Project Hail Mary
Author Andy Weir
Audio read by Ray Porter
Cover artist Will Staehle
Publisher Ballantine Books
Publication date May 4, 2021
Media type Print, ebook, audiobook
Pages 496
In Ripley Scott’s The Martian, Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is stranded alone on Mars, and has no way to communicate with Earth, which in turn has no idea he is alive. Resolving to survive, but facing very long odds, he looks around at his limited options and vows “In the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option: I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.”
Aside from being an absolutely great line, it captures perfectly the philosophy that underlies Andy Weir’s The Martian, which was the source of the movie, and it also captures the spirit of Project Hail Mary.
There are many elements that make this a remarkable tale. There is, of course, the high level of scientific literacy that informs the story throughout. The real science is solid, and the pretend science, for the most part, is at least plausible.
Weir’s incomparable narrative style blends realistic and very approachable characters with a level of wit and humor that makes Hail Mary a riveting and wholly enjoyable read. His dry humor provides laugh-out-loud moments on nearly every page.
As a “First Contact” story it’s the best I’ve ever read.
At first glance, Project Hail Mary might seem to be just a retread of The Martian. Certainly the basic plot setup is similar. A lone human, stranded far from Earth, aware that humanity assumes he is lost forever, struggles to survive even when it seems there is little reason—or ability—to do so. But the similarities end there.
Junior High School teacher Ryland Grace is the sole survivor of an interstellar mission to find a way to save the solar system. A strange life form that is capable of living in a star’s protosphere and carrying the energy away in their trillions has “infected” the sun. Sol is losing its radiance; not all of it, but enough that in a few decades, Earth will experience the fimbelwinter to end all fimbelwinters, wiping out much of the life on the planet, including humanity. The life forms, dubbed “astrophages” (yes, ‘star eaters’) are discovered by Grace, who rockets to prominence as a result of that discovery. He puzzles out the breeding cycle of the organisms that cause their migration to the CO2 saturated atmosphere of Venus, and as a result of that discovery, ends up as the de facto assistant to Eva Stratt, a bureaucrat who is absolutely mission-driven and who has been given unlimited power. The mission?
Humanity has measured stars similar to the sun in the nearest areas of space, and determined that all but one are showing a dimming similar to Sol’s. That exception is Tau Ceti, and the mission is to go to Tau Ceti and discover why it is different.
Weir’s version of utopium, the magic substance that can provide the strength of steel, the flexibility of rubber, the hardness of diamond is made somehow from xenon, which is a noble gas, inert. Weir had to do a bit of handwaving on that one. Astrophage is the bacterium that is both screwing everything up and providing an answer. It can somehow store preposterous amounts of energy. In effect, they are tiny little batteries that store energy at near E=MC2 levels. And Tau Ceti is where the unobtainium, whatever it is that nullifies Astrophage, is to be found.
Grace is on board with two other astronauts, in an induced coma. Upon awakening when arriving at Tau Ceti, he learns his crewmates did not survive the coma.
However, he isn’t completely alone. There is another ship in the Tau Ceti system which his radar identifies as “Blip A.” It is, in fact, a large alien vessel sent by the civilization on a hot ammonia planet orbiting 40 Eiridani. There is one alien on board, a pentagonally-symmetric crab-like creature with a rocky shell that he dubs “Rocky.” Like Grace, Rocky is the sole survivor on his ship, and he, too, is there to see why Tau Ceti is seemingly immune to the Astrophage plague. Rocky, who doesn’t navigate using light, has a level of intelligence and technology equivalent to that of humanity’s but both quite different and oddly complementary.
The relationship that develops between Grace and Rocky becomes one of the deepest and most moving in all of SF. It combines the best of David Brin’s wildly imaginative aliens from his Uplift series with the emotional depth of Enemy Mine.
It is an engrossing read, one that leads to an unexpected and entirely satisfying ending.
Much as I loved the film version of The Martian, the ending struck me as ridiculous, something tarted up by Ridley Scott to wow the audience and which destroyed the suspension of disbelief that made it such a great story. Now I’m going to have the read the damn book, and see how it was supposed to end.
But I know this: if The Martian turns out half as good as Project Hail Mary, it will be the second best SF novel I’ve read this year.
Oh, yes, and a film adaptation of Project Hail Mary is in the works. Maybe they’ll call it The Tau of Grace.