I really enjoyed the film adaptation of The Martian, so much so that I think it may have over-written my assessment of the novel. I know I read it, and i have vague memories of enjoying it, but those are now called into question by my experience reading Project Hail Mary.
I pause here to say that if you are the person who recommended this book to me, please stop reading here. I promise I hold no ill will, and I wouldn’t want our difference of opinion to drive a wedge between us.
Project Hail Mary reminds of nothing so much as Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s film criticism. You know how he’ll always pop up on social media after a sci-fi movie comes out with his little corrections about how astrophysics actually works? You know how it always feels like the antithesis of actual art criticism? Andy Weir writes as though he expects his readers to be just waiting to nail him on a mistaken application of science. He painstakingly elaborates every action of his characters, giving endless care to the scientific principles and the math involved. But the art and the heart get lost.
This novel focuses on Dr. Ryland Grace, who wakes up from a coma on a spaceship far, far from earth with no memory of how he got there or what he is meant to do. He slowly pieces together his memory and his mission, figuring our that he is the only man capable of saving Earth from a creature that is *spoiler alert* draining the sun’s energy.
It’s a classic set-up for a sci-fi novel, but the problems begin with Ryland’s characterization. Weir writes in the first-person, meaning the reader is hearing from Ryland nearly all of the time. Ryland left the world of academia behind because no one believed in his ideas, and somehow decided the best use of his expensive education was to become a middle school science teacher. Which is bad enough, except he talks like a middle school science teacher for the duration of the book, right down to his avoidance of cursing using adolescent replacements.
The book proceeds around parallel tracks. As Ryland nears his destination he conducts experiments in his spaceship lab, encountering many setbacks that he has to counter using his limited resources. He narrates these to the audience in the teacher voice, which really gets old. Meanwhile, his memories of the lead-up to the mission fill in the backstory for the reader. Unfortunately, this involves a lot of cringe-worthy, exposition-heavy dialogue and a bunch of paper-thin characters.
The thing about Project Hail Mary is that when a book is written this badly, the mechanical nature of the plot structure is glaringly obvious. The repetitive pattern of problem arising, solutions proposed, best option selected and implemented gets extremely tedious. Now, I am not scientifically-inclined, so perhaps I just have less tolerance for this kind of thing than others, but if the the prospect of reading about someone doing math doesn’t set your hair on fire, you might just find yourself agreeing with me.
Like The Martian, Project Hail Mary has been turned into a film. Ryan Gosling with be playing Dr. Grace in a movie premiering next spring. With someone else writing the dialogue, I think it has a chance.