Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary

[Janx]

I liked the film of The Martian and the premise of Project Hail Mary intrigues me. But I've also read Weir's prose is a bit... not good. Like the main character inner voice sounds like corny 1950s sitcom talk. What did you all think of the writing quality?

he dropped the silly not-swearing-isms early enough. Clearly trying to foreshadow a person who watched what theys said.

I'm not seeing a problem with it.

I'm still somewhere in the book. Hard to say without spoilers.

One difference between Martian and Mary is the former had dang near everything attempted go wrong. Mary hasn't had any failures (yet?). In the former, I felt like that was going on a bit long such that it became expected. Here, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I reckon that might dub the hero a Mary Sue, though the standard setting example is far more atrocious than what most folks stick that label on.

 

[Sithlord]

I liked the film of The Martian and the premise of Project Hail Mary intrigues me. But I've also read Weir's prose is a bit... not good. Like the main character inner voice sounds like corny 1950s sitcom talk. What did you all think of the writing quality?

What you describe is a plus for me.

 

[Janx]

I had a thought, so I checked. This book was published on May 4th, 2021.

I'm going to guess it took the publisher a year to turn this out from the initial manuscript Weir sent in.

So he did likely did NOT write this in 2020.

The book is too optimistic about the world coming together to solve a global crisis. A lesson he would have learned during the pandemic last year.

last I checked, I was 61% read on it. Maybe something will surprise me.

 

[Mallus]

What you describe is a plus for me.

It was a plus for me in the early episodes of WandaVision, but generally speaking I prefer more naturalistic dialogue (unless the writer stylizes the hell out it like Mal Reynolds‘s diction in Firefly).

 

[Janx]

I'm a little over 70%. Stuff is going wrong now. Still a bit simplistic in problem/solution setup.

Now I thought The Martian was a continuous stack of every step had a problem (and immediate solution). Perhaps in this book he's trying a different approach. Haven't read Artemis, so I'm not sure what he did there.

 

[Morrus]

Haven't read Artemis, so I'm not sure what he did there.

Totally different type of story. At least, as far into it as I got.

 

[Janx]

Totally different type of story. At least, as far into it as I got.

Finished HM last night. Anybody else ready to talk about it? I don't recall this being a full spoilers thread, so I can wait...

 

[Morrus]

Finished HM last night. Anybody else ready to talk about it? I don't recall this being a full spoilers thread, so I can wait...

I'm still a couple of days out. Right now --

Spoiler

Rocky is dead but I think he's going to get better

 

[Janx]

I'm still a couple of days out. Right now --

Spoiler

Rocky is dead but I think he's going to get better

I'll check back when this thread pops back up near the top...

 

[Morrus]

Finally!

So, verdict - solid. Not as good as The Martian. Way better than Artemis. A decent enough story, let down by a long slow bit in the middle.

Spoiler

The slow bit was several chapters of Grace breeding taumoeba and cleaning fuel lines. I feel like that went on for way too long, and was even less interesting to read about than it probably was to actually do.

Also, why does Rocky say things like "Thank" instead of "Thank you" or "Thanks"? What Grace is hearing is the output he entered into his spreadsheet and voice synthesizer. So why did he tell the spreadsheet that that musical note was to be said "Thank" and not "Thanks"?