Project Hail Mary Review: Andy Dam invokes a Brand-new Tale of Space Danger

Clare Wilson, a medical reporter, says that she has been a fan of apocalyptic sci-fi since her teenage years. She was hooked by the 1950s classic The Day of the Triffids by UK author John Wyndham. Instead of discouraging her, the COVID-19 pandemic fed her hunger for end-of-world stories because the past year showed us in real life, albeit on a smaller scale, how we handle global threats and whether authorities will sail roughshod over civil liberties to save lives.

Wilson notes that she thought she had listened to all the different ways civilization could end, from deadly plagues to nuclear armageddon and incoming asteroids. However, Andy Dam, the writer of the Martian, has come up with a new version.

Wilson explains that an abnormality is found in the sun’s radiation. Our star’s light has begun to dim at an exponentially decreasing rate. In 20 years, there will be ice ages, crop failures, and mass starvation. The explanation behind this and how to fix it is nearly too far-fetched, yet Dam makes the science credible enough.

Astrobiologist Rylan Grace, curiously qualified for the mission to save the sun, awakens millions of miles away from Earth to his dead crewmates and little to no memory of what he is doing there and how to do it. Moreover, that is not even the most intriguing aspect of this story. Spoiler alert: early in the story, there is a plot twist, so skip if you do not wish to know.

Graces find an alien lifeform, whom he names Rocky due to its appearance. He needs to learn how to talk to this alien to save our star, and consequently, Earth. The “first contact moment” where humans meet an alien species has catastrophic events, and it has been fertile ground for science fiction. How they will communicate without analog anatomy or biochemistry is an interesting philosophical problem, and it is being studied for real.

In some sci-fi stories, the communication barrier is solved by endowing the alien extremely superior intelligence that allows them to learn English from terrestrial broadcasts that accidentally reach them and arrive ready to talk. However, in Project Hail Mary, Grace is not as lucky since Rocky turns out to be of a species with similar intelligence and technological abilities as humans.

Far from their homes, they must use their ingenuity to simultaneously learn how to communicate with each other through trial-and-error and discover how to save the sun from its impending doom. A lot of the charm of this book comes from Grace and Rocky’s relationship.

Wilson states that in her opinion, there is a little too much Martian-style detail about how Grace fixes several engineering issues on his mission but still enjoyed the book.

Wilson finishes by saying that Director Ridley Scott transformed The Matian where Matt Damon as the stranded astronaut, has the immortal line: “I’m going to have to science the spunk out of this.” It could similarly be applied to the attitudes of Grace and Rocky in Project Hail Mary. Moreover, perhaps a few coronavirus vaccine designers took inspiration from it, also.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is out now.

Originally publishe on The Conversation. Read the original article