Project Hail Mary

Genre

Science Fiction & Speculative Fiction

Publisher

Ballantine Books (Penguin Random House)

Publication year

2021

ISBN

9780593135204

A man wakes on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is or why he is there, and slowly realizes he is humanity's last hope against a catastrophe threatening the Sun. Andy Weir's science-fiction novel combines an amnesiac mystery with hands-on problem-solving. It was a #1 New York Times...

A man wakes alone on a spaceship, unable to remember his own name, tended by robot arms and flanked by two corpses. Andy Weir turns that disorienting opening into one of the most purely enjoyable science-fiction novels of the decade, as his narrator reconstructs both his identity and his impossible mission: to save a Sun that is dimming and, with it, all life on Earth. As in The Martian, the pleasure is watching a resourceful mind attack lethal problems with real science, worked out step by step, wrong turns included - but Project Hail Mary adds a first-contact friendship so charming it has become the book's most beloved feature. Weir writes propulsive, wisecracking prose that prizes momentum and delight over literary polish, and the result is unashamedly a crowd-pleaser: funny, ingenious and genuinely suspenseful. For readers who want science fiction that celebrates curiosity and competence, it is close to irresistible - a rousing, big-hearted adventure racing toward a soon-to-be-filmed finale.