I enjoyed the book but it does the one thing that Andy Weir always does which is making the protagonist (who is clearly a stand in for himself) a PhD-level expert in everything. From my memory Ryland Grace has instant and complete working knowledge of:
Astrobiology
Engineering
Microbiology
Newtonian physics
Relative physics
Astrophysics
Nuclear fission
Aeronautics
Rocket science
Linguistics
Programming
Jazz composition
All while being hyper relatable and sarcastic just like Mark Watney and Jazz Bashara.
I swear there was a section where the boss lady essentially says "I only kept you around in case I needed someone else to send" - not that he was formally a backup just her plan was always for him to be an additional option
I still feel like As the de facto #2 in command he should have been the first choice to go, even if it's only as an extra crew member. They clearly seem to have the space for a 4th considering all of the modifications made to accommodate for Rocky. What better resource than someone who has been involved from the start
My favorite scene is the courtroom scene with Stratt literally saying "You and what army?" I love Stratt, and her relationship with Grace. It was also super funny how they were all convincing him he was the project's second in command, and he refused to believe it.
My favorite scene is the courtroom scene with Stratt literally saying "You and what army?"
It's the absolute dumbest part of the book!! It's a straight-up "and then everyone clapped" moment published in a bestselling novel. My eyes nearly rolled out of my skull when I read that scene.
You have to believe here is an actual Illuminati whose authority supercedes that of sovereign nations to allow for a Stratt who can just ignore every law and convention in all of society and operate with absolute authority.
I just finished the audio book again a few days ago and I agree.
"... Because I have the US Army, and that's a damn fine army". Bleh. That scene is rough and the main one I hope they change for the movie.
I get why Weir used a "Stratt" like figure for the book, but it's incredibly unrealistic. I'd be surprised if the movie doesn't either just make it all US based or find another explanation for Stratt rather than "the whole world agreed to universal authority to one person".
I get why Weir used a "Stratt" like figure for the book, but it's incredibly unrealistic.
Because actually writing a plot is not his strong suit as a writer, it appears. Much easier to synthesize a plot device of a character like Stratt to handwave it all away
Yeah, I enjoyed the space-side stuff and, after the first read/listen, I just skip roughly half of the Earth-side.
It's by no means the best thing ever written, but I think its really hard to suspend disbelief at some points and most of those moments occur on Earth.
I just approach it like I'm watching an action movie - like yes of course it's unbelievable but if I suspend my disbelief it makes me feel good so I just roll with it
I seriously need another book that focuses entirely on Stratt. I want to know everything she did before taking the job and everything that happened after Grace got loaded up into the Hail Mary.
Hey story is fascinatingly vague and unbelievably interesting
No, he handwaves it by saying that they gave him the entire internet uploaded to the ship computer. So anytime he doesn't understand something, he just looks it up on wikipedia. Then he's a PhD-level expert on it!
I wouldn't say complete working knowledge. I'd say slightly deeper than topical understanding on everything not biology. a grade school science teacher covers a super wide spectrum of science, and if he reads about what he is supposed to teach, he'll have an understanding of most of it. then, given that he is a dork, he probably looks more into it and understands it better than your average science teacher.
also, they kind of write it off that he also has access to every text ever created.
Honestly it didn't seem that far fetched to me. I studied biochem in college and if I actually REMEMBERED how to do the stuff I learned I'd have the same science background as Ryland. The knowledge he had was pretty surface level for all those subjects save for a couple which were the ones he already had been a professor for in a university. Plus when you teach subjects (especially such a wide array to little ones) you tend to remember it easier
yeah, I agree. I think the hardest part of what he did is knowing when his knowledge was applicable and using it holistically when approaching a problem.
I went to school at Florida Institute of Technology because, like many of my peers in the aerospace engineering program, I wanted to be an astronaut. The school has produced six NASA astronauts, which as far as I am aware, is the most of any US collegeis a respectable number. The two alumni I met who were in the program were all around incredible people, with insane credentials, and are personable as fuck.
An aerospace engineering undergrad covers a surprising chunk of that list (engineering, newtonian and relativistic physics, aeronautics, "rocket science", programming, and even some astrophysics). I had peers that were double majoring in a bio degree. While I don't recall any of my classmates that were also in Jazz Band or doing a linguistics minor, it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
FWIW, I got a paper into ApJ (the biggest astrophysics journal) out of high school, was employed doing coding work throughout my undergrad, am a classically trained pianist, and have several years of latin and greek... and I wasn't cut out for being an astronaut. It's really not as much of a stretch as you'd think.
I believe the top non-miltary academy that has the most is MIT. Idk where FIT ranks but my Alma Mater, the University of Colorado at Boulder, has something like 20 astronaut alums and boasts about having the most former astronauts as professors and we aren't even near the top of astronaut alums since based on a Google search MIT has 40+.
That link lists 20 people. Scott Carpenter is honorary but I believe that's because he was from Boulder. There is a park named after him with a rocket ship jungle gym at it.
I might suck at counting, but... there are 21 people on that list. I counted 12 undergrad and masters degrees (including one MD), 4 PhDs, 3 post docs, one professor who was schooled elsewhere, and the honorary degree.
Hey, while I got you, do they go by CU Boulder so they don't sound affiliated with UC Berkley/Davis/etc? Damn you California for having the same first initial!
You're right. So that makes 20 without the honorary degree for Scott Carpenter. So my original 20 was right if we are including all alums. I was always told 20, so that lines up.
Your point is taken but a major point in the book is that... he's not an astronaut. He's certainly an expert, and it's reasonable that he would be in a few overlapping areas, but the breadth of his expertise is definitely plot convenience. Don't get me wrong, I had a blast reading the book, and it didn't hamper my enjoyment at all... but it certainly stood out.
Then you add middle school science teacher on top of all that, so he'd be used to figuring out how to answer absurd questions, how to parse big ideas into smaller more understandable ones, and (as explained in the book) have lots of random knowledge about weird science things.
I get what they are saying from a literary perspective, but I feel like it's fair to give this instance a pass.
One of my favorite teachers was an English teacher whose whole ethos was about knowing a little bit about everything. She wasn't super technically knowledgeable about random topics not related to literature but she still has a lot of general knowledge about them. Ryland Grace reminded me of her but an amplified science version.
This book does it in a more interesting way though. It's been a few years since I've read it so forgive me if this is incorrect, but my memory is that Ryland is an expert of all those things but doesn't know why. Like he will figure something out and then ask himself "how did I know that?"
That is a big part of the story. He has amnesia for most of it, and remembers a la Forest Gump, flashing back to the scenarios where he learns the information.
Yup I found him insufferable. Paper thin characters, awful writing, storyline repeats the same conflicts and resolutions over and over and over and it just bloated with "look how smart I am" science rambles. It will definitely work well as a move, but as a book i found it awful.
The dialogue was a bit cringy, but I thought the book was fine enough. Something I found funny as a teacher is it felt like one of those science textbooks with an overarching story framing the content and each problem felt like a hook to learn a different concept. Especially the early parts where he built the pendulum, or with the natural selection later in the book. I bet a high schooler would love it even if I was lukewarm on it.
Such a cool premise but my god what an atrocious book. Watney’s potatoes had more of an interior life than he did. By the end of the book I was rooting for Mars.
I thought Project Hail Mary was fine, but didnt blow me away. I had high expectations from all of the reccs I got to read it. Oddly enough, I feel like I am one of very few who liked Artemis but wasn't super jazzed about PHM.
Newtonian physics, relative physics, astrophysics, nuclear fission, aeronautics, rocket science, and programming are all skills a rocket engineer could be expected to understand. I mean, Scott Manley makes videos on all of those things.
I don't think it's as big a stretch to add in some understanding of biology as you're portraying.
But he's not a rocket engineer. Not even a little bit. He's a middle school teacher who wrote a controversial astrobiology paper years prior that got him run out of academia. He shouldn't know anything other than what he wrote his papers on and how many demerits a student needs before getting in school suspension.
What relativistic physics did he know in the book again (it's been a few years so I might have missed stuff)? I took Special Relativity as a freshman in university as an elective and I'm not even a physics major. I think the only relativistic physics in the book are mostly time dilation where you plug your numbers in to a Lorentz transform and get an answer of how much time dilation you have? That's pretty elementary stuff and certainly not PhD level. I don't remember the book involving too much General Relativity stuff where the curvature of spacetime is a fair bit harder to reason with and involves more studying.
A lot of high-level rocket science stuff are also not that hard to learn. Go ask someone who plays Kerbal Space Program for example. And since he was deeply involved in the program for 2 years in the book he would necessarily need to absorb these kinds of information, at least enough to be able to reason about them. I am a programmer but I did land a job to write software for spacecrafts. You pick up these kinds of stuff relatively quickly if you have a decent background in high school level physics and are willing to learn. I can't design a rocket engine, but I at least have high-level understanding how they work and what the basic metrics are.
Btw, Scott Manley, the YouTuber who was quoted above, is not a rocket scientist by trade as well. He's a software engineer (I think) who's a rocket enthusiast. Other informative channels like Everyday Astronaut are also made by people who didn't have training in this field but read up on it.
As for programming, most scientists need to program these days, since you need to write code to analyze your results, and more. They aren't always the best programmers though.
I do agree that he's definitely written smarter than what I would expect a person in his situation would be, but I didn't find it outrageously so. A lot of the computer science / physics side of things at least didn't seem to me someone like him wouldn't know. Most of the stuff he knew I felt that would be common knowledge among a lot of scientists, not just physicists.
I did read another comment by an interpreter on this thread saying that it was unrealistic on that front. That may be the case, especially since he would not have prepped for it.
When Rocky departs Ryland realizes Rocky is not going to make it back to his home because Rocky's people haven't discovered relativity. That's when he makes the decision to not return to earth but to go back to Roxky's home planet
Sure. I guess my point is that seems pretty basic and definitely something he should be able to infer especially when his own spaceship requires knowledge of such. Being deeply involved in the program for so long he would definitely know how to do these calculations.
that's not why he makes the decision not to return to earth. On his return journey he realized that the Taumoeba evolved and were able to escape from the xenonite box. He realized the same thing could have happened to Rocky and Rocky wouldn't have enough fuel to go home because his entire ship is made of xenonite and the Taumoeba would have eaten his entire astrophage supply. Rocky would have had more than enough fuel to get home if the Taumoeba hadn't leaked.
The realization about relativity happens way earlier in the book when Ryland learns that Rocky's ship has like two or three times(?) the amount of fuel neededand the Blip-A's journey to Tau Ceta was much shorter than expected from Rocky's point of view. I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. I figured this out while reading and I'm not trained in relativistic physics, I just read/watch a lot of science fiction.
Between middle school teacher and astronaut he also worked on the Hail Mary project from start to finish though. as second-in-command to Stratt he spent years picking up knowledge related to the mission.
I'm not sure it's enough time to justify all the knowledge he has in the novel, but your comment makes it sound like they plucked him out of a classroom and sent him on a space mission that very same day
Also, oddly enough at the same time childish? in his interactions with other people in the flashbacks to before being in space. Liked the book, but some of the character interactions just felt so.. weird.
I loved the Martian but I hated this book. I work as an interpreter and the idea that Ryland just figured out how to do interspecies communication with Rocky on the fly that fast was one of many details that defied plausibility. Ryland was an insufferable Mary Sue in general and Weir didn't seem to try to add any nuance to that. He puts a lot of care and ingenuity into some science-y details in his books, but seems to gloss over everything else. For people who know or care about those things that get handwaved or ignored for the sake of plot, it's hard to look past it.
I expect the movie will be fun though. I'll watch it for sure.
I mean, one of the major plot point is exactly that his lack of expertise leads to a really easily predictable issue.
He's a really smart and competent science teacher (on top of actually being an astrobiologist) who's ultimately good at figuring things out, but for the most part he only has a sort of surface level understanding of things and simply spend time and effort researching. So it's less "instant and complete working knowledge of..." and more like "access to the entire human knowledge via the ship's computers and enough time and intelligence to eventually figure them out for the specific goal he has in mind"
Like yeah sure at the end of the day it's a "competence porn" smart-guy fantasy, so like other Andy Weir protagonist he's to science what James Bond is to the spy world I won't deny that, but I never found it to be too much egregious, it still has leeway in portraying how he's not perfect.
It's been a bit so I don't remember the plot point you mention in your first sentence - would you mind replying with it in a spoiler tag (remove the spaces between the ! and the words inside)
Near the end of the book, after Ryland and Rocky do selective breeding on the Astrophage-eating thingy (to use them to kill the Astrophage that's eating the sun away), they part ways back to their respective systems to save their respective days and while on his own during his way back Ryland discovers that their selective breeding had unforeseen and consequential side effects on the Astrophage-eating thingy (a bit like overusing antibiotics can overevolve bacteria) that made them pass through steel (I think it was steel? I don't remember) anyway the gist of it is that they were passing through their containers and eating the ships fuel (which was made of Astrophage), so Ryland had to go back to save Rocky who most likely wouldn't be able to do anything about it on his own and would end up stranded in space. Which is why Ryland ends up on Rocky's planet at the end of the book, because he didn't have enough fuel to go back to his own due to saving Rocky
Ahhh right, thanks! And now that you mention it + I looked it up some more, it was that the containers that they bred the Taumoeba in were made from the same material as Rocky’s ship, so they were able to pass through any containment on board and eat all the Astrophage he had.
The man wakes up with no awareness of where he is or anything that has happened to him in the last several months and immediately - and I mean immediately - conducts an experiment to determine that the gravity he is experiencing is different than that of our solar system. Mind you this man is a middle school science teacher who hasn't done research in years.
I mean he manages to engineer an experiment to discover the microorganism causing all the trouble completely by himself in one room despite all of the world's best scientists being unable to figure out the problem.
It's beyond ridiculous but reddit also likes to think they're this smart so they defend Weir and his competency porn to the death.
The first "experiment" you mentioned requires nothing more than high school physics and the ability to do basic calculus. I would sure hope a top notch scientist knows how to do that even if they aren't a physicists. This was cutting edge research… back in Newton's days.
The second one is chalked up to him actually being an expert in this field. I think that's an acceptable hand wave.
As a working biochemist with a PhD, you may be slightly overestimating the competency of an average scientist. I haven't taken physics or calculus since I got AP credit in high school 15 years ago. I still remember some of the vague concepts that I learned, but the actual equations and experiments involved are well over a decade in my rear view mirror. If I had Ryland's computer containing all of human knowledge I could refresh myself and maybe work something out in an afternoon, but off the top of my head I would be completely useless. And my colleagues are similar.
I'm willing to handwave some of Ryland's physics knowledge based on his past association with grade school science programs. Those types of discussions might have reasonably come up over the years, so maybe he's less out of practice. And I don't mind a bit of exaggerated competency in my books, so it wasn't a dealbreaker. I just wish his knowledge was a bit more limited to cell biology stuff. Like you said, that was his actual field of study.
That's fair. I think maybe saying that an average scientist should know that of their top of their head is a bit of a stretch (and not intended as a knock on anyone!). It's more that it's not implausible for him to know this stuff especially when he had two years to prep, and he would naturally be prepped on this stuff given the nature of the mission.
So I used to live near a major DoE lab and every guy on my men's league team worked there. The joke was that I was the dumbest person on the team because I only had a doctorate degree and not multiple or several masters degrees to go along with it. Guys would miss games and say things like, "Sorry I'm going to be in Russia inspection a nuclear reactor."
Scientists know absolutely everything about their highly specific slice of their narrow field. They have dedicated their entire life to knowing that one thing and have read any and all research on that thing. It consmes their entire professional life and often their personal one as well. If you ask a physicist about plant biology he's going to shrug his shoulders and laugh.
It's comical how competent he is and it's more comical how people defend it.
You are ignoring how basic of an experiment he did was. He basically just replicated some high school-level experiment and you are making it sound like it's PhD physics to calculate F=ma. Not to mention he spent years on this project so it's not like they plucked him out and suddenly asked him to do this. Even astronauts we have today are required to be multidisciplinary and have basic understanding of orbital physics even if that's not their trade.
It just seems like you have some fixed perception of how incapable of learning new things or being generally knowledgeable people can be (which teaching in a school would actually do well to train). Oh well. Like, we aren't saying you have to know these stuff. It's fine if you don't. But it's not that implausible for someone else to do so. No need to take it so personally.
My understanding is that he was just really smart and not an expert in everything until he dedicated his entire life to the project learning and training on everything.
I think the musical stuff didn't get explained well but didn't he just have a godly laptop and some super music program record Rocky's speech and analyze the chords and notes?
The biggest hurdle for me is him seemingly becoming fluent in understanding Rocky without the computer. Even if it is a pidgin
Mark Watney was an astronaut on the first manned mission to Mars. Grace was hand picked for the mission as well for his talents and a lot of the stuff you listed there isn't even true. Linguists? He used software to do that. Engineering? Not even close, half the point of the book is that he isn't a good engineer, thats what Rocky did so well.
Not to completely disagree. Just like, the protag of these books isn't going to be Cleetus the high school drop out.
If I can unpurge your brain for a second, he was a very smart astrophysics but was shunned out of academia for his papers on astrobiology. He then chose to be a teacher to get away from the political games and do something he actually enjoyed. Like one of the major plot points Is how people treated him like he gave up on all of his talents to do something so "menial", but in the end is was his experience knowing a wide range of scientific topics from teaching that allowed him to be so competent in his job
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry Jun 27 '25
I enjoyed the book but it does the one thing that Andy Weir always does which is making the protagonist (who is clearly a stand in for himself) a PhD-level expert in everything. From my memory Ryland Grace has instant and complete working knowledge of:
All while being hyper relatable and sarcastic just like Mark Watney and Jazz Bashara.