Review- Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
Thought-Provoking Things 2021
Looking back at the books, podcasts, and media I encountered this year that I’ve caught myself thinking about again and again…
Andy Weir’s “the Martian” was my favorite sci-fi novel of the past decade. I am thrilled to say that I just might like his latest survivalist space thriller “Project Hail Mary” even more. In the Martian, humanity was trying to save one man marooned on Mars, in Hail Mary, the tables are turned with a lone spaceman racing to save humanity.
Weir’s style is captivating. He trades the shimmering transporter and warp drive hand-waving so common in the genre for the harsh realities of relativistic space travel and the punishing environment of living in zero gravity. While the characters are dynamic, what really shines is Weir’s lateral thinking and problem-solving. His respect for the engineering process shines through making the pay-off all that more enjoyable because you don’t feel like there were any shortcuts to get there. All I know is that if I were stuck in space, Weir might be at the top of my list of people I’d want to help me survive.
So why is this book on 2021’s Thought-Provoking Things list? It isn’t just because I enjoyed it so much and want everyone to share in the enjoyment–although that definitely contributes to it–there is more going on here.
The central calamity of the book revolves around an existential threat to humanity, not something so imminent as a meteor barreling down on the planet, but something that will cause mass extinction and terrible suffering in just several decades. The comparison to our own climate crisis was unmistakable and contrasting that hypothetical response of Weir’s humanity with what is playing out in our own sparked a lot of thought.
In Weir’s world, the timing and stakes are the same as our own climate crisis, but the difference is that the source of the trouble is a tangible and distinct threat, not the byproduct of our choices and systems. Although Weir’s take may be somewhat simplified so as not to distract from the central focus of the story, it is not hard to imagine that in such a scenario, humanity could come together to move heaven and earth in response. If an alien spacecraft showed up in our atmosphere and started dumping carbon into the atmosphere to terraform our planet (this is not the plot of Hail Mary, so don’t worry, no spoilers), we would collectively sacrifice to repel the invaders.
