Project Hail Mary

Author: Andy Weir

Published May 4 2021 by Ballantine Books

Such a great hook. A man wakes up from a coma on a spaceship with amnesia, two dead crewmen and a vital mission to save humanity that he can’t remember.

A real easy read that pushes you to keep reading well past your bed time.

The book doesn’t so much as ask you to suspend your disbelief, but instead asks to suspend your comprehension of science. The story is filled with interesting scientific facts, feats and experiments. Unless you’re well versed in science, it’s easier to just roll with it. But it is tailored in a way that doesn’t make you feel stupid. On the contrary, it feels enough to get the gist and more importantly, gives credibility and relatability to our main character.

The story flips between what our hero is doing in the present, solving the mystery of who he is and why he is in a space shuttle moving through space, and him processing memories that are flooding back to him giving context to his mission.

It doesn’t take long for our main character to be fleshed out, and much of his drama centres around puzzles needing to be solved around the ship. As the mission becomes clearer the science becomes more complex and more desperate, and the stakes more severe.

The fascination, for me at least, was the back story. As the global threat takes shape the world reacts in a desperate way that forces a unity across different nations. The problem splinters into different areas: Investigation to the planetary threat, the solution that resides in outer-space and the more immediate concern to the danger ravaging the Earth.

I’m being purposefully vague as the real treat of the book is how it unravels. I haven’t read a book this quick for quite a while. I’d consume multiple chapters in a sitting but push through for another chapter or two because I just needed to know what happens next.

I highly recommend you read this book, if only so we can talk about it more.

Evin Bryant 01/11/2023