Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir
Recommended Ages: 13+

Ryland Grace wakes up in a weird, mechanized hospital with no memory of how he got there. In the neighboring beds are two dead bodies. To start, he can't even remember his name. He applies a little science and math – things he's evidently good at – to figure out that he's on a spaceship traveling at high speed, far from Earth. And he's been put in a medically induced coma to pass the time before arriving ... where? And for sake's sake, why?

The pieces slowly fall into place. Grace is a sometime middle school science teacher who, before he was that, wrote a major paper in which he rudely told off the entire scientific community and declared that alien life didn't have to be water-based. Then a threat to all life on earth pops up – little alien microbes that are stealing energy from the sun. Given enough time, their effect on the sun will cool the earth to the point where crops will fail and billions of people will die. Because of the strangeness of these bitty bugs, which Grace dubs Astrophage, that rude paper of his suddenly becomes very relevant, and – well, to make a long story short, he finds himself second in command of a mission to save the planet that has a blank check from every country on Earth. A mission from which there can be no return.

They've spotted similar issues of stars going dim all over the galaxy – and exactly one star, Tau Ceti, that should be dimming but isn't. So that's where the starship Hail Mary has to go, powered by brand-new technology (such as a propulsion system that uses Astrophage for fuel – I don't know, read the book for more details). But only a tiny minority of would-be astronauts can survive the trip, thanks to a rare gene that gives them a better-than-even chance of surviving years in a medical coma. And though he wasn't supposed to be one of those astronauts – how he got on the ship at all is the very last memory to come back – Grace is, fortunately or otherwise, the only crew member who actually woke up. The fate of humanity depends entirely on him. He isn't alone for long, however. Almost as soon as he arrives in Tau Ceti orbit, he encounters a ship from Epsilon Eridani that has come for the same reason. Like (gulp) first contact with aliens and whatnot.

So much for the blow-by-blow synopsis. It's generalities from here, so you don't get bored and go read something else, or so I don't spoil the whole book for you. Grace and Rocky, the sole Eridian to survive his planet's mission to discover what makes Tau Ceti special and how to use it to save his world, hit it off and quickly form a touching friendship, despite Rocky being the least anthropomorphic alien you've ever met in sci-fi. What sets him apart from humankind? A better question would be, what doesn't? Despite the challenges of communicating and working together – such as mutually unpronounceable languages and life-support environments that would almost instantly kill each other if they went over for a visit – they form a highly productive partnership and get right to work cracking the problem of how to save their worlds from the Astrophage. Whenever everything seems to be going well for a moment, a disastrous setback almost destroys all hope. And then, like the STEM heroes they are, they fight back with science, tech, engineering and math. Big time.

It's a novel teeming with thought-provoking speculative concepts, mind-expanding scientific facts, heartstring-tugging emotions, excitement, humor and suspense. It's written like a science fiction twist on Raymond Chandler's recipe for a hardboiled detective story: whenever the plot stalls, bring in a guy with a gun. Only in this genre, the "guy with a gun" is just space with its endlessly creative ways to kill you, your whole family, and the planet you rode in on. It has some characters, most of them only seen in flashbacks, whom you won't quickly forget, such as the all-powerful Ms. Stratt (Project H.M.'s first-in-command), and a devastating twist toward the end ... and another ... and another ... some of which you'll start to anticipate (I remember counting the paragraphs until one particular penny dropped) while some will keep you guessing until the end. It's good stuff. It definitely makes me keen to see what Hollywood does with it.

I went in search of this book after I saw a trailer for the (at this writing) upcoming film adaptation, featuring Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. It may be unwise to judge such things from a film trailer, but it looks like the movie might preserve some of the non-sequential narrative structure of the book. Andy Weir is also the author of the fantastic novel The Martian, previously made into a terrific movie starring Matt Damon, and a heist-on-the-moon novel titled Artemis, which I haven't read. Yet. His short stories/novellas include The Egg and James Moriarty, Consulting Criminal. From the two works of his that I've read, I gather that he's a highly intelligent guy who does tons of research and, at the same time, doesn't lack a popular touch. These are, bottom line, fun books to read.