here? Ryland can't remember, but with some conveniently placed (and rather screenplay-like) flashbacks, all is eventually revealed. I say flashbacks, but they're not always, because sometimes they are 'memories' of scenes at which Ryland was not actually present, which is bizarre. Eventually, these start to peter out and just become 'backstory'.
Luckily, by the time we get a third of the way into the book, we meet the alien buddy, Rocky, and things start to turn around because Ryland has someone to think about other than himself. This is when things get pretty entertaining for a while. Rocky the alien is pretty cool, and the buddy relationship really works well. By the end, I found myself caring for both characters in spite of my earlier feelings for Ryland. This section had some nice twists and turns and even ends in an interesting fashion, so I was quite pleased with it.
I'm sure Weir put a massive amount of work into the science behind everything, and I think that pays off for the reader. I'm not an expert on most of the fields discussed in the book, but pretty much every time I had a 'hey, wait a minute - he forgot about this!' moment, Weir demonstrated that he had indeed thought of that a paragraph or two, later. I might quibble with his thoughts on evolution a bit, but apart from that it seemed really sound to me and effort well spent by the writer.
The problems that Ryland and Rocky have to solve are, on the whole, pretty interesting, too, though I did find the 'whoah, here's a problem we didn't see, let's science our way out of it' thing starting to get a little tired in the last third. I think 50 to 100 pages could have been knocked out of the book without losing too much. The back story wasn't nearly as interesting as the 'first contact' story.
So yes, overall an enjoyable read for me. The book offers an interesting space problem to be solved, a really interesting exploration of alien biology, and a touching buddy story. With a less cloying main character, fewer clichés, a more worldly outlook, and some tightening up in the story-telling would likely have put this into 'Touchdown!' territory for me. 3 out of 5.
Comments
Amusing review, thank you! Sounds like another instance of someone hitting a winning formula and keeping at it. That's something that came up in the discussion of the "Thousand True Fans" idea: the artist needs to produce work that is similar enough to previous that it satisfies the fans, but different enough to keep them engaged (and the artist interested in what they're creating).
I started his Artemis and gave up on it (having very much enjoyed The Martian) and am middling about this one... certainly persevering but I can't imagine wanting to reread it.
I have to confess I totally missed the sporting reference when choosing the title (American football, I think) and just interpreted the title in a naive way as a hopeful / wishful desire, ie the original source of the phrase rather than the derived sports one. I haven't bothered to look up what the sports term means but I'm guessing from context that it's a long and risky manoeuvre.
I haven't yet reached the bit where he meets an alien so that's something to look forward to!