What a phenomenal book! A must-have, must-read, light sci-fi gem filled with humor and relatable moments. It’s an excellent choice for anyone looking to step into the sci-fi genre without wading through the jargon-heavy, philosophy-laden, math-centric texts that dominate many popular sci-fi series.
I had an absolute blast reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Grace, the protagonist, is somewhat relatable (though at times, the writing or plot makes him come across as less likable or harder to connect with, well, a lot of the time). Rocky, the co-protagonist introduced later, is a delightful and strangely relatable creature. Their friendship is heartwarming, fun, and occasionally tear-jerking. The scientific aspects of the book are accessible, even when I didn’t fully grasp them, they were at least understandable, unlike some dense sci-fi that lulls me to sleep after a couple of paragraphs, looking at you Asimov.
The worldbuilding is a major highlight. The depiction of a handful of decision-makers globally uniting to save humanity, while corporate executives try to sue over sending movies and books into space, felt achingly real. Andy Weir also does an admirable job crafting an alien culture, a notoriously difficult feat in fiction.
But I’m not here just to sing praises. I’m here to grumble. While I thoroughly enjoyed the book and wholeheartedly recommend it to both sci-fi fans and skeptics, I’ve got bones to pick.
Let’s talk convenience. Convenience pervades the entire book. At times, it feels as though Grace is a “chosen one,” or as if I’ve stumbled into fantasy, where Grace is equipped with a +100 luck stat. Sure, Grace himself would argue that being drugged and forced into a long-term suicide mission was far from lucky, but plot-wise, everything conspires to ensure Grace is the one on that ship. He’s the one to find the signal. He’s the one to figure everything out. And somehow, this high school teacher not only pilots a spaceship but also excels at biology, fixes instruments, and solves every problem with ease, ok, some are a bit difficult even for him, but similarly to Doctor House, Grace always has an epiphany at the end of each episode. Apparently, training astronauts is overrated, we should just send teachers into space and trust they’ll figure it out.
It’s not as if Andy Weir sets Grace up as a genius. He’s portrayed as an average scientist who left the field years ago, now working as a middle school teacher. Yet he retains every ounce of expertise, despite spending his days grading papers and teaching children. Seems like he even learns new fields of science on the fly, all while balancing the demands of teaching. What a prodigy! If Weir had explicitly labeled Grace a genius, I might have bought it. But the narrative paints him as an ordinary scientist, certainly smarter than the average human, for sure way smarter than me, but still an average scientist, making his miraculous competence feel jarring
And then there’s the language issue. Grace, this everyman-turned-superman, learns an alien language in mere weeks, becoming essentially fluent. For me, this was the biggest flaw. Come on! A middle-aged man mastering a completely foreign language in a fraction of the time it would take to learn a human language? It’s just absurd. With that pace, the American Grace that knows only English could become fluent in Japanese in just a few days! I understand the need to streamline the narrative, prolonged scenes of painstaking translation would have been tedious, but there had to be a way to show the difficulty of communication. Instead, it’s glossed over. After the “translator” is built, Grace and Rocky seem to converse effortlessly, even during high-stress action scenes when using a computer is impossible, they are portrayed as talking to each other without any difficult, as soon as Andy Weir stops writing about the translator Grace created, no time is lost during their conversation, everything happens in real time. It’s jarring.
And how about the supporting characters? The character roster doesn’t fare much better. The story’s only well-developed characters are Grace and Rocky. Every other human feels like a walking cultural stereotype. It’s as if I’m watching an old 1980s movie where the “normal” American protagonist interacts with cartoonish caricatures of other nationalities. Want a tip, Andy Weir and every other author out there? Create your foreign characters as regular people first, imagine they are a “normal” human just like your protagonist, then, after you made them as normal humans, you can layer in their cultural identities. Otherwise, you end up with shallow, cringe-worthy depictions that pull readers out of the story. Thankfully, most of the book focuses on Grace and Rocky, every detour into Grace’s past interactions with others was difficult to endure.
We also have a dead bodies plot hole! Another oddity is the handling of the dead crewmates. In the book’s first part, Grace has visceral, emotional reactions to their lifeless bodies, crying and feeling deeply connected to them despite his memory loss. Yet when their backstory unfolds, there’s no substantial connection to justify these feelings. They were barely acquaintances, spending a few months together before the mission. It feels like Weir initially intended for them to share years of camaraderie but abandoned the idea midway. Grace’s intense grief just doesn’t make sense in the final narrative, they literally had zero time together during the mission, and spent just a few weeks, perhaps a couple of months in a same building before it. Makes no sense, Andy Weir could have cut some pages depicting Grace crying over them and it would be the same.
Well, let’s end this. The book has other smaller flaws. Some readers dislike even the minimal math involved. And the supporting cast was painful to read. But despite all this, it’s a very good book, a great mix of humor, science, and adventure. And I’d love to have a smaller publication depicting the aftermath on Earth.
Leave a Reply