Books: Project Hail Mary By Andy Weir (2021)

“Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he?” 

For the most part, I enjoyed this novel, which plays out like a bunch of science experiments, with a wacky buddy comedy and first contact thrown in for good measure. Andy Weir is a wonderfully nerdy man and Ryland (which really just as variation of his Mark Watney character from The Martian) is man-shaped nerdy science textbook in an astronaut suit.  

But he is Watney, which means Weir has the limited ability to create main a character that we’ve not seen before (perhaps why I’ve not read his second novel Artemis?). But this is the problem in a lot of successful media titles, as the publishers want something new, but what they really want is a variation of the first successful book. 

I think the book would’ve been better if told in third person, because with the added flashbacks, the conceit of the book probably would’ve worked better. The way it’s arranged is designed to reveal things to the reader as they happen, but it’s clear that despite all the doom and gloom of an extinction level event on Earth, Grace was to survive. 

I have other issues with the book –the death of the other two astronauts is just too convenient, which made me wonder if Weir cannot create a workable plot and characterization with two additional people to write for. And while the science sounds sound, it becomes so technical that I found myself skipping over the babble. 

Overall this book was fun even it got carried away with the scientific details.

Books: The Martian By Andy Weir (2014)

Andy Weir's The Martian has done something that seems brilliant, yet familiar. Yes the tale of a modern day (somewhat) astronaut left on Mars and forced to fend for himself is not new (Robinson Caruso comes to mind first, then Castaway, MacGyver and a lot of Apollo 13), but Weir does not give his protagonist an easy time (Martians helped Caruso) in solving how the man will survive on the red planet. 

The story opens with Mark Watney, one of the first humans to walk on Mars. Him and fellow astronauts on the spaceship Hermes, are surveying the planet when a huge dust storm forces an emergency evacuation of Mars. But a piece of debris hits Watney, holing his suit and plunging him away from his crew. With no time to waste, and with his fellow members believing him now dead, the landing party leaves Mars and Mark behind. But the man survives and finds himself stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to get him first. But the human will to survive is strong within Mark, and drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit, he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. 

The novel owes a lot to the science fiction authors that came before, but I think Weir achieves something that even writers like Asimov or Clarke could not, which is a very technical, very realistic science to science fiction novel, using no magical realism to propel the story forward. This book is also a celebration of human ingenuity, something seen today as not being praise worthy.

Most of the book features Mark, and it's Weir's ability to make that compelling is its greatest strength. Plus, Watney is a smart-ass as well as super smart. It makes him appealing human even when he rattles off mathematical equations that the average reader will never fully understand.

NASA, for all is bureaucracy that has overtaken it, hires smart people, ones whom have the ability to think outside the box, take risks and force the next step to solve a problem that propagates twelve more. It's these people who I want in my corner when things fall apart.