With themes of isolation and using science to combat a life-altering event, “Project Hail Mary” seems oddly prescient to the present day. So it maps over very easily to concepts that everybody already knows.” “The other thing is that they also have an inherent understanding, even if they don’t know it, about how mold and algae work. “One thing that makes it work well is that people immediately understand that if there’s a problem with the sun, we’re in a lot of trouble,” Weir says. Weir’s strength as a writer is his engaging style where the reader feels as if they’re solving these puzzles along with the protagonist. In one of the novel’s many flashbacks, Ryland is recruited by a multinational task force to study the problem of an algae-like substance that is ostensibly killing Earth’s sun. Readers soon learn that Ryland was once a junior high school science teacher who previously worked as a molecular biologist and whose ideas at the time now seem prophetic. There’s a sense of responsibility there.”

“ Not just as a fellow citizen of Earth who will die with everyone else - I’m actively involved. And I’m tangled up in it,” Ryland thinks to himself early in the novel.

Relearning to climb a ladder is one thing, but Ryland soon learns of his real mission: To solve something called the “Petrova problem,” where Earth’s sun is dimming at a rate to where a second ice age is inevitable within a few decades. Those edge cases are all over “Project Hail Mary.” From the moment the novel’s hero, astronaut Ryland Grace, wakes up in a spaceship with no memory of how he got there, he has to deduce and science his way through multiple scenarios to get to the truth of why he’s there. He’d be like, ‘OK, I can do this magic, but instead of calling forth some demon, I’m going to see if I can make this wheel turn around forever’ or something like that.” If I wrote a book about a magical realm or something, then my mage would basically be a scientist. “Even then, I am who I am and I would begin to explore the edge cases. “Sure, I could just make stuff up, but if I did that it would be a completely different kind of book, which is fine, but I don’t think I’d write it in the style that you’ve seen,” says Weir, who lives in Mountain View, Calif., and once attended the University of California San Diego. While many fantasy and sci-fi writers are content with readers having to suspend their collective disbelief, Weir prides himself on his extensive research and scenarios that, while fictional, are based on real scientific principles. It’s the type of sci-fi thriller that will certainly please fans of “The Martian” and, just as with that novel, Weir commits himself to being as scientifically sound as possible. It’s easy to overlook Weir’s technical enthusiasm when “Project Hail Mary” is such an engrossing read.

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