A man wakes up to find himself in a high-tech environment but has no memory of how he got there. Through observation, he is able to piece together the basics. One, he is on board a space vessel; two, he is the sole surviving occupant, the other crew being mummified corpses. Then, bit by bit, he begins regaining the memories that were clouded by his recent coma.
He remembers that he is Dr. Ryland Grace, a schoolteacher involved in the early study of Astrophage – a newly-discovered extraterrestrial microorganism, “space algae”, that thrives on the surface of stars. As harmless as this space algae might sound, its existence poses an apocalyptic threat to life on Earth: it drains energy from stars, and by passing from star to star, has reached the sun – beginning a process that, if left unchecked, will cause the world to freeze.
There is one chance of salvation. In the trail of dead and dying stars is one star that has somehow escaped unscathed. As humanity’s scientists had already harnessed Astrophage as a powerful form of fuel, it became possible to send a research vessel to investigate. This, Dr. Grace realises, is his mission: to study the seemingly miraculous star, find a way to prevent the sun’s death, and send his findings back to Earth – while he himself remains in space, a casualty of a necessary suicide mission.
But he is not alone. During his expedition, Grace catches sight of a second ship – one not of human construction. Somewhere out there, another species has decided to investigate the same star for the same reason. If the two travellers are able to understand each other, they may be able to work together and save their respective worlds.
Among the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalists, Project Hail Mary feels like the odd one out. While Andy Weir is not entirely new to the Worldcon awards (he won the 2016 Campbell Award for Best New Writer) his work is nonetheless representative of an aesthetic that has, for some time, been sidelined at the Hugos. At its core, Project Hail Mary is the sort of story that was the bread and butter of the long-gone Campbellian era: science fiction in which a man with tools is presented with problems and gets cracking.
When this kind of thing turns up at the Hugos, it is typically handled with large amounts of humour (see John Scalzi) or confined to an alternate history (see Mary Robinette Kowal). Weir’s novel has no such irony or distancing, and instead proudly continues a lineage that can be traced back to the days of Robert A. Heinlein – an author who, incidentally, is directly invoked when Grace remarks that his craft, the titular Hail Mary, “has always looked like something out of a Heinlein novel”.
This is not to say that Project Hail Mary is something straight out of a time-sealed box, however. It is in some ways a very “now” novel, particularly in its use of climate change as a central threat. Yes, the climate change depicted – global cooling caused by alien microorganisms – is clearly fictitious. But the anxieties that arise from this situation, and the characters’ means of handling these anxieties, are rooted in stark reality. Consider the scene where Grace tries to tackle the subject in a classroom:
“Yes, I’m sorry, but a lot of livestock will die. And it’s worse than that. On land, crops will fail. The food we eat will become scarce. When that happens, the social order often breaks down and—” I stopped myself there. These were kids. Why was I going this far?
“How—” Abby began. I’d never seen her at a loss for words. “How long before this happens?”
“Climatologists think it’ll happen within the next thirty years,” I said.
Just like that, all the kids relaxed.
“Thirty years?” Trang laughed. “That’s forever!”
“It’s not that long…” I said. But to a bunch of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, thirty years may as well be a million.
“Can I be on Tracy’s team for the rock-sorting assignment?” asked Michael.
Thirty years. I looked out at their little faces. In thirty years they’d all be in their early forties. They would bear the brunt of it all. And it wouldn’t be easy. These kids were going to grow up in an idyllic world and be thrown into an apocalyptic nightmare.
They were the generation that would experience the Sixth Extinction Event.
I felt a cramp in the pit of my stomach. I was looking out at a room full of children. Happy children. And there was a good chance some of them would literally die of starvation.
“I…” I stammered. “I have to go do a thing. Forget the rock assignment.”
Although a narrative of world-saving heroism, Project Hail Mary avoids easy solutions. It is made clear that even if Dr. Grace finds a way of halting the sun’s destruction, enough time will have passed that the world will still be scarred by warfare and famine arising from the climate chaos.
In another departure from the old-fashioned model, Grace is a long way from the hyper-competent heroes described by Campbell and Heinlein. While his exploits aboard the Hail Mary show him to be an adept problem-solver, the lengthy flashbacks that arise from his returning memories reveal another side to his character: a Dr. Grace willing to make excuse after excuse to avoid undertaking the suicide mission that will save the world. In other words, a product of an era where heroes are expected to be flawed.
Despite these updates, Project Hail Mary ultimately holds to the golden rule of Golden Age SF: that exploration of scientific concepts is paramount. The narrative, split up between the present day and flashback portions, is structured so that just about every major plot development will give Grace something new to study.
His early areas of inquiry include the properties of the Astrophage, from the dangers it poses to its potential as a fuel source; in terms of internal chronology, this is followed by his mission on board the spacecraft, including his meeting with the alien scientist – a spider-like being that he nicknames Rocky, whose native language is indicated in the book using music notes. Finding out how to communicate with Rocky is an intense research project in itself, as is productive co-existence with a creature that has such unfamiliar biology (what Grace takes to be soot to clean away turns out to be a vital part of Rocky’s healing mechanism) and a very different level of scientific knowledge (Rocky’s species has no understanding of radiation, nor a theory of special relativity).
Then, of course, comes the culmination of the expedition: finding out exactly what saved the unique star from the Astrophage, and whether this property can be harnessed to save other stars and their systems. There is plenty of peril along the way – sometimes arising from Grace’s misjudgments – and moments where all appears to be lost, until the spacefarers hit upon their next breakthrough.
Project Hail Mary sometimes carries over the flaws as well as the virtues of the hard SF tradition, flat dialogue being particularly notable. While Grace’s internal monologue is engaging, the conversations between human characters tend to veer between straight-ahead exposition and generic sitcom snark (Grace, being a teacher, avoids swearing and instead comes out with such Ned Flandersisms as “gosh-darn” and “what the fudge?” in one of the novel’s few efforts to bring life to its dialogue).
More satisfying are the conversations between Grace and Rocky that take place as the barriers of language and culture break down, allowing us to admire both Grace’s problem-solving and a genuinely intriguing depiction of an alien lifeform. This is very much a novel where experiments speak louder than words.
With its even pace and – flashbacks included – straightforward structure, reading Project Hail Mary can be compared to the process of steadily boring through a mining tunnel. But this is a mine with plenty of rewards to be uncovered, and the reader is never far from the next glistening nugget. The Golden Age of science fiction may not be as fashionable as it once was, but novels like Project Hail Mary show that its aesthetics and principles can still be drawn upon for a good story.
