Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
5 stars.
this is an amazing, well-researched book. like most of the readers, i definitely did not expect such feels from a sci-fi book, but i'm not complaining a bit about it. it was such a heartwarming read and the characters are just too precious, i cannot get enough of it.
spoilers ahead!
so onto everything i liked about this book. first 100 pages of it, I enjoyed being inside the mind of such a sciencey scientist: our main character, Ryland Grace, a microbiologist specializing in extraterrestrial biology. the way he methodically figures everything out is so cool!! he wakes up from a coma with all his memories wiped, feels something is off with the gravity, calculates the gravity by making things fall off the table(twenty times to minimize his error) and times them. uses d=(at²)/2 and realizes the gravity is 15m/s^2. then he reasons he must either be in a centrifuge or a spaceship. so he swings a pendulum. counts the cycles. if he were in a centrifuge the 'gravity' (centripetal force) would be higher the further away he goes from the center. but nope. the cycles were the same everywhere. so yes. he is in space. (side note: andy did get the math wrong on this one, but that's fine)
Thing is, in a centrifuge, the farther you get from the center, the higher the centripetal force will be. So if I were in a centrifuge, the “gravity” down here would be higher than it was upstairs. And it isn’t. At least, not enough to get a different number of pendulum cycles.
and then by observing the sun spots he figures out he's in a different solar system? (embarrassingly, i had totally forgotten the sun rotates too)
The solar disc is 27 centimeters on-screen and the sunspots are 3 millimeters.
Over ten times faster than the rotation should be.
This star I’m looking at…it’s not the sun.
I’m in a different solar system.
genuinely, him theorizing and experimenting to prove or disprove his theories were the best parts of the book. there are only some minds i like to be in and his is one of them. it's such a joy to be able to see things the way Ryland Grace does, and i absolutely enjoyed every moment of it. it's incredible(and relatable) how his mind has so many questions and how he picks them apart one by one in such an organized way and how he actually has the knowledge to start from somewhere to answer them(not relatable).
then we get to reading his attempts to figure out what the hell is Astrophage.
“Look at the bright side,” she said. “You’ll be forever known as the man who made first contact with extraterrestrial life.”
a little foreshadowing?
spectroscopy, gas chromatography, gamma rays, radiation of all kinds.
First thing I tried was the x-ray spectrometer. It sends x-rays into a sample, making it emit photons and you can tell from the wavelengths of the photons what elements are present.
and then for him to figure out why they travel to venus? all by himself?
next we meet Rocky. blip A showing up in the petrovascope and then the telescope was downright terrifying but thankfully it was clear from the first few communications that this is a friendly species and this was a tale of collaboration rather than of horror. back to Rocky. this brilliant, adorable lil alien. he has my entire heart. he's the perfect companion for Grace. he's intelligent, competent and he so cutely and so willingly fixed so many of his problems? like: the generator which was damaged because of Taumoeba infestation, the lack of astrophage cus this was a one-way trip for Grace, the fuel tanks which Grace jettisoned because "trillions and trillions of horny little Astrophages" escaped to Adrian to breed. Rocky made the fuel tanks by melting parts of his ship and just how generous can this little alien get? never have i been more fond of a character.
it's so cute how Grace blindly relies on him. he never once questioned Rocky's talent or engineering. He admits that Rocky is smarter. Rocky is faster in math and conversions and translating english to eridian. and obv, he's a skilled engineer who could build or fix anything. the amount of mutual respect and trust they have for each other??? ughhhh.
and. i cried when rocky realised grace had come to save him :(
“Rocky?!”
“Grace, question?”
“Yes!” I’ve never been so happy to hear a few musical notes! “Yeah, buddy! It’s me!”
“You are here, question?!” his voice is so high-pitched I can barely understand him. But I understand Eridian pretty well now.
like. I wasn't expecting such feels.
and i appreciate Andy's research on eridian biology and planetology. It's impressive how in depth he has explained it.
as much as i enjoyed reading the science stuff in the book, there were some mistakes. like 2 million kg of fuel would only be sufficient for a flyby. not a stop and go kind of trip. to stop at tau ceti, grace would've required the square of that amount. and the calculation of the swinging pendulum was wrong as i mentioned. and the 8 light years of Astrophage infection radius would've collapsed most of the observable universe. like there are too many stars within that range of each other.
but. but. I enjoyed it. 5 stars. the ending was precious albeit a little bittersweet. i got into scifi cus of Nolans interstellar and kurzegesagts endless space videos. so I decided to read hail mary too. and now that I'm watching the movie... i do have some complaints. the movie skims over a lot of good science stuff. the ones who have only watched the movie are missing out on the best parts from the book.
and if I had to have any criticisms for this book then it would be that most of the characters were quite one dimensional. they served the purpose of plot progression and exited. butttttt. this author wrote rocky ffs. he wrote the chemistry between these two scientists ffs. he wrote a no nonsense woman in power who knows how to get shit done ffs. so a pretty weak criticism from my end.