Hugos 2022: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Andy Weir's The Martian was self-published electronically in 2011, and then republished by a traditional publisher in 2014, which is when it went big; this meant that by the time people noticed it, it was no longer eligible for a Hugo Award. (Weir did win the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2015, however, on the basis of The Martian, as even though it is administered alongside the Hugos, it has different eligibility rules.) Weir's next novel, Artemis (2017), had a much more mixed reception; I never read it, but critical reception made it seem like he tried something new, and it wasn't within his skillset as a writer. It didn't make the 2016 Hugo ballot (it was about twenty-five nominating ballots short, putting it five positions down).

Published: 2021
Acquired and read: July 2022

Well, Weir is back on familiar ground with Project Hail Mary, and it is thus little surprise that he is finally a Hugo finalist. Like The Martian, Project Hail Mary is about a single science expert struggling to survive on his own in space—although in this case, the entire future of the human race depends on him. I called The Martian an example of Golden-Age science fiction, and PHM is similar: a scientist boldly sciencing his way out of problems. I enjoyed it, particularly the exploration of an alien biology in the form of the astrophage, a space-based life-form that feeds on the light of stars. Weir does a good job extrapolating from the idea of the astrophage.

The big difference between Project Hail Mary and an actual work of Golden Age sf is that PHM is much much longer. Novels were a rarity back then, and when they existed, they ran about 200 pages at most. PHM is over twice as long, and around page 350, I was bored with the formula. 1) Everything seems fine. 2) Something unexpected goes wrong. 3) There is a perfectly rational scientific explanation for this. 4) There is a perfectly rational scientific solution for this. When something went wrong around this point, I just groaned, because I could see exactly how it would play out... and indeed the formula repeated two more times beyond that.

Unfortunately, there's nothing else to get you through Project Hail Mary. Not theme, nor character work. Weir is the kind of writer where his supporting characters have no more characterization than "Russian." His main character isn't much better: there's an attempt at an interesting idea with him being too cowardly to go to space, but somehow he's done it anyway, but 1) it wasn't clear to me he was meant to be a coward until someone actually said it aloud, and 2) you might think the book would then be about overcoming cowardice, but instead his cowardice is treated as a mystery, and once you know the reason he went to space despite his cowardice, it never comes up again.

It's clear that this book works for many. I think there's a version of it that could have worked for me; after all, I did enjoy The Martian. And I did laugh at one good joke. But I found this a bit of a pointless slog in the end.