primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2022-07-18 07:47 pm
primeideal) wrote2022-07-18 07:47 pm
Entry tags:
(SFF Bingo): Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
I can't give a better summary of "Project Hail Mary" than this post from cahn : "It's basically as if a Randall Munroe book (or his blog) came to life and I am here for that." Yeah. Our hero is trying to fix the sun, while doing science and explaining esoteric human concepts like sleep.
Unfortunately, he can't even remember his name. So at the beginning, he's trying to figure out things like "who am I, where am I, is gravity being weird?" and he solves it with SCIENCE, such as trying to build a pendulum and measure gravity (like Rowan in "The Steerswoman"!). And like Paulie in the Hugo-nominee "Proof by Induction," he also gets cute with complex numbers and their roots, just to challenge the capacities of his not-quite-human interlocutors. There's a running joke about "I must be an American scientist, judging by the fact that my brain thinks in inches and miles by default but also occasionally throws in cubic centimeters, really unhelpful." But like, he's a total blank slate at this point--almost more of a video game protagonist, the reader can project anything or anyone onto the outline, it's the science and technology that matters.
Weir is at his best when he's hypothesizing "so, okay, how would you science the bleep out of this?" While some of the descriptions can get a little long-winded, this book worked better for me than "The Martian" did along those lines, in part because the technology is a little more speculative and impossible to actually do all the research and then infodump it. Shortcuts can be taken, and while we'll all disagree on "which parts were cut too short, which could be longer,' overall it struck a good balance.
Gradually, our everyman begins getting flashbacks to Earth, which reveal that he was briefly a research scientist interested in hypothetical non-water-based extraterrestrial life, but then ditched academia for a teaching career. When he discovers the dead bodies of his fellow crew, he's like..."wow, they must have been really good people, too bad they died out here," and tears up slightly. But the grief is always informed rather than based on knowing them or having memories of travelling through space together--it's like, trying to "show not tell" but not necessarily succeeding. Like Dalinar in "Oathbreaker," the amnesia is suspiciously laser-guided, and makes us wonder what's going on beyond plot convenience.
So then there's the whole "actually, the sun is going out, how do we fix it?" problem that requires lots of scientists/technologists/bureaucrats to marshal the world's resources and find a solution. One issue here, as the narrator lampshades, is that science doesn't usually advance by lone geniuses sitting in a secret lab and researching away from the world--in this century, we have peer review and lots of collaboration and checking each others' work. Another issue is that, in light of recent events, "world community works together to do science and solve a problem" may be dismissed as unrealistic escapist fantasy by many readers. My personal belief is that, if you're going to write ~500 pages (or even orders of magnitude less than that, though this is more divisive), and the upshot is "haha actually just kidding, everything sucks and humans are too terrible to be saved," I'm not interested because I have better things to do with my time. But yeah, there's that caveat.
There were a couple places where I would have expected more genre-savviness. The narrator's initial reaction to "we need a few people to go on a suicide mission because it's the only way to save humanity" isn't only "welp, count me out" (which would be a reasonable reaction!) but "you're actually getting volunteers, really?" Maybe I just read too many books, but "die a hero on an interstellar adventure, or die alongside everyone else on a dying planet" doesn't seem like a particularly excruciating choice (assuming I could survive the physical difficulties of zero-G, etc.). And there's a part about "we always assumed our first contact with aliens would be a sophisticated, technologically advanced space-travelling species, we never imagined unicellular life." Like...really??? What about all the searches for fossils on Mars? I don't buy it from the leader of the scientific project.
But the most unlikely contrivance is that an international, UN-backed, 2020s space project would have the name "Project Hail Mary"--the provincialism of referencing a Catholic prayer that gave its name to an American football play!--just so we can set up the stealth pun of the main character, when he remembers his name, being Dr. Grace. Dr. Grace in the Hail Mary. Get it?????
Okay, those are quibbles, but they are really only quibbles. Verging on spoiler territory here (for a twist that's like ~1/4 of the way into the book), but it turns out to be a story about collaboration, and how people with different skill sets can complement each other and work together to experiment. If "The Martian" was in some ways about the world coming together to save one person, "Project Hail Mary" is in some ways about two people coming together to save the world(s). And while it might be a little unnerving to wonder "well what can Weir do for an encore, we've already made the stakes about as high as they can get," the basic cycle of "what's the basic problem facing us right now? do some science, okay, that worked, there's hope. one step back, two steps forward" is a simple but effective combination.
Ultimately, "Project Hail Mary" is the kind of book where I wanted to dive back in because I cared about what happened to the characters, both on a personal and global level. Which shouldn't necessarily be high praise, but in this case, it is! The "lanes" of contemporary SFF have become fragmented in such a way that many books aren't trying to do the same thing this is. And while I'll always appreciate more like this, "Project Hail Mary" definitely quenched my thirst for this genre!
Bingo cards: IN SPACE! Also Standalone, (Hugo) Readalong, No Ifs Ands Or Buts
cahn : "It's basically as if a Randall Munroe book (or his blog) came to life and I am here for that." Yeah. Our hero is trying to fix the sun, while doing science and explaining esoteric human concepts like sleep.Unfortunately, he can't even remember his name. So at the beginning, he's trying to figure out things like "who am I, where am I, is gravity being weird?" and he solves it with SCIENCE, such as trying to build a pendulum and measure gravity (like Rowan in "The Steerswoman"!). And like Paulie in the Hugo-nominee "Proof by Induction," he also gets cute with complex numbers and their roots, just to challenge the capacities of his not-quite-human interlocutors. There's a running joke about "I must be an American scientist, judging by the fact that my brain thinks in inches and miles by default but also occasionally throws in cubic centimeters, really unhelpful." But like, he's a total blank slate at this point--almost more of a video game protagonist, the reader can project anything or anyone onto the outline, it's the science and technology that matters.
Weir is at his best when he's hypothesizing "so, okay, how would you science the bleep out of this?" While some of the descriptions can get a little long-winded, this book worked better for me than "The Martian" did along those lines, in part because the technology is a little more speculative and impossible to actually do all the research and then infodump it. Shortcuts can be taken, and while we'll all disagree on "which parts were cut too short, which could be longer,' overall it struck a good balance.
Gradually, our everyman begins getting flashbacks to Earth, which reveal that he was briefly a research scientist interested in hypothetical non-water-based extraterrestrial life, but then ditched academia for a teaching career. When he discovers the dead bodies of his fellow crew, he's like..."wow, they must have been really good people, too bad they died out here," and tears up slightly. But the grief is always informed rather than based on knowing them or having memories of travelling through space together--it's like, trying to "show not tell" but not necessarily succeeding. Like Dalinar in "Oathbreaker," the amnesia is suspiciously laser-guided, and makes us wonder what's going on beyond plot convenience.
So then there's the whole "actually, the sun is going out, how do we fix it?" problem that requires lots of scientists/technologists/bureaucrats to marshal the world's resources and find a solution. One issue here, as the narrator lampshades, is that science doesn't usually advance by lone geniuses sitting in a secret lab and researching away from the world--in this century, we have peer review and lots of collaboration and checking each others' work. Another issue is that, in light of recent events, "world community works together to do science and solve a problem" may be dismissed as unrealistic escapist fantasy by many readers. My personal belief is that, if you're going to write ~500 pages (or even orders of magnitude less than that, though this is more divisive), and the upshot is "haha actually just kidding, everything sucks and humans are too terrible to be saved," I'm not interested because I have better things to do with my time. But yeah, there's that caveat.
There were a couple places where I would have expected more genre-savviness. The narrator's initial reaction to "we need a few people to go on a suicide mission because it's the only way to save humanity" isn't only "welp, count me out" (which would be a reasonable reaction!) but "you're actually getting volunteers, really?" Maybe I just read too many books, but "die a hero on an interstellar adventure, or die alongside everyone else on a dying planet" doesn't seem like a particularly excruciating choice (assuming I could survive the physical difficulties of zero-G, etc.). And there's a part about "we always assumed our first contact with aliens would be a sophisticated, technologically advanced space-travelling species, we never imagined unicellular life." Like...really??? What about all the searches for fossils on Mars? I don't buy it from the leader of the scientific project.
But the most unlikely contrivance is that an international, UN-backed, 2020s space project would have the name "Project Hail Mary"--the provincialism of referencing a Catholic prayer that gave its name to an American football play!--just so we can set up the stealth pun of the main character, when he remembers his name, being Dr. Grace. Dr. Grace in the Hail Mary. Get it?????
Okay, those are quibbles, but they are really only quibbles. Verging on spoiler territory here (for a twist that's like ~1/4 of the way into the book), but it turns out to be a story about collaboration, and how people with different skill sets can complement each other and work together to experiment. If "The Martian" was in some ways about the world coming together to save one person, "Project Hail Mary" is in some ways about two people coming together to save the world(s). And while it might be a little unnerving to wonder "well what can Weir do for an encore, we've already made the stakes about as high as they can get," the basic cycle of "what's the basic problem facing us right now? do some science, okay, that worked, there's hope. one step back, two steps forward" is a simple but effective combination.
Ultimately, "Project Hail Mary" is the kind of book where I wanted to dive back in because I cared about what happened to the characters, both on a personal and global level. Which shouldn't necessarily be high praise, but in this case, it is! The "lanes" of contemporary SFF have become fragmented in such a way that many books aren't trying to do the same thing this is. And while I'll always appreciate more like this, "Project Hail Mary" definitely quenched my thirst for this genre!
Bingo cards: IN SPACE! Also Standalone, (Hugo) Readalong, No Ifs Ands Or Buts