Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Published by Ballantine Books on May 4, 2021

I enjoyed the story told in Project Hail Mary. I would have enjoyed it more if not for sentences like “The force you feel in a centrifuge is inverse to the square of the radius.” Unfortunately, rules of science appear with exhausting regularity.

Andy Weir apparently decided he stumbled upon a successful formula with The Martian. In Project Hail Mary, he doubles down. Weir’s protagonist in The Martian famously decides to “science the shit out of” each problem he encounters. In Project Hail Mary, Weir’s protagonist scienced the shit out my patience. Weir rarely makes it through two pages before he finds some new principle of science that he absolutely must explain to the reader. Few of the principles do anything to advance the plot. Many of them are only marginally relevant to the story, meaning they could have been excised from the text without harming the plot, producing a much tighter story. Thanks to all the pauses to explain science, Project Hail Mary takes about 500 pages to tell a 200-page story.

Science lectures are not good science fiction. Explanations have their place, judiciously used. The reader needs to be served enough science to provide a context for what’s happening and why. But the science shouldn’t get in the way of moving the story forward. The giants who originated hard science fiction knew that. Isaac Asimov knew that. Arthur C. Clarke knew that. Robert Heinlein knew that. Most of their contemporaries knew that. Andy Weir doesn’t get it. Science lectures are not science fiction. Full stop.

Remove the incessant science lectures, including every sentence that follows “Hang on, let me do the math,” and what remains is a reasonably interesting plot. The sun is slowly dimming, a phenomenon that will lead to a new Ice Age in another few decades. The dimming is caused by an alien organism that the protagonist, Ryland Grace, dubs an astrophage. Grace discovers the organism after he’s drafted to join a science team that is focused on saving the Earth. Grace teaches junior high school science but he wrote a widely-ridiculed dissertation explaining that alien life forms might not require water to evolve or survive. He responded to the ridicule by abandoning his studies and taking a junior high teaching job, which makes him a bit of a weenie. We learn, if fact, that Grace is risk-averse to the point of cowardice. But he’s found the perfect job because lecturing a captive audience about science is what he does best.

The story begins with Grace waking up from a coma suffering from a selective memory loss. He doesn’t remember that he’s on a spaceship. He doesn’t know its mission. As time passes, he recovers his memories in linear fashion, from oldest to newest, which allows Weir to tell Grace’s backstory through Grace’s recovered memory while the story in the present moves forward. Weir offers a contrived explanation at the end for the memory loss and its slow recovery, although he doesn’t explain why the memories are so conveniently recovered in order from the earliest to the most recent.

Grace eventually figures out that he’s on his way to a star that stopped dimming. Great minds decided that the star might reveal an antidote to the astrophage. The odds that he can find the antidote are slim, which explains the novel’s title.

When Grace’s ship arrives in the right neighborhood, he encounters an alien who is on a similar mission. Grace calls the alien Rocky. This happy encounter gives Grace a fresh audience for his science lectures.

The story has a few credibility problems. Grace is a general-purpose scientist who seems to be adept at physics and math but is valued for his knowledge of cellular biology, which allows him to understand the workings of the mitochondria found within the astrophage. Since he wrote his doctoral thesis on a relevant subject, it makes sense that the project manager in charge of saving the Earth would consult him. But the decision to turn a junior high teacher into the manager’s personal science advisor — she even has him testing the glove that will be used to grasp small objects during extra-vehicular activity — seems unlikely. Her decision to draft him as an administrator when he has no particular management experience also struck me as implausible. Weir concocts a reason for turning him into an astronaut that depends on an unlikely coincidence. I’ll cut Weir some slack for all that because Grace is the protagonist and he needs to be immersed in all phases of the project for the story to work. However, science fiction is all about the willingness to suspend disbelief. Weir tested my capacity to do so.

The ease with which Grace and Rocky learn each other’s languages is impossible to believe. Words that signify numbers and computation are easy to translate, as is the periodic table if the two species both understand it. Nouns or verbs that can be demonstrated might be easy to approximate, but it isn’t easy to grasp abstract concepts like “pretty” and “friend” without a common language. Grace and Rocky manage to achieve complete fluency in weeks when linguists would need years.

And then there’s Rocky’s personality. He shares Grace’s sarcastic sense of humor. He shares Grace’s general attitude about most things. Considering that Rocky is an alien, there doesn’t seem to be much about him that’s alien. He’s like a mirror image of Grace, apart from his resemblance to a spider and his need to breathe ammonia.

Setting aside the novel’s flaws, the plot is engaging. Grace has an opportunity to grow by overcoming his cowardice and selfish nature. The ending is much better than I expected it to be. Whittle down the science lectures, keep the meaningful content, and this would be a decent novel. As it stands, Project Hail Mary too often made my eyes glaze over. Young science geeks who feel validated when novels reinforce their belief that “scientists are really smart” might view the book differently.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

A Lonely Man by Chris Power

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on May 4, 2021

Novelists often base characters on people they know. They sometimes go so far as to tell another person’s story in the form of a novel. Is it a form of theft to use a real person’s life as the basis for a fictional story? Should the author obtain consent before incorporating details of a person’s life into a novel? Chris Power explores the ethics of creating fiction in A Lonely Man.

Robert Prowe is a British novelist. He irritated his mother by basing an early story on a childhood vacation in Greece. Now he is tempted to repeat that potential sin by writing about a mysterious man who may or may not be involved in Russian political intrigue.

Robert is living in Berlin and struggling to find a story worth telling. He’s under a contract deadline to produce a new book. During a chance meeting in a bookstore, Robert learns that Patrick Unsworth is also a British writer, but one whose domain is nonfiction. Patrick ghostwrites biographies for celebrities and politicians.

Patrick seems a bit drunk and disagreeable. He clearly has no friends in Berlin. As an act of charity, Robert agrees to meet Patrick for a drink. When the meeting finally occurs, Patrick explains that he had to cancel or no-show earlier meetings because he was being followed. Robert believes that Patrick is imagining things but listens to Patrick’s story.

Patrick explains that he was hired to ghostwrite a tell-all book for a Russian oligarch who had the goods on Putin. After the project was underway, the oligarch was found dead, having apparently hanged himself. Patrick is certain that the oligarch was murdered and that Russians in the service of Putin are coming for him too.

Robert doesn’t believe Patrick is in danger. He nevertheless believes that Patrick’s story would be a good plot for a novel. As Robert begins to work on the novel, he even includes himself as a character, the writer who listens to Patrick’s story. The story of the oligarch’s suicide resonates with Robert when he learns that an old friend has hung himself in a closet, a strange place to take one’s life.

A Lonely Man follows the two men as they walk the thin line between paranoia and danger. As events unfold, the reader wonders whether Patrick is delusional or the actual target of Putin’s thugs. Robert asks those same questions. Someone indeed seems to be following them when Patrick is with Robert. Someone then seems to be following Robert, who may have placed himself in danger by listening to Patrick’s storis about Putin and the oligarch. Robert even receives a phone call that might be perceived as a threat to harm his wife.

Whether Robert or his family are actually in danger is ambiguous for much of the novel. That ambiguity contributes to the novel’s evolving tension, as the reader wonders whether branding Patrick’s fears as paranoia will be a fatal mistake.

Robert arguably invites trouble by befriending Patrick. He does so in part because he feels an affinity with Patrick, but Robert also believes Patrick’s story might be what he needs to overcome writer’s block. Karijn, Robert’s wife, does not approve of Robert’s appropriation of Patrick’s story without Patrick’s consent. Robert argues that writers steal life stories all the time. He is troubled, however, by his developing sense that “another person had grown up inside him, a shadow-self whose existence she knew nothing about.” Robert is becoming like Patrick, but is he becoming paranoid or is really facing a threat?

Chris Power sets the tone by building distractions into the story that seem vaguely menacing. Robert and Karijn own a cabin on wooded property near a lake in Sweden. When Robert visits the property with a plumber to repair a pump, the trip seems ominous for no obvious reason. When he later takes his daughters to inspect a fort they built in the woods a year earlier, the presence of beer cans suggests intrusion into the family’s privacy. Yet until the final pages, it isn’t clear whether Robert or his family are at any risk of harm at all.

The last few pages provide an anticlimactic answer to that question. They force Robert to make a choice between loyalty or betrayal, the kind of moral choice that makes spy fiction so fascinating. Yet the ending seems abrupt. It is foreshadowed by all that comes before, but it leaves the reader hanging. Novels often challenge a reader to imagine what will come next. This one leaves the feeling that the story is unfinished, that the reader will need to do all the important work.

Still, Power proves his ability to set a scene and to create characters in depth. At first blush, the title seems to refer to Patrick, who has no friend but Robert. Upon reflection, the reader might wonder whether Robert is the lonely one. Perhaps Robert reached out to Patrick not just for story material but to make a connection to someone from his homeland, a connection he can’t easily find in Berlin, one that his Swedish wife cannot provide. That might be why Patrick travels back to London for the suicide victim’s wake, despite not having kept in touch with the man during their years apart. A Lonely Man demonstrates Chris Power’s writing skill and offers the reader an intriguing story on multiple levels, even if the ending is a bit disappointing.

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Basil's War by Stephen Hunter

Published by Mysterious Press on May 4, 2021

Basil’s War is an expanded version of the short story “Citadel.” That story is fun. The novel, with the addition of new adventures as Basil carries out his mission, is even more fun.

Basil St. Florian is a spy, but he’s not a James Bond clone. He combines the wit and charm of Bertie Wooster with the sly intelligence of Jeeves. Basil is a captain in the British Army during World War II. He has a fondness for cocktails and actresses.

The British believe that a German spy is using a book code to transmit secrets. The book is actually a manuscript, The Path to Jesus, published in 1767. To break the code, the Brits need the manuscript, but there are only two copies in existence. They can’t access the one in the Oxford Library because the German spy would learn that they have tumbled to the source of the code. Hence, Basil is to make his way into France and photograph relevant pages of the second manuscript, where it is housed in a rare document collection at the Institut de France in Paris.

Basil changes the mission plan while entering France for reasons that are revealed in the end. He uses his wits and pickpocketing talents to avoid the Germans who are searching for him. More Germans need to be foiled to complete his mission. All the while, Basil’s attitude is one of breezy self-confidence. In the British tradition, he is self-effacing rather than cocky, but he brings a “nothing ventured” philosophy to the more dangerous aspects of his mission. For example, he decides to steal an airplane, and having watched pilots fly them in the past, he thinks it really can’t be that hard. Landing turns out to be trickier than he anticipated.

The light tone distinguishes Basil’s War from a James Bond or George Smiley novel. Since the story isn’t meant to be taken seriously, it would be easy to forgive improbabilities. Yet Stephen Hunter tells a credible story, avoiding the outrageous while spicing the plot with believable action scenes. Well, maybe sleeping with Vivian Leigh and working with Alan Turing is a stretch, but it all adds to the fun. Basil’s War is easy to read and easy to enjoy.

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Blood Grove by Walter Mosley

Published by Mulholland Books on February 2, 2021

Walter Mosley has a permanent position on my list of three favorite crime novelists. He secured that position with intelligent prose, credible plots, and complex characterizations. Add compassion and humanity, and you've got a storyteller who rises about the crowd. All of those elements combine in Mosley’s most recent Easy Rawlins novel.

Blood Grove takes place in 1969, a century after the Civil War ended “but the remnants could still be felt, still killed over on any street corner in the country.” Easy has earned the respect of a few members of the LAPD; many others would be happy to shoot him because of his skin color.

Easy is enjoying some alone time in his office when a man named Craig Killian walks in. Killian thinks he might have stabbed a man to death. He was in an orange grove where he saw a woman tied to a tree. He also saw a man holding a knife. Killian fought him and eventually realized that the knife was deep in the man’s chest. He lost consciousness after battling the man and, when he woke up, the man and woman were gone.

Killian endured some trauma in Vietnam and suffers from what would now be diagnosed as PTSD, but he doesn’t seem delusional. He wants to know what he might have done. He believes the woman called the man Alonzo. Since Alonzo was black, someone suggested to Killian that Easy might be in a good position to ask around and learn Alonzo’s fate.

Killian’s story is missing some pieces but Easy is a soft touch for damaged veterans. He takes the case, embarking on a twisting plot involving mistaken and multiple identities. His investigation leads him to a sex club, a bank heist, an embezzler, more murders, and multiple encounters with dangerous people. Along the way, Easy enlists the services of his own dangerous people, including series regular Raymond “Mouse” Alexander.

Other series regulars, including Jackson Blue and his wife Jewelle, make appearances, Jackson having made a career change that gives him the self-confidence he always lacked. Not lacking in self-confidence is Easy’s adopted daughter Feather, who meets her blood uncle for the first time, a hippy who must overcome Easy’s protective skepticism.

What is there to say about a new Easy Rawlins novel? Mosley has developed Easy and the secondary characters in such depth over the years that, at this point, only the plot details distinguish one novel from the next. And the plots are always good. Easy pounds the pavement, makes civilized inquiries, and calls in favors while waiting for the moment when a white cop decides to put him down. Through persistence and deduction, he moves closer to the truth a step at a time. Like every Easy Rawlins novel, Blood Grove is a treat for fans of intelligent crime fiction.

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Paradise, Nevada by Dario Diofebi

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on April 6, 2021

Dario Diofebi develops the parallel stories of multiple characters in Paradise, Nevada. The stories connect and interweave. Las Vegas is their focal point.

The action centers around the Positano Luxury Resort and Casino. The resort is modeled upon the Italian surfside village of the same name, complete with a mountain and a beach.

The most interesting character in the ensemble is Ray Jackson. Ray is a math whiz who dropped out of Stanford and moved to Canada, where he could legally play online poker. Ray’s decision to drop out disappointed his father almost as much as his decision not to pursue the failing family business. After losing a poker competition to a computer, Ray decides to play high stakes in-person poker in Vegas. For Ray, success depends on understanding the ever-changing odds. He doesn’t believe in watching other players for tells. The other players are always watching Ray.

Also of interest is Tommaso Bernardini, who comes to Vegas after winning a poker tournament in Rome. Tom overstays his tourist visa to play low stakes poker in Vegas, hoping to accumulate wealth. Tom was bullied as a kid and has always felt like a weakling and a loser. The story will give him a chance to discover that there is more to weakness than the absence of physical strength.

Tom meets Trevor, a man who oozes strength and self-confidence. He is in many ways Tom’s opposite. They agree to share an apartment to minimize their expenses. Trevor makes money through his videoblog and happens to have chosen Vegas as one of the destinations he documents. Trevor and Tom take a road trip that harms their friendship while giving Trevor more fuel for his vlog.

Mary Ann is a pretty woman who craves to be seen. She finds a waitressing job at the Positano through her Aunt Karen and becomes involved in a labor movement to extort higher wages by damaging the Positano’s profits. She is swamped with guilt when she becomes the victim of a scheme to destroy more than profits.

Rounding out the cast are Al Wiles, wealthy owner of the Positano; Ben “Graywolf” Richards, a far-right provocateur; Trevor’s frat boy friend Patrick; Orson Peterson, a pessimistic Mormon; Orson’s optimistic sister Lindsay, who ponders Orson’s criticism that she would be “selling out” if she agrees to write Wiles’ biography; and a man sometimes known as Walter Simmons, a grifter who describes himself as “practically a Disney villain” while excusing his embrace of evil.

Doing justice to the free-wheeling plot would be impossible. Plot elements include the science of poker and the social engineering practiced by professionals who dupe amateurs into joining high stakes games; a scheme to extort Tom for immigration fraud; a plan to sabotage profits at the Positano as waitresses fight for better wages; and a plan to cause mayhem at the Positano while blaming organized labor, antifa, and social justice warriors for violent threats to capitalism. The plot has its ups and downs — Paradise, Nevada is an ambitious novel, and some the plot diversions could have been excised to make it tighter — but the novel’s strength lies in how the characters respond to adversity rather than the unlikely struggles they encounter.

Diofebi’s characters try on philosophies of life for size as they try to shape themselves. Ray concludes that humanity is “a multi-agent system, slowly refining itself over time and countless mistakes . . . a large neural network, connected by feelings, striving toward good.” In other words, in the long haul, enough humans behaving decently will overcome the harm caused by those who don’t, and humanity will finally achieve its utopian potential. But that won’t happen until long after we’re all dead, and it depends on the less decent not killing us all before that potential is realized. From the perspective of those who die during lulls in humanity’s incremental progress, humanity is a “parade of solipsistic monsters.”

Diofebi indulges in postmodernist storytelling by having a character, shortly after his death, comment unfavorably upon the novel’s plot. He suggests that humans need to stop focusing on stories of individuals (stories in which we see or imagine ourselves) “while the tide brews and finally sweeps us away.” He counters Ray’s philosophy by expanding the gambling maxim, “the house always wins,” to explain his belief that life is not a network striving toward good, but an “inextricable tangle of hierarchies of evil, and that within this tangle we are so powerless and meaningless, so ignorant and frail, that the house is to us every last thing outside our weak little selves.” History provides ample evidence to support each of the competing philosophies.

Other themes include: greed; empathy and its absence; the evolving and unpredictable nature of selfish and unselfish friendships (“the transactional marketplace of human relationships”); the qualities of winners and losers; the difference between what we want, what we need, and what we deserve; the nature of freedom (true freedom, Tom discovers, is “freedom from doubt”); and whether we learn from crises or merely survive them (or as pessimistic Lindsey suggests, learn the wrong lessons from them).

Paradise, Nevada gives the reader a lot to chew upon. While Diofebi’s reach for profundity sometimes exceeds his grasp, he is an intelligent author who blends comedy and absurdity with dramatic moments that ring true.

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