Project Hail Mary
“Anybody read Andy Weir's Hail Mary? It's really great.”
Why it is worth your time
Project Hail Mary is Andy Weir's 2021 novel. Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher, wakes alone on a spacecraft with no memory of why he is there. He pieces together that a microbe called astrophage is dimming the sun, that he was sent to a nearby star to find out why that star is unaffected, and that he is not the only one who came. Weir wrote The Martian, and this book uses the same method: a problem-solving narrator, real physics, and jokes. Jason asked on the podcast in July 2021 whether the others had read it and said it was great. Science fiction is his regular break from business books. It suits readers who liked The Martian and anyone who wants a fast audiobook. The caveat is that the narrator is a wisecracking problem-solver much like The Martian's Mark Watney, and The Space Review found the back-and-forth flashback structure tiring.
