A Review of Project Hail Mary

This review will describe my thoughts about the book and will contain spoilers, though mainly used as a source to back up my points. Whilst I will include some explanations about the story in case you’re unfamiliar, I would recommend you to read the book first for yourself to fully understand this critique. In case you’re hesitant, I do recommend this book; it was a fun read and I struggled to put it down.

I recently finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I had a really fun time reading this book. I really struggled to put it down, and in the end I read all 750 pages¹ in two days; it definitely helped that I was on vacation and had lots of free time. To summarise my thoughts, I found it enjoyable and engrossing but far from being a literary masterpiece, with some aspects which made little sense or were severely under-developed. I found Weir’s earlier work The Martian to be all-round better.

The entire premise of the book is not the most far-fetched idea but still requires quite a level of suspension of disbelief. I appreciate that the author has tried to embed biological concepts into the disaster, such as the fact the Astrophages migrate to breed, that they have an eat-cycle, that they have predators, etc. I think this is one of Weir’s strongest suits, backing up fictional ideas and partially explaining them with real-life science and behaviour. However, the concept as a whole is still quite fantastical in nature. The idea of a bacterium which can store so much energy with zero loss, can travel at close to c, can somehow detect things such as magnetism and light even though it is a single-cell organism, can detect wavelengths of light larger than itself; all of these things are unrealistic and physically impossible, and you do have to accept them as fiction to enjoy the story. I think this is still a lot better than the stereotypical dangers that are used by most authors of space-themed creative works, so I commend the author for trying to make the problem truly unique, interesting and a bit more grounded in reality.

I found the protagonist to be interesting initially but to later get a bit repetitive as the book progressed; it felt that Weir was reusing the same goofy interactions and clichés over and over again. I would describe Grace to be somewhat spineless in his behaviour. At the beginning of the book when he is initially contacted by Stratt, he says Seems optional to me!² in regards to being asked to help the research efforts. Yet once he’s escorted by the FBI to the research centre, he almost immediately accepts the offer and seems even excited about it. So what exactly is his view/opinion then? Either you’re interested from the get-go, or you tell the person in authority to get fucked and don’t budge. It immediately gave me the impression that Grace is a pushover, and I hate characters who have a weak spine so to speak. I would’ve understood if Grace at the very least showed reluctance to cooperate but nothing of such sorts. I also ended up feeling quite disconnected from Grace especially near to the end of the book. When he found out that he didn’t sacrifice himself but was rather forced onto the mission against his will, and when he remembered the utter panic³ and terror he felt back then, he just said, What else would I do? Let 7 billion people die to spite Stratt?⁴ Maybe I’m a more vindictive man but I would definitely be tempted to say yes. You can argue that saving humanity is important⁵ but I personally don’t believe in forcing people against their will. Seeing him just come to the realisation and then immediately move on felt odd; he didn’t even consider sabotage as a serious possibility. This event spanned barely 5 pages and I think the author should have spent much more time in this section to develop the character and emotion further, because in it’s current form it falls flat. I believe if this was a real situation the person would have a much bigger moral dilemma than presented here. Separately, the complete lack of swearing throughout the book made the protagonist feel fake in a way; even accepting that Grace swears less because he’s a highschool teacher and he’s conditioned himself to do so, his whole situation in space is an extreme event which would severely mentally affect anyone. Maybe the author made this decision to make it easier for the source to be adapted into a movie with a lenient age rating,⁶ which if that’s the case I don’t agree with; one of the qualities that books have over movies is that they can tell stories with almost zero censorship of ideas or words.

I found the interaction between Grace and Rocky the alien to be enjoyable to watch unfold. I again liked how the author approached this is a more realistic manner. The alien species saw the world in a different manner compared to humans, both literally and figuratively. Unlike in most science fiction works, the alien was curious rather than hostile. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the alien race was more advanced technologically in certain areas but not others; for example, the fact that they had a space program but hadn’t discovered radiation yet. Weir was able to come up with a really interesting fictional evolution of the species which explains these things logically. I found the idea of humans and the alien species having a common ancestor to be believable from an evolutionary perspective. All of these things made the alien race feel more real compared to a lot of other science fiction works. However, the rate at which Grace and Rocky learned to communicate was far exaggerated, but I understand that otherwise the plot would be too slow and boring. A minor plot hole is that Grace was able to understand Rocky without using his translation software; very few humans have perfect pitch without which it would be almost impossible to differentiate the notes in enough detail and especially at such a quick rate. I also found the communication to be a plot-device that strongly deviated from realism. Whilst it’s theoretically possible to communicate with an alien species, such communication would be very limited, probably only to mathematics/physics/chemistry, because the likelyhood is that two completely separate species would be wildly different in their thought process. Anything which involves analysing the physical world would likely not differ, since the laws of physics apply everywhere.⁷ However, I somehow doubt that an alien would have concepts to be able to map the human thought You are very sad⁸ to something in their language. This is even more egregious with the notion that the alien species has the concept of sarcasm. There are problems with people misunderstanding sarcasm across language barriers here on Earth, let alone with a potential alien species 16Ly away. Too many things between human language and the alien language line up in this book, but equally I understand that the current plot as–written would not work without such a deep level of understanding. I guess there is a possibility of a completely different plot based around a much poorer level of inter-species communication, but I also imagine it would be less accessible to the general audience so I understand Weir’s decision here.

The situations encountered in this book were paced really well with just the right amount of downtime, but they also became a bit repetitive towards the end. Initially the events were very interesting and fun to follow, but it quickly boiled down to Oh no, there’s a problem. Oh, I know a solution. Oh, I’ve fixed the problem. There was a lot of mystery and tension at the beginning, but by the second half of the book all of the tension was gone because of Grace’s superhuman ability to do everything, be it orbital mechanics, programming, biology or mechanical engineering. Rocky was also used as a Deus ex machina; his alien materials could achieve any desired property and he could craft anything that was necessary for success. A point of note is that whilst Xenonite could do everything, it apparently couldn’t contain a bacterium inside whilst being able to contain hydrogen atoms without leaking. That’s a plot hole; it is impossible for a material to block the smaller but let something many, many magnitudes larger pass.

I enjoyed the scientific explanations. Weir actually understands orbital mechanics which is a rare quality in science fiction, and it really helped me to immerse myself in the book. The scientific explanations for the phenomena are logical and mostly correct which strongly mirrors The Martian. I particularly like how Weir, unlike many science fiction authors, doesn’t try to explain fictional elements with nonsensical real-world science. I detest when authors use existing scientific terms with defined meanings in fictional and incorrect contexts,⁹ because it just doesn’t make sense. I much prefer when the inner workings of imaginary unexplainable things are just not explained, period.

Weir did a great job with the exposition in my opinion. Rather than having dumps of text and description, he drip fed the reader knowledge and context through well crafted flashbacks. I think the author’s use of amnesia as a plot device was a good decision to make the flashbacks feel more subtle and less out of place or jarring. As the book went on I found myself increasingly interested in the flashbacks and what part of the story–on–Earth would come next. I did, however, find the characters on Earth to be severely underdeveloped, almost one-dimensional like. Weir used very stereotypical character designs and never made them feel much like real people doing things that real people do. I understand that the focus of the story was on the events Grace experienced in space, but I think the author could have fleshed out this part of the book more. Arguably, the secondary character that was fleshed out the most was Stratt, and Weir wrote her poorly. Here is a snippet of a conversation: Have a seat. I’m in the middle of— Have a seat.¹⁰ The author made this character really unlikeable, which in itself would be fine apart from the fact that she’s presented as someone who worked at the ESA yet she says something like Biologists worked out how bacteria works. Just do the same thing they did¹¹ in response to researching the Astrophage. I would expect someone as highly educated as her to know that research moves slowly, and in no way can you compare the work done by thousands of individuals over a hundred years to something being done by one person over 24 hours. There were a few other examples of her saying idiotic stuff. I can maybe accept that the author did this as a way to introduce exposition and explanation through dialogue, but it still rubbed me the wrong way; the supposed explanation is that she will do anything at any cost to achieve the goal of preventing the catastrophe, but I struggle to believe a smart person of her calibre would act in this way. The confusing thing is right at the end when she forced Grace to go on the mission, she has a little monologue effectively grandstanding that she’s somehow doing him a favour by sending him away because Earth will become a very hostile place to live in. I really can’t tell what sort of character Weir was trying to write here, but it was all over the place; he definitely didn’t do a good job of writing an unlikeable, smart character. You can say that characters and character development aren’t Weir’s strong suit.

I found the ending to be strongly underwhelming. I was expecting Grace to return back to Earth and was really looking forward to the reaction, both of Earth seeing him return from a suicide mission and of him meeting Stratt assuming she’s still alive, and how that would play out. However, none of that happened. I found him returning to rescue Rocky much too cliché, and frankly somewhat difficult to imagine. Part of the idea is that he didn’t really have friends back on Earth so it wasn’t a big loss to him, but even as someone who doesn’t socialise much myself, I still would never think of completely abandoning Earth; ignoring social contact, there are still lots of other fun things to do on this planet and I really struggle to believe a man would want to never experience any of this ever again. The ending sequence is another plot hole. It mentions that Sol has returned to it’s previous brightness, hence suggesting that humanity got the message and managed to fix the Astrophage problem. The problem with this ending is that it doesn’t make sense. Assuming that the Astrophages were taken care off, the mass that has already been consumed from Sol wouldn’t magically return; Sol would remain at a reduced power output forever because it’s not actively consuming any matter. Hence, this entire mission was actually flawed from the start because no matter the outcome humanity would have needed to learn to survive in the new conditions.

This book does present a contrast to author’s earlier work, The Martian, in which everything aside from the very opening scene is realistic and physically possible, and I have to say I personally prefer the realistic approach. Weir’s earlier work had more hard–science fiction and it made the story much more believable and engaging. However, despite this novel’s numerous flaws, I did have a really fun time reading it and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction. I think it’s quite accessible for the average reader, the plot isn’t particularly complex, the prose is somewhat simplistic and easy to read, the book is full of clichés which is what the general audience likes, it’s engrossing and a page turner. I can definitely see this book being adapted into a successful high production film.