Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

⭐ 4/10

I'll start by saying I have seen the trailer for this movie and it will be an absolute smash hit. Great actors, perfect directors for something like this, fun trailer, when the story of history is told and my WeViews come back up everyone will say I am wrong. I had a friend I hadn't talked to in forever at a party last weekend say he read this and loved it and thought of me and I had to share my hot take...

This book is unreadable! I am truly baffled by the universal love for this. Now let me explain, I love sci-fi, and I also really like science! I took astrophysics as an elective in university, you know, the the course where you usually take something to raise your average. This book felt like studying for an exam, but not in a way I used to enjoy. He completely bombards you with new science, but also an onslaught of explanation and experimentation. The book would pick up steam, and then there would be minutes of explaining procedure and scientific method that would completely deflate it for me.

Let me backtrack. So this is a book about a high school science teacher who is sent in to space to save the world. Cool premise, great first chapter. But all book long he's like, aw shucks, I'm just a teacher! But at the same time he is making insane discoveries, doing crazy experiments, learning languages, just all this genius level stuff, basically a super hero. He maintains this annoyingly humble attitude, especially through the flashbacks, where it is clear what his role will be and he just will not accept it for the most eye-roll inducing of reasons.

This is a good time to bring up WeView's favourite, Sanderson. This is a total Sanderson book, I am 100% convinced he has read it and loved it. Rhythms of War contains huge sections that are exactly this book! Navani doing a million experiments to uncover secrets in the magic system of that world, and I actually liked it there because it wasn't the entire book. That book is also trash, but not the point. What hooked me on Sanderson originally is the world building, but also the scientific basis for his magic systems. I love as they evolve, and you learn more about them, and they connect. My math brain loves when everything adds up and makes sense and is "explainable", using the facts of that world to explain of course. This book is that on steroids, using real world science but with new elements and physics and whatnot, and it is just so overwhelming and honestly boring to listen to.

The humour is Sandersonian too, I hate to say. Just kind of one-liners and retorts that are always like, "haha, isn't science so great!?". Or like, something goes wrong and he's like, "well, isn't that great...". He's alone (for most of the book), so this internal dialogue is just cringey to me, a sarcasm and dorkiness that just did not translate. Not to mention that every person we meet in flashbacks is so cookie-cutter. The Russian likes Vodka! The German over-engineers everything! Of course they all have their quirks, since they are all geniuses.

There are some awesome ideas in here. In some of the flashbacks there are scientists and ecologists who need to undo years of work to actually make the world hotter, increase the effects of global warming, to buy the world some extra time. That's interesting!  There's a twist when you find out why he is actually on the ship I did not see coming at all, and that was really great too, although his motivation for what happens is so so silly to me so that kind of got neutered. I did like the flashbacks, so maybe I was missing the connection to Earth, being reminded what was at stake. I thought the ending was laughable, and some of his decisions near the end had me yelling out loud.

I can't help but feel like there is something wrong with me. Maybe its because this was an audio book. Again I just cannot understand the broad appeal here, since the minutia of scientific experimentation is not broadly appealing!