Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

If you like a lot of science and math in your science fiction novels, Andy Weir is just the SF author for you. And that means that you will almost certainly love Weir’s latest novel, Project Hail Mary, because there are equally heavy doses of both science and math in this one. Heck, Project Hail Mary even includes a full-page illustration of the components of the spaceship in “thrust configuration,” along with another full-page illustration explaining how the ship transforms into centrifuge mode and what happens after it does that. But as much as I enjoy science and math in science fiction novels (if maybe not quite as much as Weir includes here), what I really enjoy in them is human contact with a space alien culture. And, I’m happy to tell you that if reading about alien-contact is as high on your list of favorite reading experiences as it is on mine, you are in for a treat. 

The story opens when Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, wakes up to a robotic voice asking him “What’s two plus two?” over and over again. Grace has no idea who he is, where he is, or why the irritating robot-voice won’t just shut up and let him go back to sleep. Maybe, though, his confusion will temporarily be a good thing because it turns out that Grace (as he eventually figures out) is the lone survivor of a three-person crew launched from Earth toward a distant star years earlier to gather the information that hopefully can be used to save humanity from its impending doom. That’s bad enough, but adding to the larger problem is the fact that Grace is the least qualified of the three scientists sent on the mission — and that even the better qualified scientists who died would have found the job near impossible on their own. 

The good news is that maybe he won’t have to do it all alone, after all, because he’s not the only one in the area trying to figure out why his home planet is dying. "Rocky" is there, too. 

Bottom Line: Project Hail Mary is a book about what makes us human, with all of our strengths and weaknesses on display, but it is also a heartwarming story about one of the deepest, if least likely, friendships imaginable. Main character Ryland Grace is a flawed individual who surprises even himself by what he is willing to do for others even though he didn't exactly volunteered for the mission he wakes up to. The book is perhaps a bit overlong, and it can sometimes get a little bogged down by the math and science at its heart, but it is one that readers are going to remember. Next, I would love to read a novel about what was happening back on Earth during the 26 years it took to get answers back to scientists there.

Andy Weir