Project Hail Mary (2021) By Andy Weir

"Knock-knock-knock... No, that's not creepy at all. Being in a spaceship twelve light-years from home and having someone knock on the door is totally normal."

If there's one genre I've wanted to explore more deeply, it is that of science fiction. I love it as a genre in film and other media forms, and have enjoyed the books that I have read under its label to this point. This book was recommended to me by a number of well-read family members, which was enough reason for me to give it a go. Written by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian - another highly successful science fiction novel, which went on to spawn a highly acclaimed feature film.

"We’re as smart as evolution made us. So we’re the minimum intelligence needed to ensure we can dominate our planets."

As someone who has never read any 'hard' science fiction before, this took a little getting used to. The book is filled to the brim with science, most of it real, which makes it very wordy and very intellectual in nature. However, if that's something you don't mind, like myself, it meant that the story had an elevated sense of realism that you don't get with your more fantastical, or perhaps slightly less intensely detailed, science fiction novels. I can certainly see both the positive and negative perspectives on this style of writing, but I for one was enraptured.

"I spend a lot of time un-suiciding this suicide mission."

Weir's writing style, despite its science-heavy language, was actually very easy to get along with. The familial, personal, and almost casual, way in which Weir's protagonist spoke to the reader was very digestible, and even rather amusing, at times. In fact, I found this to be a very entertaining read just about the whole way through. But, even better than the often off-beat and sarcy humour, was the emotional gutpunches interlaced along the way, all told with deeply personal and intimate thoughts from the protagonist.

"I’m a scientist! Now we’re getting somewhere! Time for me to use science. All right, genius brain: come up with something! …I’m hungry. You have failed me, brain."

Much like in real life, and indeed real science, events unfold fairly gradually in this book. For those with the patience for it, as I suspect most who choose to read this novel will be, they are rewarded with a fantastically laid-out and driven narrative that blends fact with fiction so smoothly that it becomes all-but-natural to suspend one's disbelief for those aspects which are more fiction than science.

"Once again I’m struck by melancholy. I want to spend the rest of my life studying Eridian biology! But I have to save humanity first. Stupid humanity. Getting in the way of my hobbies."

Overall, I was really taken by my first experience of Andy Weir's intensely science-based science fiction story. It has a lot of information to digest and keep track of, but I really found it to be worth my while. I doubt whether the film will be able to match either the intellect or the personality that this novel provides. If it is even half as good as this book, then the film will have done very well for itself.

"Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob."