20250808 Friday

Book log: Project Hail Mary (2021)

Andy Weir's 2021 "Hard sci fi" novel Project Hail Mary was 
recommended to me by a friend when it was new, and later handed to me 
by my cousin after he read it. This summer I brought it with me on a 
trip abroad, and started it off by reading a good chunk on the flight 
out. The premise was intriguing but familiar; a man wakes up in a 
clinical and alienating environment, tended to by robot arms that 
feed him IV nutrition. A robot/computer asks him questions that he 
initially can't answer, like what's your name. After a while he 
realizes that he's aboard a spaceship, and memories gradually return 
to him. His name is Wyland Grace. So far, so good -- the mystery 
unravels gradually. Still I felt irritated after the first reading 
session. The main character - who tells the story in the first person 
perspective -- just seems so annoying. There's so much mansplaining 
going on, he talks down to the reader, treats you like an idiot. 
Several times, you read a paragraph only to have the next paragraph 
explain to you what  the previous paragraph implied. At one point he 
even goes as far as typing the previous paragraph's wisdom out as a 
four point bullet list! On top of this, Grace seems to be absolutely 
pleased, even enamoured, with himself, his smarts, his humour. And 
further on, you get the feeling that the main character is actually 
the writer himself. 

The next problem that I discovered with the book was its structure. 
Grace/Weir gradually starts to remember the main goal of his mission 
(to save Planet Earth), and identifies the first obstacle to 
overcome. He plots up a possible solution, which fails on the first 
try. Then he just happens to remember something from his past that 
gives him the answer to the problem at hand. Success! On to the next 
obstacle. Aaaaaand... repeat the procedure. This part of the book 
feels like a computer RPG/adventure game -- a long list of small 
problems that lead you on towards the goal. And to build on the 
parallel, Grace's/Weir's steady drip of convenient memories is like 
the Gamer's Playthrough Handbook. And here you are, trying to solve a 
problem, always giving up after the first try, and then resorting to 
the guide book. Lazy stuff, cheating.

The writing style is stilted, almost non-existent. You get nuggets 
like "I've had seven days of hardcore science since then". The 
memories are written in the past tense, and the "now" part is written 
in the present tense in a mostly real-time way. I suppose to give the 
writing a sort of movie-like drive. At two or three points in the 
book, the writer needs to skip ahead a few weeks or months (because, 
well, tedium) and suddenly switches to past tense. And it works quite 
badly, feels half cooked and random.

Then there are stupid plot points. Like how the essential inter-
species communication in the latter half of the book hinges on the 
facts that (1) Grace/Weir has perfect pitch, and that (2) the alien 
species from light years away have evolved to communicate using the 
chromatic 12 tone equal temperament scale. Not very important in the 
big picture, but this is a book that goes out of its way to be anally 
as-a-matter-of-fact-y on every single page.

And don't get me started on the ending, haha.