Pippa Reads Art

American author Andy Weir is not new to having his works adapted for the big screen: prior to the success of Project Hail Mary, his 2011 novel The Martian was made into a 2015 film, starring Matt Damon. While his second novel Artemis did not have quite the same impact, this third release of his has clearly been a hit. Project Hail Mary was recommended to me by a friend a couple of years ago, and with the release of the movie I figured it would be a good time to actually get round to reading it.

For a novel based on the premise that the Sun is being rapidly extinguished (which would of course end all life on Earth), there is a fair amount of humour to be found. The narrator, a school teacher-turned-astronaut with rather alarming memory issues, shows a sense of irony in his self-observations before he can even recall his own name:

I hang on to the ladder with one hand and turn the hatch’s circular crank with the other. It actually turns!

“Holy moly!” I say.

“Holy moly”? Is that my go-to expression of surprise? I mean, it’s okay, I guess. I would have expected something a little less 1950s. What kind of weirdo am I?

Project Hail Mary, chapter 1

It is these precise memory issues that draw us deeper into the story, allowing us to meet new characters and uncover details about the mission that our hero, Ryland Grace, is on, even as he traverses the solitude of space without a single human companion on last-ditch effort to save the Earth. The unreliability of this adds to the intrigue: as events begin to unfold in the present, Weir reveals more and more about the narrator. How much of a hero is he, really?

What we do know, though, is that Grace is a man who loves science – as, we are shown, is Weir. With the inclusion of diagrams and explanations of the mechanics of the space ship, detailed comments on the various procedures the Earth-side researchers carry out, plus a splash of speed-running alien evolution, it could be easy to get bogged down in the details. Yet despite how ‘Sci-heavy’ this Sci-Fi novel might seem in places, Weir writes in a way that is entirely accessible even to someone whose last experience of a science class was twenty years ago (…it’s me, that someone is me).

Back to the microscope. “Okay, you little reprobates. You’re radiation-proof, I’ll grant you that. But how about I stab you in the face?”
Normally a nanosyringe would be controlled by finely tuned equipment.
But I just wanted some stabby time and didn’t care about the tool’s integrity. I grabbed the collet (where it would normally mount to the control machinery) and brought the needle into view in the microscope. They’re called nanosyringes, but they’re actually about 50 nanometers wide. Still, the needle was tiny compared to the hulking 10-micron Astrophage
—only about one two-thousandth the width.
I poked an Astrophage with the needle and what happened next was nothing I could have expected.

Project Hail Mary, chapter 4

However, it is the relationship between Grace and his new alien friend that really steals the show. Described at one point as a ‘dog-sized spider’, the creature Grace nicknames Rocky shows as much humour, loyalty and bravery as the best of us. I won’t give away too much more here, as it’s best if you meet him yourself.

I do not necessarily consider myself a SciFi reader and initially assumed this would be a little dry and slow-paced; I was wrong. From a nameless man waking up unable to move his fingers or even blink, to a desperate scientist dashing high-speed across space, we journey with Grace on the Hail Mary on an adventure that is, at its core, filled with optimism and whimsy. First contact with a nonhuman species! Impossible metals! Space amoebas! Saving the world!

Buy Project Hail Mary here:

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