i love that andy weir never kills his protagonists. it would be so easy to. at so many points. by all means they Should be dead. mark gets stranded on mars and the planet works against him at every turn. jazz's suit fails on the surface of the moon and she feels herself begin to die. ryland is sent on a suicide mission then gives up his chance at return for his friend. they should all have died. multiple times in some cases. but they don't!!! because weir isn't writing tragedies, he's writing stories of hope and humanity. they survive even when it should be impossible for them to because of connection. simple as that.
I will never get over the fact that project hail mary is a story about a guy who goes from having no one - no family, no close friends, no one he has to tell when he gets forced onto an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean for several years, no one to mourn him when he is forced into a suicide mission, and perhaps most significantly, no one he is prepared to die for, to having one person who he is prepared to die for again and again and again.
You had to go lightyears across space to a different solar system and learn a new language you can't even speak unaided to find the platonic love of your life but when you did you burnt and starved and hurt for them without hesitation. Ryland Grace saves the world, but more importantly, he finds something bigger than himself to believe in and it's loving a lil alien crab dude.
Fucking IMAGINE the reaction on earth when they got the beetles.
"Heyyyy wassup I made you some new aliens to eat the aliens that are blocking out the sun I made them with my new best friend who is a five-armed rock spider I'm going to starve to death in space now fuck you Stratt :)"
The worst plan I ever made is the fact that I started my scifi reading journey with The Martian and Project hail Mary cause how the fuck could anything ever top those two books.
as someone who jumped from the Martian straight into project Hail Mary I was really not expecting how much more absurd project hail mary is.
like. The Martian is fairly grounded? Its sci fi and had some elements that couldn’t really happen but ultimately it was a survival story. And since the two are so closely associated ig I expected something similar?
But every chapter of project Hail Mary is like ‘algae are eating the sun’ ‘they nuked antarctica’ ‘aliens and humans have a common ancester’ etc. It’s amazing.