Our astronaut, Ryland Grace, was once a humble middle school teacher. Those little buggers are sucking the life out of the sun, which threatens humanity’s existence. That’s the first problem he needs to solve. or why the heck he’s hurtling through space. He doesn’t know his name, his job, his mission. The opening of the book sucks you in right away: an astronaut wakes up in a mysterious spaceship with two dead crewmates next to him. Luckily, for sci-fi fans the world over, Project Hail Mary shares far more with Weir’s debut novel than his mediocre second attempt. More like The Martian or more like Artemis? So when I heard the announcement about Weir’s third novel, I wondered which direction it would take. Weir’s follow-up, Artemis, was okay, but didn’t nearly live up to the author’s debut. It was science-heavy, but also vulgar, funny, thrilling, and entertaining as hell. That story was so successful because of its utter originality. It’s a story I’m fascinated by, apart from the amazing story contained within the book’s page. A few years later, a “real” publisher bought the rights and it instantly hit the NYT bestseller list. But he priced it at 99 cents on Amazon (for the ebook) and it took off. Weir self-published, which is always a hard route to go for major publicity action. When The Martian was originally published in 2011, it hit exactly nobody’s radar. “Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”

Project hail mary review