I recently saw the film adaptation of one of my favourite novels, Project Hail Mary… twice. I’ve read the book twice, too. Back when I first picked it up it was one of those rare novels where I actually felt sad when I got to the end, not because I didn’t like the ending (I loved it), but because the story was over, and I would never get the same emotional experience of that “first read” back again. With the film adaptation, however, I did get something similar: a “first watch”. I’d been looking forward to the release ever since I learned it was in production, and I wasn’t disappointed. The filmmakers did a remarkable job of the adaptation, and I enjoyed every single moment in that cinema. I confess to shedding more than one tear.

Friends and family members have enjoyed it too, though I’ve noticed few seem to be quite as obsessed as I am. Where they soon moved on to other topics, I kept thinking about it for days afterwards, and played the soundtrack while tidying the house (in my defence, it’s an awesome soundtrack). Somehow, this story pushes all the right emotional buttons – taps into something deep inside me – that makes me eager to re-experience it in a way I am with very few other narratives.

All this left me wondering – what is it that got so under my skin? What ingredients in the fictional recipe made it so addictive to my particular reader taste buds? So instead of a classic film or book review, I thought I’d see if I could put my finger on exactly what makes Andy Weir’s story an all-time favourite for me. I’ve come up with five key elements.

There will be SPOILERS in this post, so if you haven’t read the novel or seen the movie, and you want to go in blind (something I definitely recommend, since I knew nothing about the book going in and that made it all the more fun), you might not want to continue.

1. First Contact

This is the most obvious “ingredient”, so I thought I’d get it out of the way up front. I love first contact stories. More specifically, I love stories where we meet aliens and they aren’t immediately trying to kill us, or us them. This is part of the reason the film Arrival is also a favourite. Imagining that we aren’t alone in the universe, that we might connect meaningfully with other intelligent beings, is thrilling to me.

With Project Hail Mary, both the film and the book thoroughly fulfil this fantasy– from the awed and frightened moments of initial contact, to the building of understanding, friendship and collaboration. While the book explores it in more detail, I was impressed by how much the film conveyed, and how engagingly, from the amusing mimicking of dance moves, to the wonder-filled ‘clock buddies’ moment. You see two beings from completely different solar systems recognising intelligent souls in one another.

I especially enjoy how these stories give us a chance to look at ourselves through an alien lens and imagine what other creatures might find fascinating or strange about us as human beings. Things that we take as completely ordinary become extraordinary when seen from Rocky’s perspective – our water based-bodies, our ability to see light, our tolerance for the radiation that makes it through our “thin” atmosphere, or the fact we go on risky space walks instead of getting robots to do it for us.

It reminds me of the famous Carl Sagan line:

“The Cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the Universe to know itself.”

Making contact with other intelligent life would mean the universe has other ways to know itself, too.

2. Linguistics and bridging a language gap

Another thing that often delights me is stories that focus on language and communication. To be more specific, stories where people have to bridge a gap in their ability to communicate in order to understand one another, especially when there’s no dictionary, advanced translator machine, or “quick fix”, and the characters have to use their smarts and mutual determination to overcome the chasm between them. The larger that chasm, the better – which is why, when Ryland Grace is faced with the prospect of trying to communicate with a being who has an entirely different way of vocalising and sensing the world, it’s so incredibly satisfying to see them both overcome it.

I suppose, to me, there has always been something inherently magical about learning a language – through hard work and dedication and the power of our own brains, previously unintelligible gibberish becomes comprehensible, and eventually we find ourselves connecting with people we might previously never have been able to know on a deeper level.

I’ll write another post about this soon, since I know quite a few favourite stories that I’d put in this category.

3. Intelligent and empathetic people cooperating

This is one of the things I enjoyed most about Andy Weir’s The Martian, and now I think about it, the recent Artemis II mission reminded me that it’s also one of the reasons I adore the 1995 film Apollo 13 (and the true story behind that near-fatal mission). I absolutely love it when teams of clever scientists, engineers, and ordinary people work together to solve problems, especially if they do it to save lives.

In Project Hail Mary, the villain is not a person, but the unintelligent, disease-like infestation of our sun with ‘astrophage’. The earth’s best and brightest have to cooperate to understand this environmental threat, and it’s only together that humanity is able come up with a long-shot plan to save itself. The icing on the cake is that even this might not have been enough, had it not been for a human and an alien combining their skills to try and save both their planets.

This sort of thing especially appeals to me in the current online climate where we see a lot of division and distrust – not to mention the rejection of expertise and the scientific method in favour of conspiracy theories, attention-grabbing lies, and outrage. It fills me with hope to see stories of people working together to achieve incredible things they never could have alone… and reminds me that for all the negativity, there are still amazing humans out there building, learning, and achieving things together.

4. Finding friendship in the loneliness of the universe

As much as I love stories about space travel, I have never dreamed of being an astronaut. There are many reasons for that, but one is that the void of space seems so very lonely and empty to me… not to mention hostile to life. In science fiction, the universe is often filled with stations and ships and other inhabited planets, allowing us to ignore the cold reality of the fact that so far, no human being has yet travelled much farther than our moon, and we have not found evidence of alien life.

At the start, Project Hail Mary confronts us with the full horrific loneliness of that reality. Ryland Grace wakes light years away from earth, alone in the vast emptiness of space with no way to get home or even receive communications. And just when we think he will have to solve everything alone, it gifts us with the wondrous hope of meeting another intelligent being – a friend – and suddenly, the universe doesn’t seem so lonely anymore.

Something about this shift in the story… the way it oscillates between utter complete loneliness and wondrous friendship, plays all the emotional strings inside me. It already moved me in the book, but Ryan Gosling conveys that roller coaster of emotions so well in the movie that it made me tear up at several points.

5. Unique ideas and surprising revelations

I always enjoy stories that surprise me with something original I haven’t encountered before, delight me with big revelations or twists, or subvert my expectations in fun ways. There were several moments like this in Project Hail Mary that I loved:

• the mystery at the start caused by Grace’s amnesia (I wrote a post last year about how much I love tantalising mystery-filled openings like this).
• the uniqueness of the whole idea of astrophage as a threat to our sun.
• the idea of going to study the nearby star that isn’t dying, and the revelation of why it isn’t dying.
• the unexpected and relatable twist regarding Grace’s struggles with bravery and self-sacrifice.
• the cleverness and originality of the Grace’ solutions to problems.

To sum up

There are other things I loved about this story too (e.g. the humour), but I think if I whittled it down to the core elements that most enchanted me, the five I mentioned above get to the heart of it.

I also noticed that, whether consciously or subconsciously, I’ve tried to channel some of these themes into the latest manuscript I’ve been working on. Not the ‘first contact’ element, because there are no aliens in my story, but definitely the other four. That’s no accident – when I first finished reading Project Hail Mary, I remember thinking that if I could capture even a fraction of what I enjoyed about it in my own work, I would consider that a dream achieved. I’m not sure if I’ve managed it, or if I ever will, but it never hurts to set your goals high.

More importantly, on a broader level, Project Hail Mary reminds me of what a book or a film can be at it’s best – more than just a fleeting dose of entertainment or distraction, but, for those who personally connect with it, an emotional journey that inspires, moves, and fascinates, and fills you up with the joy and wonder of knowing what mere humans are capable of creating.

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Have you seen the film or read the book? If so, did you enjoy it as much as I did? Let me know in the comments!