![]() ![]() There are two timelines in the book, one about scientist Ryland Grace who wakes up alone in a space ship (“Hail Mary”, full of Grace) with his memory gone and tries to figure out what is happening. This time, not just Science Man but humanity itself is in mortal danger, and the clock’s ticking. For Project Hail Mary, Weir returns to the narrative setup of The Martian in which a snarky, competent guy finds himself in a dangerous situation and has to calculate his way forward, doing little experiments, solving one problem at a time. He does extensive research for every book he writes, and it is incorporated into the stories with a childlike enthusiasm, of the type that makes a crew member in Star Trek: Discovery exclaim ‘this is the power of math, people!’ The hard part is building a story around it. Weir’s interest in science was never the issue. ![]() Does it answer the potential that so many readers saw in The Martian? ![]() Project Hail Mary, then, after the misstep with Artemis, carries the weight of proving whether Weir is going down in history as a one-hit wonder or that Weir has the talent to build a longer, fruitful career. ![]() His first novel The Martian (2011) may have been a great popular success, even receiving a movie adaptation in 2015, but his second novel Artemis (2017) was met with widespread derision and raised questions for many SF fans whether Weir’s first novel might have been a fluke. With the publication of Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir is still in a vulnerable position in his writing career. ![]()
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