Project Hail Mary

I read this because the movie came out, and I wanted to read the book before I watched the movie (I did the same thing with Shogun a couple years ago). I finished the book at 1:00 p.m. one afternoon, and I was watching the movie at 2:30.

The book is very good. It’s the story of a middle school science teacher who wakes from a coma and finds himself on a spaceship with no idea how or why he got there. Through a series of flashbacks, he learns that the sun is being drained by a new, parasitic lifeform that has been systematically infecting stars throughout the galaxy. One star remains unaffected, so he was part of a mission to travel to that star and find out why, in an attempt to return that knowledge to Earth and save humanity.

Problem: the trip to the star takes 14 years. And there’s only enough fuel for a one-way trip.

Also, an alien shows up.

The book is the story of how this guy figures out his circumstances, learns to communicate with an alien, and makes use of what might be his final years of existence. It’s a lot like The Martian in the sense that it’s about one guy, abandoned in the middle of nowhere, trying to survive. And it has a lot of the same vibes to it.

(Note: I never read the book The Martian. I only saw the movie.)

Unlike The Martian, there’s the alien. That’s the one part of the book that’s not strictly “hard” science fiction. But it’s a nice story that highlights the commonalities that any sentient species would have with each other, and how we can use that to communicate with and understand each other. Some of how the main character and the alien figure each other out gets a little far-fetched… but we’re talking about aliens, so we already crossed the line of believability a ways back.

However, the movie was better. I don’t say that lightly, because it’s rarely true, but the movie was an absolute triumph. There was a lot of science in the book that the movie found some great ways to summarize understandably, and Ryan Gosling gave a fantastic acting performance. (The cinematography of the movie was breathtaking. It will kill at the technical Oscars next year.)

Regardless of those quibbles, it’s a great book.

Book Data

Author

Andy Weir

Year

2021

Pages

496

Acquired

Not recorded

Open Library

OL21745884W

Wikipedia

Project_Hail_Mary

• I have read this book. According to my records, I completed it on April 4, 2026.
• I own (or have license to) an electronic copy of this book.