Book Review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Let’s start with what a Hail Mary pass is. I knew that it was a desperate, last ditch effort, and that the only place I’d heard of it was in relation to American football.  According to Wikipedia, “A Hail Mary pass is a very long forward pass in American football, typically made in desperation.” There’s generally a pretty low probability that it will succeed.

This tells us right off the bat that the story is opening in a bad situation and someone is trying something desperate to fix it.

The main character is Ryland Grace, something even he doesn’t know at the beginning of the book. Grace awakens alone, not even knowing who he is, on a ship in space, with two clearly long dead crewmates. Are there other crew mates on the ship somewhere, dead or alive? Why is he here? What is his goal? How can he accomplish it on his own? Most importantly, who the heck is he?

Surprises abound throughout this book for me, always a pleasant thing when I can’t predict how a book is going to go. In fact, I often try not to read the description of a book ahead of time so that it can’t give me too much information. (That's easier to do when I've read something else by the author that I've enjoyed. I loved his first book, and enjoyed his second book as well.)

Action on the spaceship is interspersed with scenes that explain how he came to be there, why he’s there, and the challenge he faces, as Grace remembers things from his past. They are just as much a revelation to him as they are to the reader. 

I really appreciate how the author describes scientific information in simple, accessible ways, often by creating a question in the reader’s mind before answering it. He also describes the science without trying to tell us the exact formulas most of the time. It’s far more accessible to those of us who don’t have the math knowledge to truly understand the science.

I also really appreciate how he takes us through Ryland Grace’s thought processes as he poses a question, thinks through it, and eventually answers it, mistakes and all.

I can very much see this being made into a movie, though I’m concerned that they would leave too much out, as they did with The Martian, another book by Andy Weir that was turned into a movie starring Matt Damon. I enjoyed the movie, don’t get me wrong, but it left a lot out that explained some key points for me. I don’t think I would have enjoyed the movie nearly as much if I hadn’t read the book first.

I listened to this book on audio and found myself continually picturing William Hurt as the main character for some reason. The voice actor, Ray Porter, does a wonderful job bringing the story to life. His female voices leave a little to be desired, but I’ve found that to be the case with virtually every reader who is doing the voices for a character who is the opposite sex to their own.

A friend who is still reading the book told me that it really pulled her out of her reading slump as each chapter drew her on to the next. She didn’t want to put it down. Personally, I am a little sad that I’ve reached the end, though I found the conclusion perfectly satisfying.

This was a great journey and I heartily recommend it to anyone.

Book Review: Artemis by Andy Weir

 

Artemis

by Andy Weir

This month, the theme for my book club is a whole genre, science fiction. I admit I haven’t been reading much of that lately, but a friend reminded me that one of my favorite science fiction author in recent years, Andy Weir, had a new book out recently. (I talked about his book, The Martian, on this blog some time ago, you can find that post at https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-martian-by-andy-weir.html ) My library doesn’t have his newest, Project Hail Mary, available in digital format yet, but they did have his second book, Artemis, which I had not read either.

Artemis is a fascinating story set on the moon in a settlement where people live in bubbles, and far underground. The main character, Jazz Bashara, is a young woman who workers as a porter, and as a smuggler. The story is told in the first person from her perspective and her voice is fantastically distinctive.

“Whatever it was, I couldn’t find any mention of it online. That meant it was a secret. Now I really wanted to know what it was. Turns out I’m a nosy little shit.”

By her own admission, Jazz has made some pretty poor choices in her young life, and it is her propensity for making such decisions that drives this story forward. It seems perfectly logical at the time, as she relates the story, but we can see her life going off the rails. She’s a little bit of an anti-hero, but she has her own standards and sense of honor. She won’t take payment for a job not completed.

Jazz has been smuggling stuff people need for a while, but here she takes on a different job, much more complex, with dangers she has no idea exist. Every time I turned around, this book morphed on me into a slightly different story. There are revelations about things that happened in the past through letters with her pen pal on Earth, and revelations about things Jazz doesn’t know yet. I love twists and turns in stories.

Another thing I love about Weir’s writing is how he works explanations of fairly complex science into the narrative by creating a question in the reader’s mind that he then answers in fairly conversational language through his narrator. It makes it so much more accessible and interesting than the information dump that writers are often prone to in trying to set up a reader for a situation.

The setting itself is complex and fascinating. The gravity is 1/6^th that of the Earth and they have a terrible nutritional food named gunk. Then there’s the whole issue of how oxygen is created, which plays a central part in the story.

This one is compulsively readable and I highly recommend it.

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian

By Andy Weir

Now, if you were left behind on Mars by your crewmates and knew you had to wait for the next planned Mars expedition, in FOUR years, would you even try to survive? Or would you assume there was no way in hell for that to happen?

 “So, that’s the situation. I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m in a Hab designed to last thirty-one days. If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happens, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah, I’m fucked.”

So why doesn’t he just take the easy way out? Well, at the moment, he’s alone but he has everything he needs. He’s in no hurry. The thing is - he’s someone who rises to challenges and likes to figure things out, so he wants to do that. He figures out how much soil he’ll need and how to turn the soil he has, plus his own shit along with Martian soil, into something he can grow crops in.

 “This isn’t a new concept I just came up with. People have speculated on how to make crop soil out of Martian dirt for decades. I’ll just be putting it to the test for the first time. But in the end, if everything goes to plan, I’ll have 92 square meters of crop-able soil. Hell yeah I’m a botanist! Fear my botany powers!”

Mark Watney is pretty smart but he’s also totally an extrovert, the class clown, the one who provides the lubricant between all the really smart introverts. He’s also an extrovert who only has his journal to talk to.

I think that’s part of why he comes across as more of a real person to me, not a type. We all have geeky sides, and sporty sides and act like kids at times, and get excited and angry and scared.  

 “I’ve been so busy staying alive I never thought of what this must be like for my parents. Right now, they’re suffering the worst pain anyone can endure. I’d give anything just to let them know I’m still alive. I’ll just have to survive to make up for it.”

He’s stuck with thumb drives of things his shipmates brought for entertainment.  

“Disco. God damn it, Lewis.”

A large part of the book is him reacting to problems, thinking through them and coming up with a solution. He’s so perfectly imperfect. Like any good hero, he causes his own trouble, and he laughs at himself so well.

“Turns out the “L” in “LCD” stands for “Liquid.” I guess it either froze or boiled off. Maybe I’ll post a consumer review. “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10.”

Right, who knew? Um, everyone.

My biggest criticism is that I felt like the ending was abrupt. We’re rocking along then . . . boom, it’s done. I feel like the author should have given us a little more warning that THIS was the goal. Oh well.

It’s a FUN book. Try not to take it too seriously. It is action, and science, and humor. I really, really liked it.