by Andy Weir
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most errrr… scientifically minded. And though I loved Weir’s debut The Martian, I didn’t love Artemis. This story, however, was just so fascinating and had so much heart that I found it thoroughly compelling.
Ryland Grace is the lone survivor of an interstellar space mission imperative to saving all life on Earth. When he wakes up in a different solar system to discover all of this (slowly of course because he’s lost his memories after being in a medically induced coma for so long), he has to cope with his fears and press onward. All of humanity depends on him.
This book is told in Grace’s present and with flashbacks as he gets snippets of his memory back. He remembers his name, his job as a middle-school science teacher, and eventually how he ended up on a spaceship. All the while he is working on finding a way to complete the mission (once he remembers what it is).
“The tears ruin my vision. Lacking gravity, they coat my eyes. It’s like trying to see underwater. I wipe them off and fling them across the control room. They splatter onto the opposite wall. I don’t have time for this. I have an alien thingy to catch.”
Project Hail Mary, p. 127
Grace is next-level smart and has a phenomenal sense of humour (a familiar trend with Weir’s protagonists). His unique career path means he knows a lot about some pretty specific science. It was most interesting, for me, after he encountered new science out in space gifted by a serendipitous new friend. Some pretty complicated (at least to me lol) scientific matters were really well explained, such as how time moves in space, but I must admit my mind did boggle at a lot of it, as well. This still never took away from my enjoyment of learning alongside Grace as he remembers, experiments, and absorbs new information.
I don’t have much background in sci-fi but I was surprised by how much Weir managed to make me care about an alien lifeform. This was in part because this particular lifeform, affectionately dubbed Rocky, and its lifestyle were so inventive, and in part because Grace was such a great narrator. Even without sharing his intelligence, it was easy to empathize with the kind of emotional upheaval he was going through. Though he masks a lot of his pain by making jokes, he also lets us in enough to know he has a big heart and is having to push a lot of his anxiety and sadness down.
“Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”
Project Hail Mary, p. 157
Despite the use of aliens (which I definitely do believe in, btw), for the most part, this all felt very realistic. Some things may have pushed believability, like how quickly Grace picks up Rocky’s language (in a way they’re kind of creating their own language), but interstellar travel is also unprecedented so I’m not going to nitpick.
This book was just really, really fun. It was completely unpredictable and totally imaginative. I loved the Rocky and Beatles references, I loved the twists, and I loved the wit. I mean, is there any better setting than outer space? Just like The Martian, this will make a great movie (and the Ryan Gosling casting for Grace is spot on). I can’t wait to feel the excitement this one gave me again.
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