With the Ryan Gosling-led movie coming out this week, I thought it would be the perfect time to discuss the inspiration for the movie, Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir.

I had been told about this book late last year and while it seemed interesting at the time, it also didn’t really sound like my typical read. And with a TBR pile too big that my spouse has banned new books coming into the house, it didn’t seem likely that I would tackle the book any time soon.

Enter: The Christmas Elves. I was gifted over a dozen books which blew up my TBR pile. Project Hail Mary was among them.

So, I got to work.

To say I’m bad at science is putting it in the kindest context imaginable. I don’t understand space, relativity, the stars, or the universe. But Weir creates this world in a way where I can feel myself aboard the Hail Mary alongside Dr. Grace light years away from Earth.

As I read Project Hail Mary, I kept bumping up against a line from the original Jurassic Park (by Michael Crichton), when Malcom, our lovable Wizard, pushes back against Dr. Hammond and says, “Life finds a way.”

Grace is thrust unwillingly thrust into the role of hero out in the depths of space because he was the one who understood the greatest threat ever posed to humanity. He understood the organism that was sucking the life from Earth’s sun. But we find him stuck and alone in the depths of space, and with no chance of ever getting home when the unthinkable and incredible happens.

He encounters another life form from another planet, and has a choice to make. Fight, flight, or simply, say hello and find a way.

What transpires is nothing short of incredible. Both creatures are there to save their respective planets and they have one chance. What is right and what is wrong? What is worth dying for? And can they work together to find the answer?

Back on earth, so much damage has already been done to just get to this point. Lives lost. Rain forests destroyed. Nuclear explosions. All to have this chance to save the planet.

Science is organized around questions and then through observations, testing hypotheses, and analyzing the evidence against the original question.

The questions, scientific and otherwise are interwoven throughout this work in a masterpiece of science-driven thinking and the excitement of a 12-year-old who just discovered he is not alone in the depths of space. Weir goes interweaves past and present to create a tension between Grace’s frustrations, dreams, and life lessons.

I found myself ripping through these pages faster than my typical book because I needed to know the answer. I needed to know how Grace was going to solve this challenge. I needed to know if his hypothesis was right or if Earth was doomed. I needed to know that Grace and the creature could survive.

That’s the beauty of the flashbacks for Grace; we get to see him learning along the way which informs his approach to the present. Every time Grace got excited he had found the path forward, there is uncertainty and worries persist that perhaps he hasn’t asked the right question, or the right experiment planned, or worse, that it is already too late.

As I read late into the night, night after night, I was constantly faced with a gut fear that something was going to keep them from a happy ending. This isn’t The Notebook, after all.

I texted the person who gifted this book to me the night I finished it while on the road, “Ok. You got me to cry.”

Science was never my forte, but we know from Jurassic Park, and now Project Hail Mary, that life does find a way. Whether humans, spiders, or in this case, interstellar organisms, life finds a way.

I was left hopeful, tense, at peace, and in love with Grace and Rocky, in a world constantly at war with itself, these two worked to find a way.

Now, tell me this doesn’t get your blood pressure up!? But in the best ways.

Want to read it for yourself? Pick up your copy of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

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