Review of Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary”

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[Spoiler Alert]
I’m not very impressed because it is yet another flaunting of the author’s science/tech knowledge with a very similar story arc to Weir’s earlier book “The Martian”. The pattern is a series of unlikely crisis resolving in to a miracle happy ending. To be fair, many pop science fiction and fantasy stories follow this pattern e.g. Harry Potter and Star Wars.
At least those stories didn’t take themselves so seriously. Andy Weir’s modus operandi is to assume the reader is kin to his total nerdy-ness and bonds with him/her via arcane science and technology terms.

The protagonist in “Project Hail Mary” is the kind of person most normal people would avoid at a cocktail party. He plays the role of a reluctant martyr sent off to sacrifice himself in order to save humanity and thrives in the adulation of his peers. With a name like “Dr. Grace” he is clearly appropriating Christian orthodoxy to evoke the reader’s empathy. Dr. Grace even has his moment of redemption towards the end when he voluntarily sends himself on an assumed suicide mission which, of course, isn’t a suicide mission because he has earned a whole new cadre of adoring fans on an alien planet that come to his rescue.

Dr. Grace isn’t perfect of course but the short falls in his skillset are made up by an alien engineer that puts all human engineers to shame. The message here is, If you are a human engineer, no matter how good you are, you will never be alien good so give up now.

Lastly, In case the reader has any doubt about the echelon of science fiction writing that Andy Weir sees himself in, he guides the reader with a direct reference in the line: “The Hail Mary has always looked like something out of a Heinlein novel.” (my emphasis)

To paraphrase someone else’s observation “I’ve read Heinlein and you’re no Robert Heinlein”.