[Review] Project Hail Mary

Was looking for my next audiobook and came across this, and went in blind, only knowing I'd vaguely heard of it, somewhere. The premise goes like this – Amateur astronomers pick up on the fact that the sun is getting dimmer, and has been for some time. And this is accelerating.

The impact of this will be catastrophic – crops failing, ecosystems getting wiped out. Extinctions. Eventually, the death of most of the human race.

Usually, in disaster fiction, there's this phase of the story where the hero tries to warn everyone, but the world won't listen, so it's on them to act. PHM skips all that… no time, we've got to focus on the plan. But what plan is that?

This is how the author hooks you: We don't know, and neither does the hero.

He wakes up alone, in space, with severe memory loss. It's up to him to piece together who he is, and why he's here. It's a great way to frame the story, adding a layer of complexity and challenge to everything. The protagonist's job is hard, but it's kind of abstract – billions of people, years in the future depend on him. So we aren't really rooting for them, we're rooting for the guy who wakes up naked and scared, being prodded by a medical robot, who realizes he's trapped in space and the rest of the crew is dead. He's desprately trying to figure out his purpose and how he can get home.

So anyway, how's the book? It's good. I want to say, surprisingly good.
I'll get into why that's a surprise, in a second. I wanna focus on the positive first.

The basics of the disaster… what causes it, how they investigate, and how they try to fix it… it's all good, hard sci-fi. There weren't any "clunk" moments where the science sounded too bullshit or handwavey. There's a lot of real-world instrumentation and lab gear, a level of tech that feels 20th century… bulky space suits and tethers, food in tubes, etc.

There's a ship computer that responds to the protagonist, but only at a basic level. 10 years ago, it might have seemed a little star trek. But now… the way it fails to understand a lot of his questions or requests, or is unhelpful, feels comparable to primitive 2020's AI.

The memory loss… at first I wondered if it was just a gimmick, but we come to understand there's a reason for it, and it's built into the storyline. I think it's the thing that pushed the story over the edge from "ok" to "we gotta make this into a movie".

At this point I gotta wander into one potential spoiler. Not the ending or anything, just a key plot point.

After a while, our hero meets Rocky… his nickname for the captain of another ship he comes across, near the area he's investigating. Rocky is an alien, a sorta big-dog sized spider creature made of stone-like organic material

We're sort of stuck with just these 2 characters for 90% of the book, so their personalities and relationship are important. If you don't like either of them, you're not gonna like the book. I don't mind them. Ryland is a bit too quick to despair, but stubborn and passionate about the things he's interested in. He loves his students (he's a middle school teacher). He's smart, but makes humanizing mistakes. He feels the sheer joy of doing Science.

Rocky is cheerful, optimistic, and stalwart.

If I could fix one thing about the book, it's this: there's no swearing. Maybe that sounds like an odd thing to get hung up on. But fundamentally, it's a realism issue. I don't know anyone IRL who doesn't curse. When people in intense, stressful situations DON'T curse, it sucks me out of the book for a second. Nobody's going to have a massive setback that might lead to the death of billions, and say "goshdarnit!". The dialogue needs to appropriately show the level of stress and despair the protagnist is feeling.

There's also some… I dunno, marvel-esque dialogue with Rocky, who is infantilized a bit. In theory, he's Grace's equal. He's older, and presumably he's the best of the best if he was sent to solve this world-ending problem. But he kind of comes across, at times, as just a goofy sidekick.

Between that, and some of the slightly marvel-esque dialogue… It gives the book a young adult vibe. In fact, I had to double check that I hadn't somehow overlooked a YA classification.

If you've seen the movie, I'd say you don't HAVE to read the book, unless you just loved the movie and would like to experience the story again. It's a pretty faithful adaptation. Ryan Gosling makes a more likeable, handsome, version of Grace. He basically lets his acting outrun the dialogue. Rocky is maybe a little more "excited Scooby Doo" comic relief. The two of them give the movie an all-ages vibe that reminds me of some classic familiy movies from my childhood. This movie would have worked fine in the 80's.

Where I think the film NAILED it, is the excellent casting for Dr. Stratt – she's basically the woman the world decided should run this mission to save humanity, and she is ruthlessly efficient, careful to preserve some detachment from the people she's tasked with finding, training, and ultimately sending to their death. She has to care enough about humanity to make some heartless decisions, which we discover via flashback. Sandra Hüller conveys that perfectly. The movie added the karaoke scene, and shifted her history-major lecture around, but otherwise she matches the book character.

The other characters… they coulda have used some fleshing out, but there's only so much you can do with a few flashbacks. The movie already clocks in at 2.5 hours, so if the Russian is cheerfully stereotypical and enjoys his vodka, that's ok.

Overall, I'd give this book a recommendation. But if you need great, deep dialogue or you're bothered by a slightly YA vibe, maybe pass and watch the movie instead.