Modern Monday - Project Hail Mary: A Review

Very rarely have I ever encountered a book that makes me say, "I am privileged to have been alive at the time this book was written," but I finished just such a book recently: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

Weir, of course, is the man who brought us The Martian, the book that launched his career and became a movie starring Matt Damon. His second novel, Artemis, was good, but not nearly as good as The Martian, and many in the sci fi community felt he had suffered a sophomore slump.

Well, not so. Weir's third novel is a whopper! It's so amazing that I'm willing to name it the winner of the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for next year. It's an amazing yarn written in the fine, stylistic tradition of Arthur C. Clarke. And yes, it uses some old, cliche plot structures, but they're put together in a new and brilliant way.

One of those cliches is the old, "Main character wakes up with no memory," trope. This happens to Hail Mary's main character, Ryland Grace, who not only awakens with no knowledge of who he is, but does so on board a spaceship. There were two other passengers with him on board, both of which are now corpses. He must work out where he is, who he is, and what he's doing there.

Eventually, his memory returns in flashes which, conveniently, paint the background story of how he got there, and what's going on. Earth is being threatened by an alien microorganism. Or rather, the Sun is being threatened. Earth just happens to be collateral damage of this attack.

[A few spoilers are necessary, so reader be warned.] The Sun is being assaulted by an interstellar-travelling microorganism dubbed "astrophage," which feeds off the Sun's energy, goes to Venus to breed, and then returns to the Sun to start the cycle all over again. This breeding is so prolific that it is causing the Sun to dim and cool by 10%, and this will result in a new, catastrophic ice age, unless humanity does something drastic to solve it. Similar dimming in other nearby stars reveals that Sol is not alone in this attack. All the nearby stars which are within 8 light-years of one another are affected - except for one, Tau Ceti. Grace realizes that he's part of the emergency mission to go to Tau Ceti to determine why that star alone isn't affected, derive a cure for Sol based upon whatever that reason is, and bring it home.

The new propulsion system is incredible: the astrophage itself! The microorganism holds a vast amount of energy! Because it travels through space by emission of light, breeding it copiously and harnessing its phenominal propulsion power means that a new class of starship could be built using astrophage as the fuel and the engines! The "Hail Mary" (the name of the ship) was able to accelerate towards Tau Ceti at 1.5 G for years, then turn about and decelerate at 1.5 G for a few years more. 13 years Earth-time, three years ship-time.

One caveat: due to lack of food and fuel, it is regarded as a one-way mission; a desperate suicidal run. And Grace eventually remembers that he didn't go willingly. Because he was one of the few remaining candidates with a genetic trait which allowed him to survive prolonged coma stasis, he was kidnapped, drugged, and forced onto the ship!

And now all humanity depends on him.

Grace arrives at Tau Ceti and finds.... No, I can't tell you. That's just one spoiler too many.

Some of the harshest criticisms have come from the review in the Washington Post by Mary Robinette Kowal, a science fiction writer who is the best of the best, and knows how to write about astronauts better than anyone. She raises a few questions which I will answer. "Grace wasn't initially supposed to go on the mission," she points out, "so why do they have his name on the mission patch?" Because the mission commander, an unscrupulous bitch named Eva Stratt, made up her mind weeks in advance that Grace was going, regardless of what he decided. She threw his name on the mission patch so that the other two scientists aboard wouldn't know that Grace went unwillingly. I find this rather obvious, and am surprised Kowal missed it.

Kowal is particularly miffed at some blatant misogyny within the text. She quotes the following exchange between Stratt and Grace:

“My guidelines were that all candidates must be heterosexual men,” Stratt says.

“Why not all heterosexual women?” Grace asks.

Stratt: “The vast majority of scientists and trained astronaut candidates are men. It’s the world we live in. Don’t like it? Encourage your female students to get into STEM. I’m not here to enact social equality. I’m here to do whatever’s necessary to save humanity.”

Kowal hates that this is present, and says, "There is no reason for this to be in the book." I disagree. The plot point had already been established that only those candidates with the genetic trait of being able to withstand prolonged coma could go, meaning that only the smallest percentage of the smallest percentage could go - and that only of the qualified candidates! The fact that the vast majority of what was left was all men was pragmatism on her part, and realism on Weir's. Weir is also showcasing Stratt to be an out-and-out villain if that means having humanity survive. It's not pretty, but there are few other ways to showcase Stratt's utter ruthlessness. The fact that we disagree with it is exactly the point Weir is trying to make. Again, I'm surprised Kowal missed this.

Kowal also takes issue with Grace defaulting to male-centric pronouns in a situation where he encounters a new form of alien life. She thinks a 21st century teacher should know better. True. But Grace is depicted as a grade-school teacher who doesn't even swear, and repeatedly shows himself to be very old fashioned and craven. What else could he do but default to conservative pronouns? I understand why Kowal is disappointed. I even agree with her. But breaking character to be PC has ruined many a story. Weir's depiction is passable as is. Not perfect, but passable.

Kowal insists Weir's novel could be better. She's right. Those points I agree with her on are rather plain. The "genetic trait" regarding induced comas is slap-dash in terms of scientific feasibility. It's a forced plot-point obviously meant to force Grace onto the ship. The Hail-Mary's shipboard computer should have an A.I. which is far more advanced, possibly even a sentient additional character. Every space mission has checklists for everything, and these checklists are notably absent on board the Hail Mary. And we're left wondering why Grace must do spacewalks when he has a perfectly good hull robot to use.

But, of course, every story could be better. For a layperson like Weir to have crammed so much science into his novel is truly monumental, and only someone of Kowal's amazing ability could have realistically caught such oversights. For the rest of us, Weir's novel is better than The Martian, and one of the truly great science fiction novels of this or any age.

I give this one an enthusiastic five out of five stars!

Expect the movie. It's inevitable.

Eric

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