Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.
A celestial consuming microorganism. A fifteen percent decrease in solar energy in the next ten years. A promised wipeout of half of humanity, best-case scenario.
Sounds like an apocalypse, right?
Yeah. Welcome to Project Hail Mary.
When a mysterious alien organism suddenly “infects” the sun and poses an extreme threat to all life on earth, Ryland Grace, a scientist-turned-middle-school-teacher with infectious enthusiasm, suddenly finds himself in space, the sole survivor of a last-ditch mission: save humanity and—by extension—Earth itself.
But no pressure, right?
After waking up from a coma that got him safely through the four-year trip, Ryland’s left with a spaceship, a mission, and no memory of how he got to a solar system light-years away from Earth. But as things start fuzzily returning to him, he begins to realize the indomitable task looming ahead of him—a heavy responsibility he must take on alone.
Or does he?
Andy Weir’s newest sci-fi novel is a highly entertaining, well-written, science-filled thought experiment that thoroughly portrays an original, fascinating—albeit terrifying—apocalyptic scenario that doesn’t fit any sort of alien invasion boxes of conventional literature. It wholly exceeded my expectations while taking me on a thrilling intergalactic journey, bouncing through the magnetic fields of cosmology and microbiology and physics and anthropology in a way that was clear, entertaining, and all-around mind-boggling.
Ready for a science-filled adventure? Climb aboard the Hail Mary—and fasten your seatbelt. It’s a wild ride.
