Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
 

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
 

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
 

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
 

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.
 

Or does he?

Reading and now reviewing Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir felt like one of the greatest tests of my patience as a reader and my ability to separate the book’s objective and subjective strengths/weaknesses. The writing style and presentation resulted in one of my least favorite reading experiences of the last year and would rightfully deserve a 1-star rating if not for the book’s concept and attention to probable scientific theories. I’ve since learned a lot of my distaste for Project Hail Mary is mostly due to Andy Weir’s signature (or potentially infamous) writing style, with only the following character-related items being Project Hail Mary-specific points. However, after taking some time to review the material after finishing the book, I can appreciate some of its strong technical qualities that no doubt contributed to its popularity and nomination for a 2022 Hugo Award.

I was not previously familiar with Andy Weir’s past novels and had only seen short clips of the theatrical adaptation of The Martian, however what was immediately obvious is Weir’s strength for writing geeky science reactions and creative sci-fi concepts. The premise’s catastrophic phenomenon and its implications for life on Earth is not only creative, but also fascinating in theory. The concept of solar-dimming in and of itself is nothing new (I recently read the opposite scenario a few weeks ago in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin), but the cause and potential solution is unique and out there. I often have personal gripes with novels advertised as speculative science fiction that end up utilizing technology or methodology that’s entirely unrealistic. Project Hail Mary on the other hand feels extensively researched with a constant overload of scientific principles applied at every turn aboard the Hail Mary (that is until Rocky’s introduction that throws most of the realism out the window). The idea of using centrifugal force applied to a traditional shaped spacecraft that can be disassembled and spun with low-grade rocket fuel (as opposed to real proposed wheel-shaped station designs) I thought was incredibly clever as well as the constant experiments Dr. Grace performs at Tau Ceti. Various aspects related to 40 Eridani with an alternative ecosystem for life based around ammonia and heavy metals were also well-thought out. In general, the technical aspects of Project Hail Mary are objectively excellent and solid.

Where everything went wrong for me personally is with the actual reading experience and execution of the story itself. While the premise is solid, I was simultaneously apathetic and irritated by the story and tone. Despite having a more serious premise, Project Hail Mary is similar to The Martian in that it feels like there’s no plot. The story primarily takes place aboard the Hail Mary and utilizes the amnesia trope where Dr. Grace slowly regains his memories, recounting the events leading up to Hail Mary’s launch. However, the entire book can be surmised as being entirely reactive. Something happens, Grace freaks out, hypothesizes a solution, then fixes it. Rinse and repeat this process over and over and you essentially have the story of Project Hail Mary. At first this technique felt interesting and raised the stakes in Grace’s life or death isolated situation. However, this repetition quickly grew tiring to read, which was further exacerbated by the character voice and tone used.

That leads directly into my 2nd note of criticism which is the writing style itself. Andy Weir’s writing style is simplistic and surface-level at best, juvenile and stilted at worst. It vaguely feels on brand with the trend of contemporary novels written as if someone were speaking or thinking aloud, full of um’s, whaaat’s, ohhh’s, …’s mid-sentence, and countless unnecessary exclamation points. This is combined with an issue often seen in poorly phrased first-person present tense books that are full of “I do this. I do that. Then I do this. I do that.” The general style felt overly casual and hyped, and without any variation or dynamics over the course of almost 500 pages, it quickly tired me out and couldn’t win me back. Worse is the fact that so much of its content felt unnecessary and lacking of substance. Nearly every page is full of Grace’s sensory observations and reactions to things around him, but they’re devoid of any sort of introspection or internalized thoughts, resulting in a scattered and disconnected journey. It’s all loud external thoughts (which is quite ironic when you realize that Grace is alone aboard the Hail Mary for over half the book) featuring the dialogue of a teenager mixed with technical science jargon. I never knew the idiom “think out loud” to be so literal.

Speaking of the science, I’ve read quite a few reviews that either love the science or hate it for being confusing or contributing little to the story. I have a BS in Env. Science and as such, took collegiate level physics, geology, calculus and organic chemistry classes which were useful for digesting the various science principles highlighted constantly. To give Weir some credit, they are introduced in a way that’s largely accessible, and he gives decent enough explanations on how they work with their implications to the situation at hand. However, I still lean slightly towards the latter opinion of feeling like they were excessive. Despite being able to understand nearly all the science topics utilized, I still felt like less would’ve been more, and more emphasis on Grace and Rocky’s characters would’ve benefited the story (their buddy banter was one of the few highlights in the latter half of the book for me).

As for the characters, there’s nothing much to note apart from Grace and Rocky. Every single character introduced in Grace’s flashback memories felt like they had paper thin characterizations that largely relied on cultural/national stereotypes. A project involving multiple countries and agencies is obviously going to have a lot of individuals involved, however the reader is given so little time and details for each that they just become random names on paper. Characters may have a particularly unique quality (for example someone is frank about wanting sex, another likes to drink, one is cocky, one cares about the environment), however their dialogue and actions entirely blur together. A particular unforeseen event that occurs leading up to the Hail Mary launch has detrimental consequences that affect Grace and the team, however I couldn’t have cared less about any of the characters involved. Across the board most characters’ dialogue felt awkward and unnatural (apart from Rocky’s which is purposely unnatural). This book doesn’t have a lot of “plot” to begin with, however these flashbacks easily felt like the weakest moments in the book across the board and were the most bland chapters to read.

An interesting theme involving Grace’s history of avoidance or fear of failure is touched upon near the story’s climax, but there’s not enough of a setup to make this feel impactful. I feel like there were ample opportunities during the project’s research and development phase to explore Grace’s psyche or factors that led to his decision to walk away from his research background. Instead, the novel wastes countless pages entirely focused on reactive outbursts or his constant “this is crazy, what in the world!” which again, wears thin fast. Perhaps the climax of the story had the greatest potential for a strong character moment when Grace is faced with a monumental decision, yet the novel tosses the situation away nonchalantly. Worse, it happens in-between chapters off the page with almost no explanation to how Grace reached his choice in the life-or-death moment.

As the story progressed, notable plot holes started to grow and the story felt increasingly less grounded. Rocky becomes the greatest engineer to ever exist and the novel leaves just how they make things left to the imagination (aka Grace does not understand what he sees Rocky doing, therefore neither does the reader). The super computer system that seemingly feels like an AI system (despite being explicitly stated to not be AI by its developer) somehow has entirely fantastical skills that can emulate a nurse caring for a coma patient for years on end. The system that Grace develops to converse with Rocky initially feels realistic, systematic, and ingenious in concept. However a very brief time skip later, you’re made to believe his system is suddenly good enough to produce a near word for word translation in real-time. Finally, the last chapter’s resolution felt like one of the most outlandish direction the story could’ve taken with the novel explicitly explaining earlier why it can’t be done as so. Yet the solutions to these problems are again conveniently “invented” off the page between chapters because Rocky can make anything based on the entirety of everything possibly known to mankind that is somehow stored on a single laptop hard drive.

I know a lot of people love this book and Andy Weir’s nerdgasm geek reactions, and if it works for you, that’s awesome. I’d recommend giving it no more than 30 pages as a test run (don’t make the same mistake I did thinking that the tone or dialogue will improve once Grace’s amnesia hysteria passes, it doesn’t). Needless to say, I was unimpressed and decidedly dislike reading Project Hail Mary from beginning to end. I found the character work to be mediocre (and the plot not strong enough to compensate for it) and I honestly cannot remember the last time I actively disliked an author’s base writing style to such a degree (not including translated works which can be heavily colored by the translator/adaptor). However, the technical elements of the book are quite strong and if I’m rating this book as a whole package instead of my only personal experience with it, I can’t go lower than a 2-star rating despite how much I was looking forward to book ending while I was reading it.