Ep 750 - Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

Summary

Podcast Summary: Overdue Ep 750 – Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

Date: May 11, 2026 | Hosts: Andrew and Craig | Podcast: Overdue (Headgum)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Andrew and Craig revisit Andy Weir—author of "The Martian"—to discuss his third novel, Project Hail Mary. With a recent hit film adaptation starring Ryan Gosling, Weir’s brand of "hard science fiction" is back in the spotlight. Craig leads the conversation, having read the book, and together the hosts analyze its scientific strengths, narrative structure, optimism, and the creative depiction of alien first contact.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Andy Weir's Career & Writing Style

• Author Background:

  • Initially a computer programmer, Weir self-published creative works and gained fame with "The Martian," which was serialized on his blog before becoming a novel and then a Ridley Scott film.
  • Published: The Martian (2011), Artemis (2017), Project Hail Mary (2021).

• Hard Science Fiction Roots:

  • Both "The Martian" and "Project Hail Mary" are celebrated for their attempts at realistic science, focusing on technical problem-solving and grounded technology—no warp drives or mystical elements.
  • Artemis's more relaxed approach to "hard sci-fi" met a tepid response.

• The 'Competent Man' Trope:

  • "Project Hail Mary" is described as a "competent man" story: "It's one guy, he's mostly alone, and he encounters problems kind of in order, and then thinks about them and then solves them with his amazing brain." – Andrew [14:15]

2. From Book to Film

• Film Adaptation:
  • Recent film adaption (2026) stars Ryan Gosling, directed by Lord and Miller (of Spider-Verse & Lego Movie).
  • Production history is straightforward due to prior Weir adaptation success.
  • Notable: Rocky the alien is realized through a mix of puppetry and CGI, with the puppeteer's performance ultimately used for Rocky's voice. [56:19]

3. Narrative Structure & Use of Amnesia

• Setup:

  • Ryland Grace, the protagonist, wakes up on a spaceship with amnesia and two dead crewmates beside him. The flashback structure reveals Earth's crisis and his recruitment.

• Amnesia as Device:

  • "The amnesia is mostly a structural device so that he—and we—can learn about the backstory...as convenient to, you know, teaching Ryland about what he's doing in real time." – Craig [31:34]
  • The hosts debate the logic and rules of amnesia in fiction, with Andrew noting: "I'm always interested in how a magic system works. And in the same way, I'm interested in where the rules of their Gilligan's Island amnesia plot." [25:02]

• Critique of Flashbacks:

  • Flashbacks are "functionally interesting but not dramatically interesting," used more for exposition than emotional resonance. [33:21]

4. The Science—Cool, Wonky, or Both?

• Science Focus:

  • Astrophage, the sun-eating alien microbe, functions as Weir's speculative "mass conversion fuel." This is the story’s central problem and engine for interstellar travel.
  • The scientific process depicted (“theory, test, revise”) receives praise for being collaborative and optimistic: "At the end of the day, it's just so nice to see scientists working together." – Craig [29:02]

• Dubious Details:

  • Real scientists have quibbled with certain elements, like ostracism for hypothesizing non-waterbased life and the technical plausibility of certain materials (i.e., solid xenon). [28:14, 54:42]

• Optimism and Collaboration:

  • Both the book and its adaptation are described as unusually hopeful for contemporary sci-fi, positing that “good people exist and want to do good, and we have the capacity to achieve.” [17:29]

5. The First Contact with Rocky

• Section Highlights:

  • The heart of the novel is Ryland’s interactions with Rocky, an alien engineer from Arid with a rocky, spider-like form and a sung, musical language.
  • Their communication method:
    • Begins with symbol exchange, evolves to constructing a vocabulary via computer analysis of Rocky’s unique "chord" language. [57:08]
    • "MIDI spreadsheet" used as a translation aid.
    • "The biggest leap in the book, imo, is that within a month or two, Grace is not really looking at the laptop...he develops a fluency of this alien music language." – Craig [58:30]
  • Rocky’s culture and biology:
    • No eyes ("never evolved to need to see light") and can function under immense atmospheric pressure.
    • Alien and human are technological peers, meeting in a "Goldilocks zone" of development. [60:34]
    • Rocky’s speech is endearingly direct: "Andrew, I have a. I would like to know more about that question." [62:01]

• Memorable Quote:

  • "Rocky rules and our main character is fine. I think that's where I land on Project Hail Mary." – Craig [73:51]

6. Major Plot Moves (w/ Timestamps)

• [34:01] Ryland’s initial discovery: spaceship, dead crewmates, learning through deduction and computer aids.
• [50:33] Disposal of crewmates/autopsy of mission failure.
• [51:13] First encounter with Rocky’s ship (Blip A).
• [53:00–56:02] The slow, tactile, science-based development of communication and cooperation with Rocky.
• [65:35–66:12] The discovery of Adrian, a planet whose atmosphere contains an organism that kills astrophage—the key to saving both their worlds.
• [68:59–69:16] Emotional climax: Ryland sacrifices his own opportunity to return to Earth, choosing instead to save Rocky and live on the alien world.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Maybe he forgot that he was a coward. Maybe he also forgot how to act one.”
  – Andrew, on the oddity of Ryland’s character ‘revelation’ [73:27]

• "People just want to be alone in a room with a problem...noodling on the problem for a bit and then solving it." – Andrew [47:56]

• "There's never an antagonist trying to dissuade them... They are working with, like, how do we manage these microorganisms that don't know any better?" – Craig [67:57]

• “I think people like this book because it’s about people accomplishing things and about science doing good rather than bad. And I think it has an innate optimism to it.” – Craig [71:44]

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Structural Breakdown (with Timestamps)

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp | |----------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------| | Introduction | Defining "hard" sci-fi (with Weir jokes and film references) | 03:08–08:09 | | Andy Weir Recap | Author’s background/career trajectory | 06:45–09:06 | | Production Notes | Film adaptation—Lord/Miller, Ryan Gosling; adaptation trivia | 10:05–12:45 | | Science as Story | Role of scientific rigor, optimism, COVID parallels | 16:22–20:40 | | Amnesia & Flashbacks | Structure, rules, critique | 23:43–33:21 | | Story Summary | Book's main plot, Earth’s crisis, the mission, sun-dimming threat | 35:16–46:27 | | The Science Bits | Astrophage as fuel, wobbly science, lab scenes | 41:23–45:30 | | First Contact | Meeting Rocky, language development, mutual discovery | 51:13–64:17 | | Resolution | The Adrian planet, fixing the problem, Ryland’s sacrifice | 65:35–69:16 | | Character/Style Notes | Narration voice, optimism, the joy of collaboration | 70:23–74:42 | | Wrap-Up | Takeaways, popularity, science literacy in fiction | 74:42–75:31 |

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Podcast Tone & Style

• Playful banter: Hosts regularly make pop-culture jokes (i.e., Castaway, Star Trek, Flanders-like "neutrinos," etc.) and affectionately poke fun at both the book’s style and their own reading experiences.
• Critical but fair: They note the book's weaknesses, such as awkward character beats and clunky flashbacks, but balance this with clear enjoyment of the book's optimistic spirit and the inventiveness of its alien contact scenes.
• Accessible science: While neither host claims to be a scientist, they enjoy the book’s approach to scientific problem-solving and are transparent about their limits ("Yeah, I trust you, dude. I trust you that that is what gravity does..."). [74:49]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Project Hail Mary is a competent, problem-solving, optimistic hard science fiction adventure, elevated by its unique and heartfelt depiction of first contact.
• The book’s science is equal parts impressive and fantastical (“wonky”), and its optimism—especially in an era of perpetual crisis—strikes a particularly strong chord with readers.
• Craig and Andrew find the amnesia/flashback device underwhelming but agree that Rocky the alien is a standout character and that the book's collaborative spirit is its true heart.

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If you enjoyed thoughtful, banter-filled discussions on the interplay between narrative, character, and speculative science—and want to know how a high school science teacher and a five-legged alien spider can band together to save two worlds—this episode is for you.

Transcript

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling Specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. Parents, have a talk with your kids about hard science, about hard science fiction. Don't let them do the hard stuff. If they're gonna do science fiction, there should be warp engines and aliens with weird foreheads and lasers and, like, laser swords.

[Craig]

Maybe.

[Andrew]

Laser swords. And like sound. There should be sound in the vacuum of space. Sound in, like, explosions and stuff.

[Craig]

Yes. Kind of unexplained gravity. That just happens if you watch it.

[Andrew]

And you can imagine Neil DeGrasse Tyson coming up to you and being like, well, actually, it wouldn't be like this. Then that's safe. You can watch that. But if they're getting. If they're on that hard stuff, that uncut stuff, I don't think that's safe.

[Craig]

Here's the. Here's what I've Learned about Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He'll do that for the hard stuff anyway, because you get so close to the real science and he goes, not close enough. Welcome to our book podcast, where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. Sometimes those books are about hard sci fi.

[Andrew]

Yeah, we're doing that hard stuff. It's Project Hail Mary this week on Overdue.

[Craig]

What?

[Andrew]

Podject Hail Mary. Because every week one of us reads a book we've never read before. We tell you about it and we tell. And Craig tells me about it. I tell Craig about it. This week, Craig read the book. And what was it that you read?

[Craig]

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weird. Now a major motion picture probably emblazoned on every physical copy of the book printed in the last six months.

[Andrew]

I imagine Ryan Gosling's face is looking

[Craig]

at me off the COVID It's not a bad face. He can look at me all he wants.

[Andrew]

He's got, you know, people like his face. That's part why he's who he is.

[Craig]

Yep, that's. That's true.

[Andrew]

That's part of why society values him. The way that it does is because he's got a pleasant face.

[Craig]

Many, many real factual moons. Hard sci fi Moons ago. Andrew read the Martian 137 from October of 2015.

[Andrew]

I got this too. I did the notes too.

[Craig]

And you were okay on the book? I was.

[Andrew]

I was fine with it. There were some memorable scenes in the Martian. And the farther away I get from the actual prose and the voice of the book.

[Craig]

The more you like it.

[Andrew]

The more. And then not even the more I like it, just like the more, you know, my feelings about it are vaguely fuzzy and positive.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Being vaguely fuzzy and negative.

[Craig]

Okay. I have not read the Martian. I have not seen either the film adaptation of the Martian, which did have some like Oscar nomination success. Nor have I seen the recent project Hail Mary adaptation, though that is doing very well at the box office.

[Andrew]

Seems to be doing fine at the box office.

[Craig]

It's directed by Lord and Miller, who I believe they're the Spider Verse guys. Right? The Lego Movie and the Spider Verse.

[Andrew]

The Spider Verse. They were attached to direct a film adaptation of Andy Weir's second book, Artemis. That's like stuck in production hell somewhere. They've said they still like to do it, but that book, people don't like that book as much.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

In the Andy weird verse.

[Craig]

So you can go back and do some more. Deep dive on Weir himself in episode 137. Andrew, what do we want to talk about for this episode before I dive into the book?

[Andrew]

Just to recap, Andy Weir. This is a guy. He's born in 1972. He's a computer programmer by trade. And in the 2000s, as many of us did, he start self publishing creative works including WebComics and the 2009 short story the Egg, which honors him an audience. There's a Jerry Spinelli up in here. The Martian was posted serially to Weir's blog before being compiled and released in 2011 as his first published novel. And that gets some attention. And then a successful 2015 film starring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott gets more attention. And yeah, that's Andy. That's Andy Weir. That's like the foundation of him. Since then he is. Since we. The last time we did an episode on him. Also in response to a book of his that became a movie. Now that I think about the timing.

[Craig]

Yep. Huh.

[Andrew]

He has written some other short stories. He's written a TV pilot. As far as novels go, he's published Artemis in 2017 and then Project Hail Mary in 2021. I think the. When that to the extent that people reacted negatively to Artemis, I think it eased up on the hard sci fi stuff some. And then I think he tried to do some like interpersonal relationship stuff or like writing from outside of his own, like lived perspective stuff and it was not super successful, I don't think for some people.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

Like the Martian PHM as we'll call it. Because that's how I started Writing in my notes, like halfway through. It's categorized as hard science fiction, which is to say it tries to stick to quote unquote, realistic depictions of technology if it's its physics. That's how Henry used to say physics, because he had a book called the ABCs of Physics and he would always say he wanted to read the ABCs of physics. Depictions of technology and physics. I'll let you tell me, Craig, whether you think that's an accurate description of the science in phm. I know you're a scientist.

[Craig]

Okay. I'm not a scientist.

[Andrew]

Sort of scientist of the world.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

As we all are. But the point being it's not a universe that's got faster than light travel and all the other doodads that we were talking about. Weir had said that some of the elements of PHM had come from an aborted second novel that he did like 75,000 words.

[Craig]

Oh, yes, Zach. A space opera.

[Andrew]

EK. And then. Yeah, we're covering the book now in part because the film came out in March. Not the, the film resists fun facts. There is no, there's not a single fun fact about this film. Like as far as the production of it goes. As far as the. Like, it's, it's, it's road to getting made Metro Goldwyn Mayer. One of the rights to the book before it was published because it was from a guy who did a book that became a successful movie. And then because they wanted the rights, they got them. And then after they got the rights, they made the movie. And then so far it's made 641 million against a budget of 200 million. There's just like not a lot going on. You told me to research the production history of the movie.

[Craig]

No, just I wasn't sure what might be in there.

[Andrew]

And sometimes you get a lot of peaks and valleys and this one is just no straight line, nothing.

[Craig]

I mean, I suppose that's not surprising for the follow up successful novel. As you said to the last time he wrote a successful novel and it became a movie and it worked out and I was like, yeah, you just say yes, just write the check, it's fine. Yeah. I think he was more involved in this production than he was on the Martian. I don't know what that means in practice, but there was.

[Andrew]

I, I know he used to have like a phobia about flying that would.

[Craig]

Yes. From.

[Andrew]

Yes, from doing a lot of touring and stuff. And then I think maybe he kicked that. I'm not sure whether he's kicked. Like he kicked it totally. Or just kicked it for like movie premieres and stuff, like comic cons or something. But I think maybe it's. It's more possible for him to get around than it was sure. Back in the day. But then also, I don't know, you could probably just. You probably just zoom that. I don't know what if you would need it to be a flight. So I'm just kind of making stuff up.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But that is a fact about Andy Weirs. He had a phobia about.

[Craig]

That is true. That is true. So a few other things that I have to add to the conversation here. There are two different New York Times pieces on kind of the development of this project. One is from 2021, Andy Weir's new Space Odyssey. There's a profile on him kind of coming off of Artemis, which it describes as a thriller about a heist that takes place on the moon. That sounds pretty good. And talks about how he was working on Zek and he's really interested in this idea of what if we had a mass conversion fuel? Which is something he also talks about in an article called A Hail Mary for Earth Built on Solid Science, which came out in March of this year as a, you know, pre film release profile. And he is just interested in this idea. What if we had some sort of incredibly efficient fuel that would allow for interstellar travel? And he. The whole Zach thing didn't like what it was going on. There were like politics on Mars. Like, he just like thought it was bad. It just got bad. And where he winds up with this one, which we'll talk about, is he kind of comes up with a what if that fuel is actually an alien organism and where did it come from? Where did it go? Are we going to survive this? Cotton eye Joe? Like that sort of ideas where he lands on.

[Andrew]

That's stupid. That's a stupid thing you said.

[Craig]

He does say that Hail Mary is a bit of a leap for him. He doesn't want to alienate his readers with something that's too fantastical. Though there. Spoiler. There is a little cool alien in this book. So it is a little fantastical if you ask me.

[Andrew]

Interesting for you to describe this book as a leap for him. Because my impression, in many ways it

[Craig]

is not at all.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Because I read this is from the New York Times review of the book.

[Craig]

Of the book. Yeah.

[Andrew]

And it says that it's. It's talking about the Martian and it talks about the kind of story it is, which is what the Times calls a competent man story.

[Craig]

Capital C, Capital M, yes, it's stranded.

[Andrew]

Astronaut Mark Watney survived on Mars using ingenuity, duct tape, and plenty of wise cracks. But the writing fell apart in the scenes in which people actually had to have a convers. Weir's next effort, Artemis, exposed his limited interests in constructing relationships or a plausible future society. His latest novel, Project Hail Mary, is a sensible course correction that supersizes the strategies of his most successful book. The narrator awakens alone in a spacecraft connected to a medical computer. And unlike Watney, who at least understood his predicament, he doesn't even remember his own name. Readers who were underwhelmed by the attempt to write a leading role for a Saudi woman in Artemis will be relieved by his first few deductions about himself. Quote, I'm Caucasian, I'm male, and I speak English.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

And it sounds like it is just kind of like the Martian. It's a. It's one guy, he's mostly alone, and he encounters problems kind of in order, and then thinks about them and then solves them with his amazing brain.

[Craig]

Yes. Which, as I recall, kind of came out a little differently in the Martian because that was written serially. And so it was more like, here's a problem, now I'm gonna solve it. Here's a problem, now I'm gonna solve it. And maybe as you're reading that serially, you don't. It doesn't. It feels different in aggregate than it does in Episode.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

But this. Yeah, this follows a similar structure. There is a lot of First Contact alien stuff in this, which I think is honestly what I will probably think about the most coming away from this book. There's some weird leaps that he makes.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Think about it.

[Craig]

How that works.

[Andrew]

Positive or think about the most negative.

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Which way?

[Craig]

Mostly positive. We'll get into it when we do the summary of the book, but in general, I think there's some creative alien stuff here in terms of a depiction of a. Of a First Contact episode that I just haven't. I personally haven't seen in books before. I'm sure there are books that have done similar stuff. I don't want to imagine that Andy is the first person to have come up with how you could tell some of these stories, but I found stuff very compelling.

[Andrew]

You talk about politics on Mars being part of Zec, and I do wonder if he was like, oh, well, Red Rising exists now, and I don't. Somebody beat me to politics on Mars.

[Craig]

So it's the other thing that the New York Times profile pre book covers is that, you know, he carries over a ruthless bureaucrat from Zack as well as the mysterious mass conversion substance.

[Andrew]

As of 2012, Andy Weir was a I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative guy. So it does seem somehow fitting to me that he would decide that a bureaucrat was going to be his. His end boss for the way that the.

[Craig]

And so there. There is a ruthless bureaucrat in this book. It's part of the structure that I find the least interesting element in the book, which is a shame because it's a big part of the book. Oops. There's a flashback structure that I think is like, at times thought provoking, but storytelling wise leaves me less engaged than the oh, I met alien stuff. But all that to say the ruthless bureaucrat cutting, you know, miles of red tape to solve an emergent crisis meant that. So this book, when did it come out? Did it come out in 20?

[Andrew]

20?

[Craig]

21 1? So folks were reading it in the, you know, it was hot vac summer, it was pre vac spring.

[Andrew]

People were watching Joe Biden's presidency fall apart as he totally bungled Afghanistan. The worst thing that any president has ever done.

[Craig]

But as people were reading it there, there were a lot of early reads that put it as a Covid parable. Like, there is this, you know, heretofore unprecedented microorganism causing all sorts of trouble. The main character is in an effective lockdown of sorts. He's all on his own. The governments are kind of racing to fix this imminent problem and throwing best practices and rules out the window to do so. And the thing is, of course, that he'd finish a draft before lockdown ever happened and before, like, anybody really knew what Covid was. So it's just like a. I think it spoke to people at the time, given their experience of COVID And I think also we don't need to. We might wind up revisiting this later in the conversation. But I think certainly something I've seen in the reviews of the film is that there's just a strong through line of optimism in this book. And like, we can accomplish things when things get bad and we can affect positive changes, even if there are some. You know, we're going to feel pain and we're going to have to overcome challenges. But, like, at the end of the day, good people exist and they want to do good and we have the capacity to achieve. It is like a baseline assumption of the novel. And I think a lot of us move through our day reading the news or having our own Personal lived experience try to dissuade us of that notion of. And if you're responding positively to the story, I would surmise that that is part of it, that is part of the appeal and I think probably was part of what people responded to when the book was first released. So there is something from the end of this might close out our first section. Andrew as he's talking about grounding because his whole deal is he loves to do a lot of research. He loves to do a lot of scientific research and then he will write his little books and they're grounded in the research so that they're hard sci fi. And somebody, somebody asks him in the New York Times interview what role do stories like this so grounded in science play in advancing scientific knowledge? And he says we're not visionaries. I think sci fi authors are science dorks with the ability to write books. They could go write an academic paper if they were actually a scientist. And the interviewer says so the difference is you aren't confined by the bounds of peer review. He says, I'm also not confined by the boundaries of physics. When it gets down to it, I can break physical laws. You can't do that as a physicist.

[Andrew]

It's true. That is the difference. Thanos Andy Weir over fiction and not and non fiction.

[Craig]

I guess so he, he recognizes that he's playing in a space where the factual nature. He's so interested in stuff being grounded in fact. But he knows he also has to make some fictional leaps.

[Andrew]

Yeah, you have to make, you have to make a story happen. And sometimes contrivance is going to, is going to enter into that.

[Craig]

I just like the Chotner esque quality Chutener. Isaac. Who's the Isaac guy?

[Andrew]

I am not going to pronounce his name because I don't know how to pronounce it. Just I've only read it, I feel like.

[Craig]

So the difference is that you aren't confined by the bounds of peer review. Is really good.

[Andrew]

That is, that is a good question. I feel like in an interview, in an Isaac See interview that the, the subject would respond a lot more negatively. They would burst into like no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying.

[Craig]

That's not what I mean. That's not what I mean. Kudos to Katrina Miller who conducted that interview. So. All right, Andrew, let's take a quick break and then I will fire up my engines and take us into space.

[Andrew]

Okay.

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[Craig]

Andrew Craig. How?

[Andrew]

Sound like you had something prepared. All I have is, like, if you have a hard sci fi problem in your home, you can get a softener to put it in your basement. You can fill it up with salt and it'll make your sci fi a little less hard.

[Craig]

How old were you when you realized why they were called soft drinks?

[Andrew]

I was an. I was an adult. I was definitely. I was a grown man when it happened.

[Craig]

I think I was in high school, but it wasn't.

[Andrew]

I just didn't have. I didn't have contact with. With hard drinks until I was of hard drinking age or pretty close. It is pretty close.

[Craig]

Like roundup drinking age as a kid. You encountered the term soft drink in advertising before. Grown ups are really leveling with you about hard drinks.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

You're like, well, why is it soft? I don't.

[Andrew]

You know, I, I. The first time that Henry was, like, pretending to be on the phone, and he held a phone up to his ear. Oh, no. Like, with his finger and thumb extended. Like, he's, like he's ever seen, like, a phone. Phone outside of a TV show. It's just like, people, people. It's just the way it is. And people don't always ask a lot of questions about why we do stuff.

[Craig]

No. We're all living in Plato's cave, looking at shadows, I guess. So this is a book about a guy named Ryland Grace who wakes up in a rocket ship. He doesn't know it's a rocket ship at first, and he's just shooting through space. What questions do you have?

[Andrew]

What are the rules of amnesia in this book?

[Craig]

Great question.

[Andrew]

He remembers. He remembers how to move and how to think.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

But he doesn't remember his name.

[Craig]

He doesn't. It's pretty good soap opera amnesia. He doesn't know his name. He doesn't know what he's in. So it takes.

[Andrew]

Is it like severance where they, like, know how to drive and remember idioms and stuff?

[Craig]

Yeah, but. But he's also aware enough of himself that he is learning about him as the quote you gave us, that he's Caucasian, he speaks English, he has little, like, moments of that in the early part of the book where he goes, oh, I'm. I'm finding myself thinking in imperial units. Like, I thought about something in inches or feet, which means that I am probably not European. I am probably American sort of thing.

[Andrew]

He remembers about countries.

[Craig]

Well, he remembers about countries, and he. I don't know how amnesia works, Andrew. I've never had.

[Andrew]

I don't.

[Craig]

I would forget if I had. I wouldn't remember if I had.

[Andrew]

In the same way. Way is when we read a fantasy book that has magic in it, we ask how the magic works because we have a deep. Yeah, we've been, you know, steeped in the era of Final Fantasy where they're just like, let's totally change how the magic works every single time and see how they like that. So I'm always interested in how a magic system works. And in the same way, I'm interested in where the rules of their Gilligan's island amnesia plot.

[Craig]

It's. Yeah.

[Andrew]

I assume that he has to deal with the amnesia through the whole book because there's no other crew member on the ship to come hit him again with a big wooden mallet and cure the amnesia.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

There's no coconut to fall on his head and make him remember all the stuff that he remembers.

[Craig]

That is true. And the way that the book kind of functions is that, yes, he has amnesia, but it has not impacted his scientific knowledge or his scientific ability, which I get. Like, there's a way in. I don't. I am not a psychologist. I don't know how amnesia works.

[Andrew]

So I'm not asking you how amnesia literally works. I'm just saying what are the dumb rules about what he. What is apparently, like, innate to him that can't be dislodged from his brain?

[Craig]

Yeah, I think.

[Andrew]

Which includes, like, all the stuff that he learned in college but doesn't include his own name.

[Craig]

Yes. He knows, like, facts.

[Andrew]

And this is not me ragging on Andy Weir. This is me ragging on the concept of amnesia in stories.

[Craig]

No, no, no, you're right. Like, he doesn't know his name. He doesn'. Why he's there. He doesn't know where he came from. He doesn't even know that he's in a spaceship. It is clear that he was. I don't even know if he knows this right away. He was in a medically induced coma for years.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Inside of a spaceship as it rocketed somewhere. He wakes he wakes up, you're right, he wakes up and there is like a nurse robot caring for him. It is not a functional like walking around, like, not a robot from the Jetsons, but like robot arms. You can say, computer, do this and it will respond. It is not an AI personality, though. It is not like talking back to him. It does not be. No, it's not Clippy or Rufus or Claude or whatever they're calling these things now. But he does know that there are two other beds that have corpses in them. So he was on this ship with two other people and he doesn't know who they were or why. And yes he does. He knows science still, like all of the processes and factoids from what he later learns was his career as a science teacher. Used to be promising young science man, academic, who published a paper on what if there were life forms that didn't require water? And was laughed out of polite academic society.

[Andrew]

Apparently you had asked me to do some looking into like the scientific reaction to this book because it is hard science.

[Craig]

Huh.

[Andrew]

And one of the things I found was so a lot, a lot of what I found was about the movie and I've talked about it, we'll talk about that. But I found a piece in Science, I Guess Science Science, science.org is an interview with University of Chicago astronomer Wendy Friedman, who had mostly nice things to say about how the film sort of approaches the depiction of the scientific method and you know, having, yes, having a theory, testing a hypothesis, like adjusting your approach. But what she said is that she finds it, quote, a lot exaggerated that a scientist would be ostracized for suggesting that, that the existence of water based, of non water based life is possible. And then drummed out of.

[Craig]

That's fascinating. Yeah. Because it is kind of taken as a given in the book.

[Andrew]

Thinks probably that people would have been more open to his evidence even if they didn't agree with him.

[Craig]

Okay, cool. Yeah, I read a few of those articles and they, more of them than not, ended with this really like positive, like. But at the end of the day it depicts how scientists work and collaborate and like that's why we love the science in this book or movie. And like, I don't think that's wrong. It was just funny to encounter multiple articles where they were like, well, this is what I think about the rocket fuel and this is what I think about the alien stuff and this is what I think about the light stuff. But the end of the day, it's just so nice to see science scientists working together.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Which doesn't seem like the hardest of hard science.

[Craig]

It doesn't? It doesn't. But no. So he, he is a science teacher because he got drummed out of academia. We learned this through flash.

[Andrew]

Wait, how did. He's a teacher and he got drummed out of academia.

[Craig]

He got drummed out of like the science. The. He's a high school teacher. Like, he's like, oh, okay, slumming it.

[Andrew]

He's a Walter White type. A frustrated Walter White.

[Craig]

Well, he, he says that he, you know, this is an under baked part of his personality. Let me just, let me just get this.

[Andrew]

Maybe he forgot all. Maybe he. There's interesting stuff about it, but he forgot all of it because of his amnesia.

[Craig]

He. And this is before he actually remembers this. He like thinks about kids at one point and it's like, oh, I, I realize I have an affinity for kids. What does that mean? Do I have like, am I like a parent? Is that why I'm like interested? And he's like. And then he has a flash, but he's like, no, I'm a high school science teacher. Oh, I'm a good. I'm a cool teacher. And that's really not well depicted in my opinion. Like, it's mostly like one scene where he is doing a lightning round quiz with kids by throwing beanbags at them. And it's like, all right, whatever. But it, it's shorthand for he's a cool science teacher, his kids like him. And he is doing this for the kids at multiple points in the book. Like, he is somebody who finds himself doing something more important than he ever could have dreamed. And if he has a, if there's something that can get him through, it's that he's doing it for these kids.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Yeah, the amnesia. Okay, the amnesia works. But the amnesia is mostly a structural device so that he. And we can learn about the backstory of what happened on Earth before he got put on a rocket ship sent light years away from Earth.

[Andrew]

Okay? So the same reason why anybody does amnesia and any.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

So the, the character can come to all the realizations as the audience does

[Craig]

correct, and so that the author can mete out the information in a way that is convenient to them because it is a book, but it is a little funky the way some. He will just be thinking, the main character will just be talking to himself and then there will sometimes just be a hyphen and he's like. And then it'll just be flashback scene. So like, I think we are led to believe that he is having kind of intense all of a sudden learning stuff from his past. I would be interested to know how the movie handles this because I think it's a more cinematic language than it is a written literary language. To have this kind of like, oh, my brain hurts. I'm remembering something which, like maybe what Weir is trying to get across, but it is also doing it at convenient enough points that it is usually teaching you something about the world in which he currently exists by remembering something about the past. It's fine. I don't love it. I think the.

[Andrew]

Just the whole. The flashback structure, the way the amnesia is deployed more that I just.

[Craig]

I think the. The stuff that we. The scenes back there are like functionally interesting but not dramatically interesting. This is of a piece with the critiques of his work overall is that he is really interested in set up a problem based on interesting science and then solve the problem and then move on to the next one. Yeah, he is not particularly interested in, or at least in this book, not particularly gifted at like interpersonal conflict. It's not a thing he's gonna spend his time writing about, is there?

[Andrew]

I mean, who is there in this for him to have interpersonal conflict? I guess that most must happen mostly in flashback.

[Craig]

It's mostly in flashback. And it is either in flashback or

[Andrew]

perhaps there's a Wilson, like from the Tom Hanks movie cast.

[Craig]

He doesn't do a Wilson.

[Andrew]

He doesn't do a Wilson.

[Craig]

And when we meet the alien, we love the alien and the alien's a cool dude. Like, and. And I actually really like that the alien's a cool dude. There's parts of me that I spend time with this book and go, I don't need an antagonist. And so then we go into these flashbacks and there is a. Effectively my brain just. Subs in the Imperial woman from Andor. The blonde haired woman from Andor. Just like severe, like, no nonsense, just cutting through everybody. She's more powerful than that woman in Andor, of course. But, but, but it's a.

[Andrew]

It feels like it's a larger scale kind of evil bureaucrat than. Not even evil, like, than like somebody who wants to bulldoze the rec center to drill for oil or whatever.

[Craig]

The things that. The things that Ava Strat does are.

[Andrew]

She recruits him, short for Ava Stratocaster,

[Craig]

I assume probably she recruits him Nick Fury style into this project where through flashback we learn that there is a microorganism that is blotting out the sun and like ingesting it's not very micro.

[Andrew]

Sounds pretty big.

[Craig]

Sounds like there's just a lot of it.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

It is ingesting the light output of the sun, such that the sun's energy is dimming.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Which will lead to catastrophic impact on Earth.

[Andrew]

Right?

[Craig]

And half of Earth's population will likely die within 30 years and everything else will be all messed up. So they also determine that there is this, like, line of infrared light between the sun and the planet Venus that appears to be whatever these little microorganisms are, are traveling between the sun and Venus. And so she brings him into this operation, recruits him from his high school, takes him away to a space super secret lab, and she is the person who can just like, make all of this stuff happen. There's a scene where she's like, in court for something and like, literally her response in court is, you can't stop me, the ass.

[Andrew]

The.

[Craig]

The alien thing is here. Like, I need to do what I'm doing. And the judge is like, yeah, you're right. Go. See you later. Bye. It builds.

[Andrew]

That can't be how it works.

[Craig]

It is how it works in this world.

[Andrew]

Okay?

[Craig]

And all of these, any bit I talk about that happens in the flashback and what happens on Earth is kind of doled out throughout the novel as convenient to, you know, teaching Ryland about what he's doing in real time. So I will not. It is not worth our time on the podcast for me to go. And then in this scene he learns this, and then in the scene he learns that that's not useful or interesting to anybody.

[Andrew]

But, like, what are we. I don't know. What. What grand. Aside from just like, why am I on the ship? What do I. What was my mission? Okay, how can I fulfill the mission aside from that stuff? Like, what grand revelations are we. Are we getting out of the. Out of the flashbacks and stuff in

[Craig]

the end, the flashbacks are critical to teaching both our main character and us literally what this crisis is and what is to be done about it. So, okay, so it's.

[Andrew]

It's pretty much all that stuff. It's not like. It's not. It's not so much him remember. Like, he remembers in the abstract that he's doing it for the nameless, faceless kids in his class. But he doesn't have, like, there's nobody at home who he is.

[Craig]

No, no, no, no pining for.

[Andrew]

Okay?

[Craig]

No. He learns. And so he recalls the. The work he got done in a lab. He was the first person to analyze what he dubs the astrophage, a space Algae that is eating sunlight. And he is the first person to both kill an astrophage by poking it with a stick and breeding them, because he learns that they move from like an ir, an infrared rich environment near the sun, to a heavy dose of carbon dioxide like they can find in the atmosphere of Venus. And that is how they breed. So what he also learns is that evil bureaucrat. Well, ruthless bureaucrat, not evil. Ava Strat put him in the lab first with the little alien creatures because she was willing to sacrifice a high school teacher and not, you know, the Nobel Prize winning scientists on the rest of the planet, which he takes a little bit of offense at. But, like, I would defend that choice.

[Andrew]

Like, yeah, I'm not. Yeah, I could. Yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm not gonna defend it. I'm just gonna say I understand where she's coming from.

[Craig]

She first approaches him because she has this, like, you wrote this paper about life that doesn't seem to adhere to the rules of life on Earth. Would you like to come look at this creature? And he's like, sure, I would. And then he discovers a bunch of stuff about it like that it blocks out all wavelengths of energy that might interact with it. That it is. He ultimately is part of the group that learns how it breeds. He learns that it is basically. It does have water in it. And it is essentially like any cellular organism that we would understand on Earth. Maybe it is a progenitor of life on Earth, that sort of thing. They also. This is also how we learned that the mission was launched to a star called Tau Ceti, a real star, because in their.

[Andrew]

I think they left Khan there.

[Craig]

Is that true?

[Andrew]

In the Star Trek, the original series episode, Space Seed? No, that was Seti Alpha 5.

[Craig]

Okay, okay.

[Andrew]

But it had SETI in it.

[Craig]

They learn, scientists do, that there are lots of other stars that appear to be dimming, but Tau Ceti does not. So they build this whole rocket ship operation. And part of that involves they have to learn how to breed the astrophage. There's a kooky guy.

[Andrew]

Sounds hot.

[Craig]

Who comes up with a plan to basically pave the, like the entire Sahara desert with little machines that breed astrophage with, like, sunlight, like going into them.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

The ecological impacts are noted, but not

[Andrew]

like, what is that? What does that accomplish exactly?

[Craig]

They need to make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of kilograms of astrophage, these bacteria, because they're going to use that as fuel. Because what we learn, and this is the wobbly science, the most wobbly science of the book is, to my knowledge, is that somehow this little organism can capture neutrinos and use them to store energy and convert it into matter and then convert it back into energy. And when it does, it creates this like very powerful, relative to its size, infrared energy thrust. And so they basically make a almost light speed engine, powering it by just like tricking the astrophysian to moving back and forth real fast.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And it, like the engines on the Hail Mary rocket are like hundreds of tiny little what they call spin drives that force the astrophage to move around and emit energy such that they are like, it's incredibly fast thrust. Like it's not a regular rocket fuel. Okay.

[Andrew]

I can't hear the word neutrinos without thinking that it's like some Ned Flanders scientist.

[Craig]

Yeah. Oh, neutrinos.

[Andrew]

That's what he would call neutrons, as you would call them, neutrinos.

[Craig]

There is some like, early weird voice stuff with the character that actually does not last throughout the book where he's like, he doesn't curse. He says, mother fluffer. At one point you're like, man, can we.

[Andrew]

Okay. This is how I felt when I read the headline and variety from Robert Downey Jr. Who was talking about how something was absolute horses. Absolute horses. And I feel like at this point we can just cuss.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I think if the president can cuss whatever he wants, then as. As a society that we should just do the cusses.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

It seems silly not to.

[Craig]

That stuff fades away over the course of the book. It's done early in the amnesiac phase of the book because it is trying to convey to both the character and the reader that, like, maybe he's somebody who doesn't curse a lot around kids because he works with kids all the, you know, it's like very. Whatever he says, joshing instead of jerking around. You know, like, I got.

[Andrew]

I got news for you. You can definitely cuss in front of kids. In front of kids. It might not be recommended, but you can definitely do it.

[Craig]

But to quickly summarize the rest of the flashback stuff, they are going to fill this rocket full of this alien substance that they found. They're going to launch it towards this star. There were two crews of. Two crews of three of a backup crew and a regular crew that were supposed to go on the rocket. And two of the crew, including the lead scientist, died in an explosion of astrophage because they mismeasured what they were using. Okay. And Grace, who has been the. Like, he's Been instrumental in training everyone on all the astrophage stuff. He knows the most about anything just because he's been there the whole time. Strat has kept him there because also Andrew, they determined that to make this mission work, it's a one way mission, but you have to be in like a coma induced, like an induced coma for the first several years of your flight or else you will probably like eat your fellow astronauts alive. Yeah, like, yeah, they've.

[Andrew]

If they do. If you're not going to do faster than light travel, then you have to do like cryo sleep. Yeah, yeah, I think generally.

[Craig]

And so they develop this like Theranos esque blood test where they determine people who have a coma gene that means you will not come out of a coma too broken. The coma gene, it is like a coma resistant gene that they test for. 1 in 7,000 people have it and he has it. So she has. So she keeps him around and then when the two people die in an explosion, she's like, you have to go on this because you actually know more than the backup scientist and you've been training with them anyway, I'm putting you on this rocket. And he's like, I don't want to do it. And this is the part of the book I like the least. We haven't got to any of the stuff I like.

[Andrew]

I mean, that's kind of on you. You're the one who's telling me about it.

[Craig]

It's fine. The part that I like the least is that she like, then effectively like has him arrested and medically knocked out and is like, I'm putting you on this rocket ship even though you don't want to. This. He has this revelation later in the book and it's like, oh no, I'm a coward. And when he has that revelation, it literally means nothing to the events of the novel that then proceed from it like. It is not a revelation. He has right before he makes a very courageous choice. It is both after he's made many other courageous choices and before he will continue to make them. It is like a weird.

[Andrew]

It's not. It's not like speaking to character development.

[Craig]

It does not for me anyway, if. If other people feel like it landed for them, that's fine. I feel like it is the least necessary part of the book to have this guy like forced on the rocket against his will and to have her kind of like a cackling villain sending him into space. It is, it is very silly in my opinion. But so then he gets launched into space and he wakes up and he doesn't know what he's doing. And then the part of the book that's kind of interesting, which is. Is happening this whole time, which is that this is the.

[Andrew]

This is, like, Weir's core competency. And I understand this as somebody who's worked from home since 2012. Sometimes people just want to be alone in a room with a problem.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And they want to. They want to noodle on the problem for a bit and then solve it.

[Craig]

Yeah. The trip that we see, I think you can break it up into three main sections, which are all interspersed with this flashback stuff that I've done an okay job of summarizing.

[Andrew]

I'll be the judge of that.

[Craig]

Thank you. Oh, I skipped over the other. The one other, like, interesting thing that I skipped over in that section is that as part of their attempt to buy themselves more time for Project Hail Mary, they sheaf off, like, whole chunks of Antarctica and just drop it into the ocean because the dimming of the sun is causing catastrophic cooling of Earth. And so their plan is just like, well, melt the ice caps, baby. Like, let's just gotta heat it up. Gotta heat it up. And that was an interesting, like, cons.

[Andrew]

Like shades of the Futurama episode where they have to learn how to litter again to get rid of the big garbage ball. Was like, every.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Everybody start driving home bombers again. Like, let's do it.

[Craig]

And it is like, it is depicted with a certain amount of, like, is this really what we're doing? Like, this is really messed up. But anyway, he. Yeah. So he's in space. Rylan Grace is in space. The, like, early scenes of him figuring out that he's on a rocket ship. Like, he is, like, learning that the. The gravity that he's experiencing is because the rocket is moving so dang fast, it is actually giving him 1.4 or 1.5 GS. He gets hit in the head with a tape measure, and he's like, that shouldn't have hurt as much as it did. And so he calculates gravity to figure out that he's actually experiencing more than Earth's gravity.

[Andrew]

I'm astonished that that did not fix the amnesia, because it did not.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

Usually getting conked in the head again is what is the cure for amnesia.

[Craig]

So he learns that he's on a ship with a nurse robot and a fully equipped lab and, like, some cool computer stuff, and they put the entire Library of Congress on the computer.

[Andrew]

All the tweets.

[Craig]

All the tweets. That's in My notes, all the tweets are in there. And he does airlock like ceremony, the funeral for the other two dead astronauts that are on there with him. There's no real explanation of why they didn't survive other than just that they didn't come.

[Andrew]

And jeans not good enough. I guess they didn't have the good coma gene.

[Craig]

And so he's traveling along. He's getting close to Tau Ceti, and he sees something that his radar refers to as Blip A. That is a big flat object. Not. It has lots of flat angles. It is not like two dimensional flat angles. It is not like trying to be aerodynamic or anything like that. It's like that flat angles is a terrible. It's like a big. It is a spaceship, but it is not remotely aerodynamic in any sort of way.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

It is just big honking, flat, oblong pieces kind of attached to each other. And he communicates with it ultimately. Okay, there's like a little robot arm on it that does move in response to what his ship does. They flash engine lights. Like, they flash their engines at each other in like a kind of a Simon says call and response way. And then the spaceship, like throws a thing to him, like a little cylinder, and he has to go on an EVA mission to go retrieve it. And. And then we get into, like, I think my favorite part of the book, which is dude meets an alien. And here are all the ways that we would. That we might have to communicate with an alien. And it's just. It's different from any version of it that I've read before or seen in a film. And I kind of. I just think it's fascinating. Fascinating. Like the initial way that they communicate, it helps that the alien seems to have like, really good 3D printing technology

[Andrew]

that would make me more interested in talking to an alien because he throw.

[Craig]

What he throws in the cylinder is like a little sculpture that shows planets and stars. It's like little, like wires with little kind of orbs at the end. And Grace kind of determines that. Oh, the first one that they're showing is this other planet. Arid that is a real planet or a real star anyway. Not. I don't know if the planet's real. And the relationship between the two he includes in the printing includes the little parabolic line that is the line of light of these. Of this astrophage space bacteria. And then he sends. Then he starts sending like little bracelets and little orbs that Grace determines are actually information about molecules. So like, when one of the things that they have to communicate to each other is like, what is their atmosphere? Like, what is the air that they breathe, if they breathe air, and like what is the chemical makeup of it? So they are like actually sending back and forth little like numbered, like beads that show, like, oh my, I breathe ammonia, you breathe oxygen. Like, like, it's kind of neat the way that it, like the way that they would communicate before they actually start learning language is, is kind of fascinating.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And there is, there's like an airlock at one point, okay. At one point the alien sends a little thing where it's clearly a 3D model without very good detail, but a 3D model of the two different spaceships with like a tunnel attaching them.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

So they, they attach a tunnel together. Grace learns that this alien makes stuff out of solid xenon gas, which is. I think I was on Reddit, I was doing like R. Science. Reddit, Googling. And I think people object to some of the solid xenon stuff.

[Andrew]

But Then one article, 3D printer filament out of anything.

[Craig]

That's true.

[Andrew]

I can make it out of a lot of stuff.

[Craig]

So this, this alien, who is like an engineer, not a. More than a scientist basically throughout the rest of the book, has kind of magic crafting powers that make the book possible. Like the story does not work if this little alien cannot just cook up new fabrications with xenon whenever he needs to. They have a little tunnel set up. There's clever stuff here where they are like, as I said, communicating what the atmosphere they need to breathe is. They have a wall in between them so that they can test which material is the best to communicate through. It happens to wind up being glass because, like Grace goes in there and can see through it. But then he learns that this creature is like a little five legged spider who looks like he's kind of made of rock. He doesn't have any eyes or a face, and all of his limbs terminate in like a three fingered claw hand. He doesn't appear to have a front or a back. And so he names him Rocky.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Because he's made of rocks.

[Andrew]

I read that this, in the movie. This character was like, it's. There's some CG stuff going on, but a lot of his, a lot of

[Craig]

it is puppet, which I'm glad to hear it.

[Andrew]

Movie should have more puppets.

[Craig]

In movie should have more puppets.

[Andrew]

And then also the. All this is. Maybe these are the only interesting facts about the movie that I found out. I, I believe that the puppeteer was doing a, like a Voice like a, a scratch track, basically. Oh, smart, smart Ryan Gosling to respond to. And then they were gonna cast some other, you know, like well known actor for the role. And they were actually like, nobody. We can't improve on the performance that this guy gave, so we're just gonna leave it. So the way that I think that's fun.

[Craig]

That is fun. The way that communication ultimately ends up working is that Grace, once they start actually talking to each other, the sounds that Rocky makes are like musical chords, like kind of like advanced whale song.

[Andrew]

I just convinced myself that Rocky was gonna be like Wilson from Castaway. Okay, that's, that's all, that's all I got. That it was gonna be like a, like a moon rock.

[Craig]

But no, he's real, he talks, he's cool. I like Rocky a lot. He kind of sings. He has like little kind of whale song stuff. And Grace sets up a computer to analyze the. It's basically like listening to MIDI tracks, I guess. And he sets up an Excel spreadsheet where they teach each other words. And then he like corresponds the recorded MIDI sound to the word that he has discerned that they are communicating about. And like, they start with time, they start with units of measurement, they start with yes and no, things like that. And then he runs a basic program that is always recording what, or is always listening to what Rocky is saying and then pulling like searching the Excel spreadsheet for like what words they are.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

The biggest leap in the book, imo, is that within a month or two, Grace is not really like looking at the laptop at all.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

That there is such that he develops a fluency of this alien music language within 12 weeks.

[Andrew]

But he, his brain is so big and sciency. Craig. I don't any. And importantly, I, I, I will give this to any Weir, because this guy does not have anything else to be doing.

[Craig]

He has no, he has literally nothing else to be doing. It's immersion only.

[Andrew]

The only other thing that he has to talk to in the entire universe that I think you would be pretty incentivized to learn how to talk to it quickly.

[Craig]

That is fair. That is fair.

[Andrew]

And it was like a six spider man. Like a five legged spider alien.

[Craig]

The flip side is that we understand that Rocky is like the, the Iridian brain has like photographic memory so that it is very. And they don't have eyes. Andrew. There's like a whole thing about their planet having incredibly dense and pressurized atmosphere such that they never evolved to need to see light because light and radiation Never made it to their planet surface. So they just hear everything. They have, like, super hearing. Okay, so he is like, Rocky, if it's a he who knows, can memorize the sounds that Grace is making pretty easily, whereas Grace has to, like, start using a computer. The other interesting thing about the Iridians that I like is they are close to us in technological achievement. There's actually a bit where they talk about this where. Where Grace is like, why do you. Why do we both have, like, roughly the same level of technology? And Rocky's like, because otherwise we wouldn't meet each other. Like, if I had better technology than you, I wouldn't be out here trying to solve the same astrophage mystery that you are.

[Andrew]

Yeah, right.

[Craig]

And if you.

[Andrew]

It would be. It would be a violation of the Prime Directive for me to be talking to you if I had better technology than you.

[Craig]

It's like an interesting, like, Goldilocks zone thing where we. We just both happen to be the right level of civilization at the right time to meet each other, which is, like, both convenient and very interesting. And the other thing about Rocky is that the Iridians learned to do space flight by building space elevators out of their cool xenon xenonite technology. But they didn't know about radiation. They never learned about radiation. So everyone, Everyone on his spaceship died except him because he was in the engineering room where all the rocket. The astrophage rocket fuel was. And the astrophage blocks radiation.

[Andrew]

I see.

[Craig]

But he had to learn that from. From Grace. So they learn about each other. I. I love all of it. I love. Rocky has this, like, at least as translated to the reader, kind of a charming TV Russian character speaking American voice, like, not using proper conjugation of things. But also he has this bit where anytime he asks a question, he says question. At the end, he says, andrew, I have a. I would like to know more about that question.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

It's like a fun little alien tick that I think is interesting.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I mean. Yeah. You wouldn't necessarily know what a question mark was, I guess, or you. It would be hard to do the thing where you inflect upward at the end of a sentence.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

If you're being translated through some sound blaster, like MIDI computer.

[Craig]

And there. Then there's also, like, all the other stuff about Rocky that's like, really interesting to me is the, like, there's like, cultural stuff. These creatures didn't evolve eyesight, so they like what they quote, unquote, watch each other sleep, you know, and there's Like a whole exchange where he wants Grace to, like, be near him while he sleeps that they have to learn about. There's a lot about Rocky's physiology that is kind of fascinating that, you know, is just born out of Weir's investment in this, like, highly pressurized world.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It does feel like he just kind of invented. And this is again, not a. Not a. Not a dig. He just, like, invented a kind of world that is different enough from ours that it made his brain like, it made something fire in his brain where he's like, oh, okay. It's interesting to think about the implications of this.

[Craig]

Yeah. And, like, one of the things I will take away from this book is this, like, notion that there's a bit where the two of them are talking to each other and they're. And Grace is like, why can we both hear, like, all the same sounds? Like, let's just, like, think about that for a second. Why can you hear me when I talk and I can hear you when you talk? And Rocky's like, well, on a planet, if there were, like, predators, we would evolve to hear them. And the physics of, like, physical objects interacting with each other would not be so different on different planets in the solar system. Like, a rock hitting the ground is going to have the same sound regardless of where you like, what the substances are. So, like, your ear would be. Whatever your quote, unquote ear is, would evolve to, like, the same frequencies of sound, but the parent has, like, a

[Andrew]

creature, higher gravity or something.

[Craig]

Yeah. And so that's like. So Rocky's ear can detect higher and lower than the human ear can. But just that there is, like, a base similar wavelength that they can hear is kind of interesting to think about.

[Andrew]

Wonder how it would react to those noises that they play to make teens not congregate.

[Craig]

Well, that whole thing. Yes.

[Andrew]

Japanese seven elevens or what?

[Craig]

Well, and I. I've heard about, like, there are things you can put in your garden to dissuade certain, like, birds and stuff from coming by. But, like, older folks can't hear them, but people who are not elderly can. And it becomes a whole point of contention. So after we meet, Rocky and I will kind of yada, yada. I think like, the back third of the book, which is the adventure part, there's a whole part of this to go. I will move as quickly as I can, Andrew. But. But the, like, after I found the middle of the book the most fascinating, which is meeting and learning about Rocky. I think it is, like, interesting first contact alien stuff that will probably stick with me longer than the. Oh, there was a bacteria eating the sun. Like science. Which is interesting because that's literally what caused him to start writing the book.

[Andrew]

Well, and then the back third, I imagine is like, you know, there are probably some scenes of conflict or problem solving or challenge for protagonists in some way. But like is mostly narratively a glide path to solving the problem.

[Craig]

It is the. The big, like, set piece scene is that they discover a planet together. Okay. That Ryland Grace names Adrian after the

[Andrew]

movie, after the wife from the movie Rocky, I guess.

[Craig]

And they learn that the reason that this star is not dimming is that there is an organism in the atmosphere of Adrian that eats the astrophage. And so they are gonna harvest it to bring back home to their home planets to save the day. Of course, Hail Mary is like a one way mission. They're gonna send like little, what they call little beetles back, like little rockets that'll fly back to Earth with the information. At this point, Rocky has built his own little spaceship so that he can live on the Hail Mary rocket with Ryland, which is kind of fun. The whole mission to do the harvesting is really cool. But it does result in the spaceship breaking in a bunch of key ways due to the intense heat reflecting off the atmosphere. Then they travel back back to. To Rocky ship to get more astrophage. Oh no. The bacteria has gotten through the ship and eaten all the fuel. The other thing that they have to. This is like the science nerd stuff is they have to like selectively breed this new organism they've met to increase its nitrogen resistance so that it can survive on Venus to eat enough astrophage, that sort of thing, that has unintended consequences at the end of the book.

[Andrew]

Which is fun to read.

[Craig]

It is. It is.

[Andrew]

Okay. Because it's not fun to hear a summary, which is not a dig on you.

[Craig]

No, like hearing.

[Andrew]

Hearing a. A book about somebody thinking real good conveyed secondhand. It takes on a laundry list kind of quality.

[Craig]

Yeah, it is, it is. All of this is peppered with what works the best for me in the book is the. The two scientists, Rocky and Ryland Grace, kind of figuring out how to solve problems together. There is never an antagonist that is like trying to dissuade them from, you know, succeeding at their mission. They are working with, like, how do we manage these microorganisms that don't know any better? That sort of thing. They separate and go back to save their home planets. But then Grace learns that he inadvertently taught this new organism how to like make it through physical matter such that it could eat more astrophage. So he had to go back and save Rocky. He doesn't have enough fuel to make it home to Earth.

[Andrew]

I thought that was a point. Is that he wouldn't have enough.

[Craig]

Well, but Rocky has so much extra acrophage that he was gonna make it back.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

But he can't. And so he goes and he lives on Rocky's planet instead and he becomes just like a jump cut and he's like an old man living on the Iridian planet.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And they've like. Like he's a science teacher again teaching their little iridium babies. But he does learn. They do observe that he did save Earth. Which is pretty cool to learn. Okay. Yeah, it's a fun. It. It is a fun book. I think the flashback stuff is a means to an end. I don't know how else you deliver some of that information about, like how we learned about what the problem was unless you just completely restructure the story. And I think to have Grace come into all of his interactions with Rocky with that full information would just so fundamentally change that structure that I don't know what I would do instead if I were writing my own version of this story. And that's not the point of the podcast. But I particularly found the and then we drugged him to get him on the rocket the least useful part of the book.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And then I'm just going to read to you some voice stuff real quick, Andrew, just to annoy you.

[Andrew]

Okay. The implication of the New York Times review is that this is a book written by a Joss Whedon large language model, which sounds insufferable to me.

[Craig]

LED lights shine down on me. Cameras in the ceiling watch my every move. Creepy though that is. I'm much more concerned about the robot arms. The two brushed steel armatures hang from the ceiling. Each has an assortment of disturbingly penetration looking tools where hands should be. Can't say I like the look of that.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

During this time Rocky is aboard his ship plugging away at a pumping system to transfer astrophage from his fuel tanks to mine. I offer to help, but he very politely declines. What good could I do aboard the Blip A anyway? My EVA suit can't handle the environment in there, so Rocky would have to build me a whole tunnel system. It's not worth it. I really want it to be worth it. It's an alien freakin spaceship. I want to see the inside. But yeah, gotta save humanity and stuff. That's the priority and stuff. And stuff.

[Andrew]

Freaking and stuff.

[Craig]

They say fist bump to each other all the time. Which I think is charming from Rocky side and less so from Grace's side. That's just because I love Rocky so much.

[Unknown Female (Ad/Promo Voice)]

Sure.

[Craig]

I think people like this book because it's about people accomplishing things and about science doing good rather than bad. And I think it's about. It has an innate optimism to it. I think. In a last decade with just untold large scale crises unfolding, the notion that we could do something about it isn't. Is incredibly appealing.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I mean, that appeals to something. I don't know if it's. I want to say it's. It's a. It's an American pathology where it's just like, yeah, we can. We can tech our way out of anything. We can. We can invent our way out of anything.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yes. And I think this book is interested in like. And yes, we can take our way out of it. But like, a person is going to have to like decide that they are willing to put themselves on the line to do it. Like the. The thing that I don't like about the cow, I was a coward and had to get forced into this note from Grace is that like he is incredibly invested in Rocky as his peer scientist and savior and willing to work with him from the beginning. He doesn't need convincing to be that way.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It feels like that that note is just like in there for no reason. It doesn't really. It doesn't so bizarre jibe with the rest of the character as described to us through the rest of the book. Maybe he forgot how to be a coward.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Maybe he forgot that he was. He forgot that he was a coward. Maybe he also forgot how to act one.

[Craig]

That is literally like kind of Strat's rush. And I was like, you won't remember that you didn't want to do this, so, like, have fun.

[Andrew]

But he would still be the kind of person who would want to do it. Right. But also, unless he forgot about it because of amnesia. I think we can just chalk us up to amnesia.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I. The science is wonky. The flashbacks are wonky. Rocky rules and our main character is fine. I think that's where I land on Project Hail Mary.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

I was like in the office the other day. My office is in a workshare space and randomly two people I'd never met before were just, we gotta talk about Project Hail Mary over lunch. And I was like, are you guys talking About Project Hail Mary is like, people are opinions. I got opinions. It's mostly about kind of sorting out the, like, timeline of what was going on. But people are. People are excited about it. And I think that they, they're. They are totally right to be. It is. It is a fun, exciting thing, even despite my reservations.

[Andrew]

Okay. Sounds like you enjoyed it. On balance.

[Craig]

I did.

[Andrew]

Glad that you read it.

[Craig]

I also was not prepared and would never have been prepared to come here to talk about a lot of the science. There's a lot of numbers in this book that I was like, yeah, I trust you, dude. I trust you that that is what gravity does. I trust you that that is what nitrogen does. I. Microns. Sure. I get whatever wavelengths.

[Andrew]

Renos.

[Craig]

Yeah, like, like that stuff is going over my head and I know it's not going over the head of everyone reading this book. And those are the matter, people. So shout out to you if you're madder about it than I am. Okay. Send us an email about how mad you are [e-mail].

[Andrew]

actually, maybe.

[Craig]

No, only. Only how mad you are at Project Hail Mary.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Okay. Or just like in general.

[Craig]

Yeah, you can just be mad. Come into our inbox.

[Andrew]

You talk to your therapist about that.

[Craig]

Overdue podmail.com hit us up verdupod on social media. Thanks to Alison, Emily, Tom, Sam, Iva, Debbie, Anya, Liesl and more for reaching out in the past few weeks. Our theme song is composed by Nick Laurengis. Andrew, if folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is our Internet website. We have the schedule for May up there now. We have all the old episodes. We have the current episode in a little like player. If you Want to download MP3s for some reason, there's a little download link there that you can use.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then patreon.com overdue pod is a URL that you can use to give us a little bit of money. And you get stuff and we get stuff. The stuff that we get is money. The stuff that you get is like bonus content and newsletter and ad, free feed and long read stuff and access to our Discord community and a couple other things.

[Craig]

So Patreon and the satisfaction of supporting.

[Andrew]

And the satisfaction of supporting independent artistes.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Who like to talk about sort of the rules of fictional amnesia as part of their podcast.

[Craig]

That's true. It's one of the things we like to talk about.

[Andrew]

Patreon.com overdue pot what are you reading next week, Andrew? I'm reading any bot by Sierra Greer sounds like more sci fi. I wonder though, whether it will be hard or soft or if the bot will be like some kind of a metaphor and it won't be science fiction at all.

[Craig]

We'll all find out.

[Andrew]

We'll all find out together, I guess.

[Craig]

Tune in next week.

[Andrew]

Tune in next week. And until we talk to you then, please try to be happy. Be.

[Mandy Moore]

That was a Headgum Podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore.

[Andrew]

Sterling K. Brown.

[Craig]

And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast that Was Us now on Headgum.

[Mandy Moore]

Each episode, we're gonna go into a deep dive from our show. This is Us.

[Andrew]

That's right.

[Mandy Moore]

We're gonna go episode by episode. We're also gonna pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Are we gonna cry? Yes.

[Andrew]

A little bit.

[Craig]

Are we gonna laugh a lot? A whole lot.

[Andrew]

That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to that Was Us on your favorite podcast app. Or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify. New episodes every Tuesday.