Parker’s Pages: Project Hail Mary

The Evergreen Echo

**Spoilers ahead for the book and movie alike! 

Friends, please allow me to peel away from our Puget Sound authors to bring you my latest and greatest obsession: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Unless you’ve been living under a rock—or the spring fever haze here in the PNW—you’ve probably heard about Project Hail Mary (2026), the newest addition to Ryan Gosling’s filmography, and, in my opinion, quite possibly the best space movie of the last decade (sorry Dune). The film adaptation is spectacular (I watched it three times in theaters), and I definitely recommend you check it out when it starts streaming if you didn’t have the pleasure of seeing it on its big screen run. For the sake of “Parker’s Pages,” however, we will be turning our attention to the book, which has the same charm as its predecessor The Martian (2014). 

Project Hail Maryis a fantastic sci-fi novel and space adventure about the power of friendship, hope, and the ability to adapt to even the most extreme of circumstances. Like The Martian, Weir explores the strength of the human spirit against the strangeness and brutality of space; but unlike Mark Watney, this protagonist, Ryland Grace, is not alone in navigating the vacuum of space.

Grace wakes up from a coma, alone and naked, in a space craft that is hurtling farther away from Earth than any other craft in history. And worst still, he has total amnesia. He doesn’t know who he is, why he’s here, or anything about the mission he’s been sent on, though he feels the weight of its importance. Through flashbacks and Grace’s gradual reasoning, we learn that Grace has been sent to a far away solar system in order to save Earth. The details of Grace’s mission are somewhat complicated, and although Weir’s explanation of the science behind the mission is digestible and interesting, I won’t go into it all in this review. 

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the way that Weir slowly sprinkled in the missing pieces and details through Grace’s own memories. Not only did this make the technical and scientific parts of the novel easier to understand, it also helped the reader connect with Grace. At the start of the novel, we also have no idea who Grace is or why he’s in space, and we discover the answers to those questions together.

The Evergreen Echo

Fun science aside, the heart of Project Hail Mary is truly in the friendship and bond that Grace forms with Rocky, the alien he encounters along his journey, who is on the very same mission as him, to save his planet and his people. Grace and Rocky’s relationship builds out of necessity—they need each other to survive, but it is still a strong and tender bond. They’re each alone on their missions, having lost the rest of their crews; both are intelligent and skilled in some aspects but lacking in others, and both end up caring for each other and fighting for each other in extreme ways, even going so far as to nearly die for each other. 

What I like about this novel, and what sets it apart from other sci-fi space adventures I have read, is that it centers around a platonic and mutual friendship, showing the importance and power of platonic love and care. There is no romance. In fact, Grace at no point shows any interest in having a partnership, and Rocky is treated as Grace’s equal, not an alien “pet” or as being so highly intelligent that Grace becomes the “pet.” While they are different in a lot of ways—in anatomy, in skills, in culture—they are immensely curious about each other and completely committed to helping each other survive in the new situation they’ve been thrust into. 

There is so much that Weir does right in this book. The characters are lovable, the flashbacks as exposition work fabulously, the language is simple without being boring, and the pureness of the built relationships make me smile and weep in equal measure. And another fascinating addition is the character Eva Stratt, a complex, interesting, and strong woman character, completely unburdened by the classic stereotypes in media. Stratt is the lead manager of Project Hail Mary, and though we only meet her in Grace’s flashbacks, she is vivid and realistic. She is completely focused on saving the world and doesn’t care about the consequences of what it takes to get there. The book, far more than the movie, shows exactly how headstrong and committed she is to her mission. And even as a character so intense and morally gray, she still maintains a softness and likability, especially in her relationship to Grace. 

The Evergreen Echo

If you’ve seen the movie, but haven’t yet read the book, I recommend getting your hands on a copy. The movie is one of the few (perhaps only) book adaptations where I feel like both versions are incredible renditions of the same story. I cannot pick one over the other, yet they still aren’t exact one-to-one copies of each other. 

If you’re in the mood for a book that will make you genuinely just feel good about the world, you need not look further. Project Hail Mary is exciting, hopeful, and a fantastic read.