Project Hail Mary

 Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

Ballantine Books

Andy Weir has published another marvelously geeky novel like The Martian, but on larger scales of plot, action and character.  Over 478 pages, he tells an interstellar tale with exciting and emotional plot twists, while still sciencing the hell out of the situation.  The not unfamiliar voice is perfect for the story, and it doesn't hurt for this reader that the cultural references of the jokes are also familiar.  (Bonus points for a perfectly placed line from Rocky and Bullwinkle.)  I opened this book knowing nothing in advance about the story, and the narrative itself was so enchanting when experienced that way that I'm not even going to hint at the contents, in case you still have that opportunity of innocence.

The science details and the unlikely hero, who is not a teenager himself but relates to them, reminds me not only of Robert Heinlein's hard science fiction but most specifically of his science fiction for young readers (often with an a young protagonist), a genre he pioneered long before the marketing category of YA.  Beginning in the late 1940s, Heinlein wrote a series of what were then called "juvenile" or "juvie" sf novels.  Their stories existed pretty much in the same story universe that Heinlein created for his adult fictions, but they tended to emphasize the science aspects more, because (Heinlein commented), "younger readers relish tough ideas they have to chew and don't mind big words."

I will say this much about the story: when I came to the jeopardy that threatened Earth I was disappointed that he invented a new one instead of dealing with the one that is already here, namely climate distortion, and I got queasy when he seemed to downplay its threat.  But then I got caught up in the otherwise satisfying story.

However I saw him do an interview in which he seemed to not only downplay but disdain the assertions that climate distortion and a mass extinction event are real threats to human civilization and life on Earth as we know it.  His views on responses to the pandemic seemed likewise skewed.  (He predicts it will be the last pandemic, or if there is another one in forty years we were so good at handling this one that we'll know how to handle that one. Really?  All this makes me wonder about other aspects of this novel, like a figure with global dictatorial powers.)  He may be a heck of a writer (and he's a hero to me for correcting a network reporter who said "less" when he should have said "fewer"), but I have to wonder what planet he's living on.