EPBOT Readers discussion

This is the thread for your final thoughts on Project Hail Mary. Spoilers are fine here, so don't read this until you're finished!

Here's some questions to help with discussion, feel free to answer any that appeal! Any thoughts welcome.

Did you read The Martian? How did Project Hail Mary compare to it? Which one did you like better?

We meet Ryland when he wakes up all alone on the spaceship. He’s suffering from select amnesia and is slowly piecing together what happened. Why do you think the author decided to tell the story in this way? How did the slow reveal help build tension?

We eventually learn that Ryland is a science teacher after he left his career as a molecular biologist. Let’s talk about why Ryland left that field and found solace in teaching.

Why did Stratt recruit Ryland to help with the task force of finding out what is dimming the sun?


The entire world comes together to try and solve this huge issue. What did you think about this behind the scenes look at the countries working together?

While it seems that Ryland is going to be a man alone—big surprise— he encounters an alien creature who is also trying to solve the Astrophage issue. What did you think about the alien appearance?

Let’s talk about the friendship between Ryland and Rocky. Despite all the differences, in what ways were they similar?

What did you think about all the science details on solving the Astrophage problem?

We eventually find out that Ryland didn’t volunteer for the mission—he got forced against his will by Stratt. How did that change how Ryland perceived the mission? Do you think he was a coward like Stratt accused him of or was he simply scared?

Ryland makes a huge choice in the end—go back to earth or save Rocky and his people. Let’s talk about Ryland’s decision.

Do you think he will ever go back to earth? In your opinion, what has happened to earth?

Hollywood is making a movie version of the book with Ryan Gosling playing Ryland. Which scenes do you hope are included in the novel? How do you think the movie version will handle the Rocky character?

Any other thoughts?

I may comment several times answering different questions as I go. I loved this book. I have read all of Andy Weir's books. This one is as interesting as The Martian. I was not a fan of Artemis and it took me three tries to finish it.

The aspects of this book and The Martian that appeal to my inner engineer is all the problem solving and analytical thought processes. This was similar in the Martian.

I thought that the flashback amnesia technique to fill in the backstory was interesting. I enjoyed that story too and I enjoyed its slow unrolling. I admit I was surprised to discover he was coerced and forced on the mission.

I loved Rocky too. I am not sure if language barriers and communication could be figured out quite as quickly.

That's all I have time for for now.

I just finished this and I really loved it! I'm a middle school science teacher myself, so learning that Ryland is (was) one too had me squee-ing.

At first I thought it was a little too similar to The Martian - one man trying to survive in space, etc - but then Rocky showed up and it went in a completely different direction. I don't know that I'd say it's better or worse than The Martian - I loved them both equally. I'll also say that his other book Artemis was a bit of a disappointment compared to these two.

Predictably, I LOVED the ending. The thought of Ryland spending the rest of his life teaching science to teeny Eridians gave me the warm fuzzies. I don't think he will go back to Earth, but I'd be surprised if he didn't try to communicate, even if it's a 16-year lag. I don't know what Earth will look like at that point, but I suspect it would be VERY different.

Ryan Gosling... he wouldn't have been my first choice, but I was pleasantly surprised by Matt Damon in The Martian so what do I know? :) It will be really interesting to see what they do with Rocky!

So I enjoyed this but yeah, it was really a lot like The Martian, even with the alien thing. Guy is alone in space, has to figure out how to do stuff! Wait, guy can now communicate and collaborate! Guy loses contact again, another round of solo figuring. Plot is pretty much just a long string of catastrophes. Basically The Martian but with slightly more biology and less cursing.

I thought the amnesia flashback stuff was largely a device to get the exposition in without being extremely boring. So you get some interesting figuring-stuff-out, and then a little bit of backstory, then back to more action. It did also allow the revelation of the protagonist's involuntary participation to be delayed to a suitably climactic moment.

There's a lot of suspension of disbelief in a book like this - microbes that break physics, a teacher going on a world-saving mission, rapidly learning an entirely alien language - but I have to say that right now the biggest leap for me was the "entire world comes together" part. We have at least two global crises going on right now and we can't get our act together. All the nations of the world giving one lady authority to do absolutely anything with any amount of money? I don't buy it.

I also liked Rocky. It's tough to make an alien that's not just "we stuck antennae on a guy" but is still able to interact meaningfully with humans. The author clearly put some thought into a plausible design as well as the reasons for the commonalities. There's still a bit of coincidence, of course, but you know, it's a novel. I liked the idea of sonar-as-vision, kind of a fun twist.

I guess Ryland Grace is something of a coward, but I think most people are. It's adaptive, right? I'm sure it's helpful to have the occasional "laugh in the face of danger" daredevil pop up in a society, but most of them are going to fall off cliffs or get eaten by lions; most of us are trying to survive. He's definitely braver than I am, though. If I woke up in a strange environment with two corpses and amnesia, I definitely wouldn't be doing science experiments; I'm not sure I'd survive.

For the movie I think they'll just CGI Rocky, but I hope some poor soul has to come up with a bunch of chord combinations for the language. (You could just play random notes, but some people would complain.) They could caption the Rocky-speak as is usually done with foreign languages, but it would be pretty easy to turn the idea of the word spreadsheet into an Eridianese-to-English speech-to-text-to-speech program and then he could have a lil computer voice.

This book is in the running for one of my favorites of the year. I'm an engineer, so I'm always up for some math and science in my novels. I've realized I'll read anything if it has a touch of humor, and think that's why I've liked all of Andy Weir's stuff. I actually read Artemis first, and really liked it. It was also quite funny for me, and I was confused about how the Martian could be written by the same guy because what's funny about someone stuck on Mars. But then I read it and was impressed at what he did with humor there too.

I really liked Rocky. I remember reading something about how most fictional aliens are still sortof human-shaped, so enjoyed something different. 22bot just finished listening to audiobook, and he said they included musical notes for Rocky's speech, so someone has already thought about this. I was surprised when we learned that he was coerced into it, and happy when he redeemed himself by saving Rocky's planet. I was bracing myself for him to die on the planet, then pleasantly surprised to see how it ended instead.

I agree that this book felt very similar to the Martian. Almost like, since people didn't like his previous book as much, Weir decided to go back to the formula that made him successful. I like them both, but I almost think I like this one better because of Rocky.

I also agree that the amnesia angle was probably a convenient way to space out gradual exposition without it feeling bogged down or front-loaded by going through all the backstory before launching him into space. Although, by the time we meet and get to know his crew mates via flashback, I really liked them and I was sad that they were already dead.

Call me cynical, but I got the impression that Stratt initially recruited Ryland to the task force because he was expendable. If he accidentally blew himself up in an Astrophage experiment, it wasn't as great a loss. I definitely agree with Rebecca - having seen everything going on in the world in the past 2 years, it was hardest to believe the various countries all coming together and giving Stratt carte blanche to do whatever she wanted, even for something as big as the destruction of the Earth.

I think Ryland was a bit of a coward, but understandably so. He wasn't a soldier or trained astronaut. Although I think his cowardice was also why he changed careers. It was safer and easier to teach basic science to kids than to defend his point of view, which is why he left biology.

I loved Rocky, and he was what set this apart from The Martian for me; he felt genuinely alien but relatable. The two characters had to struggle to communicate. The big similarities is that they're both alone and stuck in space, but I think beyond that, they both have the curious, scientific minds that want to know how and why things work. As with The Martian, I enjoyed all the science talk and the practical application of science to solve problems.

I loved the ending, especially the bit with him teaching the little kids. I think Earth was probably saved if his research reached them. I don't think he'll ever go back, unless the Eridians suddenly invent FTL travel; it's too far, and he'd probably be dead by the time he got back. I do think it would be interesting if his presence and involvement opened up the first interstellar diplomatic relations in the future, but then the question would be, which country/countries/organizations would speak for Earth? The UN?

Yeah, I think it would be interesting to know what data came back on the beetles in addition to the taumoebas, but I can see how that wouldn't really fit into the story. At a minimum, he must've taken some pictures of Rocky and sent a copy of the linguistic spreadsheet. Did he take some time to write up the known state of Eridian science and technology? What else would Earth need to know? Also I hope there was some sort of data file available from the robot nurse that would give insight into what happened to the other crew members.

I thought that it was nice to have a non humanoid alien with a tonal language. The first contact and building a common language/ language dictionary was so nice to hear/read (I read the audiobook).

But it was so similar to The Martian. My husband I were commiserating that yet again it was a sci-fi book with a hero who is reluctantly pulled into a mission because of their background knowledge. There was a little suspension of belief about Ryland going from middle school science teacher to number two in the planning mission, and then onto the ship for the mission.

But I was left wondering at the end, when he sent the beetles back, did he let them know about the Eridians? Why was he still the only human? Were there going to be more Earthlings coming to the planet to expand the relationships between the two species? Would this discovery be the start of interstellar relationships between two nearby star systems?