Book Review - Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: May 4th, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 496 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
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Ryland Grace is on a suicide mission. He has been sent to the far reaches of space to find a solution to the Petrova Problem, a single-celled extraterrestrial life form named Astrophage that is feeding off the sun. The Astrophage is killing the sun and that will result in the death of all life on Earth. The Earth's only hope is the distant star Tau Ceti. Despite living amongst a cluster of infected stars it somehow is unaffected by the Astrophage. If Ryland can find out why Tau Ceti is unaffected then perhaps there is a hope for Earth. He and two other scientists have been sent on this one way mission and are Earth's only hope, they are a Hail Mary. The problem is when he awakes from the voyage he is suffering from amnesia and his two crewmates are dead, nothing but desiccated husks. He has no idea who he is, where he is, or what he's supposed to be doing. His memory slowly starts to return but he can't quite reconcile that he somehow went from being a teacher to being an astronaut who still doesn't remember his own name. Before Ryland became a teacher he wrote a research paper about extraterrestrial life that could exist without water. He was laughed out of academia and yet that is exactly what Astrophage is. Before he knows what's happening he's one of the top people in the Petrova Taskforce. And yet this remembered information isn't going to help him when his ship is barreling towards an unknown sun. He is barely able to keep himself alive so how is he supposed to save humanity? The plus side, he's remembered his name. And he might have just discovered intelligent alien life! Because there's another ship out there. Another ship with only one survivor. Another ship that was sent to save it's planet because it too is at the mercy of Astropphage. Maybe together they can save two worlds and make their deaths mean something?
Aside from the amnesia, this has a fairly similar setup to The Martian; man, alone, stuck in space with no way home. So I figured it would go along similar lines. Man would, through his ingenuity, find out how to survive his situation. There might be potatoes. And then it didn't because aliens. That's right folks, Andy Weir wrote about freakin' aliens and I loved it! Yes, he occasionally falls into the trap of being almost too technical with his science, which he somehow avoided in The Martian, and here I would zone out for a minute or two, but then Rocky. Every flaw this book has, and there aren't many, are solved by, but then Rocky. I don't know if I've ever felt such genuine love for a character in my entire life. I realize that some people actually love E.T. for inexplicable reasons, but if they felt for that extraterrestrial what I feel for Rocky, I can kind of understand. I mean just the feeling, in no way can I understand you and your unholy love of that Spielberg monstrosity. My love for Rocky was pure, I wanted to take care of him and make sure nothing bad ever happened to him. Rocky has this childlike wonder, this enthusiasm for life, an insatiable yearning to understand. He balances the more dour and pragmatic Ryland and spurs him on. The two of them become a dynamic duo. They show that problem solving works so much better with two than one. I honestly don't know what this book would have been without Rocky. He is so integral to everything. Not just the plot, but the whole feeling of the book. Oddly enough I think this book hits even stronger because it was released during the Pandemic. Earth is fucked and somewhere, out there, is a friend who can help. Someone who completes you. Someone you never expected. Rocky's optimism and ingenuity is the can-do attitude that every single one of us needed mainlined into out veins after such a long struggle. We all needed Rocky and thank the powers that be that Andy Weir gave him to us.
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