Signal Watch Reads: Project Hail Mary

Author:  Andy Weir

Audiobook read by:  Ray Porter

I read The Martian by Andy Weir a bit before the movie was released, and thoroughly enjoyed the Ridley Scott/ Matt Damon film that followed.  I skipped Artemis, and somehow just sort of missed that Project Hail Mary had been released until the movie trailer dropped and saw that the film was based on a book by Andy Weir.  

Jamie, who loved the The Martian, picked up Project Hail Mary, and plowed through it in a couple of days, recommending the novel.  Also, I am now listening to audiobooks in one ear while I walk Emmylou in the mornings before work, and this seemed like a good one to listen to after The Godfather.

There's a certain sameness to Project Hail Mary that you'll feel if you read The Martian, and while that's certainly the author's voice coming in strong, it almost feels like the same character from The Martian at times.  And I suspect that was a return to form after Artemis, which had a female lead and was a bit more space-adventurey from what I heard, didn't get the same good notices as Weir's freshman effort.  

But, like a band whose first record you liked, it's not all bad to get that third album and hear that the band was just finding their way on the sophomore effort, and now they're back in their groove.  

An astronaut awakens on a craft headed to a nearby star - his memory is wiped and the other two crew members are dead.  As he stumbles about, pieces of memory come back to him.

Earth had a problem - the sun was fading.  If a solution isn't found, the planet will drop into an ice age that will kill a whole lot of life on Earth.  

SPOILERS

I really liked Project Hail Mary.  I don't know that it will be taken for great literature, but it certainly makes for an interesting page turner of a read.  Slowly revealing what happened on Earth, how middle-school science teacher Ryland Grace winds up as one of three astronauts sent to save the Sun/ our Solar System is a great engine to propel the story, pushing forward the sturdy chassis of the story of the actual work done to save the planet and teamwork needed to get there.

Once again, Weir is working in the realm of math, engineering and science in plausibly-realistic conditions, this time interjected with more science-fiction than the hard science of The Martian.  The movie deals in the discovery of first the microscopic alien Astrophage which the novel goes to great lengths to make possible as a sun-eating, star-faring species with astounding properties.  The second is the meeting of and co-habitating with an alien life form very unlike humans due to the extreme conditions of that alien's homeworld.  The alien has left it's homeworld to travel to the same location, also seeking why *this* star is not impacted by Astrophage.

It's all made to read as plausible, and that's one of the great pleasures of Weir's work.  It doesn't hand-wave warp drives and other technology as science-fiction will do when the primary concern is the sociological implications of hyper-science.  Instead, Weir ponders and extrapolates, letting his science fiction have terrific internal logic - how If X = Y, then Y + Z = Q.  The internal logic hits all the right buttons and makes the science-fiction sing and work in the best ways.  

Even as Weir moves into the realm of speculative fiction, he doesn't abuse the privilege of world building with his Eridian pal Rocky.  I don't know if "xenobiologist" is a real job, but he does seem to have worked with someone to consider what sort of being could possibly evolve in an environment we'd consider hostile and out of our Goldilocks Zone. I have no idea if any of it's feasible, but I'll go with "sure, why not?".  I may be more skeptical of Astrophage than I am of Eridians, but it's at least interesting.  

The science is not so out there that it's very hard to follow (at least with a basic Biology 101 class taken 30 years ago at a public university).  And, in fact, you can somewhat anticipate some of the problems and solutions as you play along at home - which  I consider a feature, not a bug, but it does feel like a PhD might have anticipated some of the science or issues.  But of that, I think I pre-guessed maybe 3 things out of over 100.  I am not a science human.

What's odd is that Weir doesn't really fully explore fairly basic ideas in his mad race to the finish, completely turning his attention to science problems and solutions.  But not to character.

Project Hail Mary is a whole book about a guy recalling memories, but not once is there a mention of *why* Grace became a scientist.  There's no note in a book about a man sent to space to die, essentially, about his parents, siblings, etc... even co-workers.   Nor is there mention if Grace worries about them or they him.  

There's no mention of regrets about a romance unpursued or even feelings about his colleagues other than "he was great" or "she was a pain".  It's an oddly asexual book, the only discussion of sex (between humans) as something distasteful and treated as a punchline.  We don't even really know what Grace likes or dislikes as a person who presumably eats, drinks, watches movies, listens to music, etc... 

One can imagine a chapter where Rocky and Grace share music - but that is never considered for a minute.

Frankly, by the time we rounded the last corner, it almost felt... artificial.  The book wants to make the point that Grace's growth is embracing the mission and taking risks when he doesn't know he doesn't normally take risks.  His cowardice in his prior life was so widespread, that his fear of rejection meant  that he had no friends or lovers.  You can't just handwave and say how few friends he had as the book does - he did have a *normal* life at one point, and the book is not explicit about any neurodivergence that would at least cover his tracks.  

I'm not sure this was the most interesting choice, but I also don't want to get into "this is bad because it's not what I would have done" territory.  But I wanted an explanation *why* he was afraid, or why it was a revelation to him when Stratt broke the news.  

But in the end, while the innate heroism and ingenuity of humanity is what drives both this book and The Martian,  this is not a character-driven novel.  Ryland Grace is a non-controversial, amiable voice to spend time with more than a character.  

And I'm afraid some of that extends to Rocky, one of three major characters/ our alien.  Who never feels... alien.  Which is sort of the point, in the end.  But he's treated more like someone from a different country, not someone from a whole other world.

While Grace's inner-monologue is amusing, the lack of personal scope just took me out of the story a bit.  And made me ask:  why does our hero want to stay on Earth so badly?  For what?  Not even a pet hamster he had to worry about leaving behind.  Just the general worry about "humanity will die" which is abstracted to the point of  bleak, cartoonish horror*.

That focus on just the topic at hand makes the book almost read like YA fiction for boys (and there's a reason boys' fantasy characters are often orphans and must go it alone).  In the end, it felt like it was to make sure the reader was left with no concerns for any particular person other than Grace.  I don't know if Weir and his editors decided it was too depressing or would make the book drag to consider Grace's inner life - but it's what keeps the book at a level of "fun, quick read" rather than really pushing the boundaries and being something greater.

This is a lot of ink spilled over what doesn't work for me, but I want to be clear - it's a good read and I recommend Project Hail Mary.  It was certainly the kind of book I thought about a lot while I wasn't listening to it, and eagerly picked it up again each morning or while driving.

The build and design of the ship, the problem solving... all feels maybe a bit like listening to someone describe their job, but in the most entertaining way.

I guess I want Weir to try to flex his muscles a bit more, but I do recall some awkward interpersonal stuff in the novel of The Martian, and heard criticism of some of his portrayals in Artemis.  So maybe he needs another book or three under his belt before we get the great American novel out of Weir.

 Notes on the audiobook adaptation:

None, really.   A+ performance as usual by Ray Porter, and the use of digital synth sounds for Rocky - and the slow evolution of those sounds was terrific.  Porter always manages to switch to characters, including females with an accent, without ever sounding... weird.  It's a real trick.  But he also performs brilliantly as Grace.

* until we get Stratt's late-entry speech about fighting over resources.  Which, yeah, I guess maybe you need a BA in History to intuit that (again, there's my undergrad degree rearing its head!), but I think a general notion of agriculture and geography would clue one in to the ideas presented.  And, yeah, earlier in the book I did find it strange there were NOT parallel efforts on Earth to halt the inevitable.  Ecological collapse during nuclear winter/ new ice ages is not a new idea.