The Martianrequired little in the way of world building Project Hail Mary, on the other hand, gives us a well-constructed alien race, with a home world very different from ours. Creating a compelling literary alien can be challenging, but Weir gives us a memorable character who soon endears himself to the reader and has us rooting for “him” to succeed. Yet the strongest character in the book is arguable Rocky, Grace’s alien counterpart. Far from the gung-ho, super-motivated type, Grace is very much a reluctant hero, one with real vulnerabilities which help humanize him and add shades of grey.

I wanted somebody who was more of an everyman.” Adding that he believes himself to be strong on plots but weak on characters, Weir says that he sets out to develop more nuanced protagonists which each new book. He must’ve beat out 10,000 other candidates, so he’s the cream of the crop, absolutely top in his field. That was a conscious decision, as Weir told me during a recent interview: “Mark Watney was a bad-ass, right? He was humble, he was funny, and self-effacing, and stuff like that, but he was an astronaut selected to go to Mars.

Grace is a science teacher, rather than an astronaut. It’s clear that Weir is maturing as a writer. As the plot unfolds, Grace begins to slowly recover his memories not only does he discover the nature of the crisis facing humanity, but also learns that he isn’t exactly the type of man he thinks he is. Ryland Grace wakes up in a medical bay with two dead bodies, tubes sticking out of his body, and no idea of who he is, or how he got aboard what he soon finds out is a starship. One key difference is that the stakes are higher in Project Hail Mary: rather than one life being at risk, Weir’s antagonist in this book threatens the survival of the entire human race, and other galactic civilizations beside our own.

Project Hail Maryuses a broader canvas as the backdrop for an interstellar race against time, but it still cleaves to Weir’s favorite themes: competence in the face of adversity, and a willingness to fight for survival. His sophomore effort, Artemis, was a change of pace, a science fiction thriller set inside a city on the Moon. After the runaway success of The Martian, culminating in a big budget Hollywood blockbuster helmed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, expectations have run high for each new Andy Weir book.

Books like the hail mary project