Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is one of the major books of the present, even if it is not yet clear how it will stand the test of time, indeed, I was checking its ranking on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and it has fallen four places, from 6915th, where it was last time, when I posted my first take on this Science fiction blockbuster, it has more than one million three hundred thousand ratings on Goodreads, and it has been adapted for the big screen, where it is the number one success of the year, at least in box office terms…indeed, the reason why I put in a few more lines on the subject is that I watched the movie last night, with Hannah, my daughter – you find thousands of notes on films from The New York Times’ 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is one of the major books of the present, even if it is not yet clear how it will stand the test of time, indeed, I was checking its ranking on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and it has fallen four places, from 6915^th, where it was last time, when I posted my first take on this Science fiction blockbuster, it has more than one million three hundred thousand ratings on Goodreads, and it has been adapted for the big screen, where it is the number one success of the year, at least in box office terms…indeed, the reason why I put in a few more lines on the subject is that I watched the movie last night, with Hannah, my daughter – you find thousands of notes on films from The New York Times’ 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

7 out of 10

 

Project Hail Mary https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/04/project-hail-mary-by-andy-weir-is-one.html has made a good impression on me a few weeks ago, when I listened to the audiobook, because I had heard that the motion picture inspired by it is such a huge success with the public and critics

 

The Metascore is 77, which means the critics have enjoyed it, although like this cinephile, they are not over enthusiastic about it…the ratings of the public on the other hand have been better, and this feature is now the 88^th most popular on the IMDB site, which makes me think of H.L. Mencken and one of his humorous quotes

‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard’ this will be paraphrased and adapted to the films, in the sense that even if audiences appreciate Marvel movies, I will not watch them https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-american-credo-by-h-l-mencken-and.html

 

Mencken also said ‘The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars’ and look at how accurate he was: their Orange Caligula has started the war in Iran, attacked the pope (after targeting allies, but not Putin and other despots) and posted himself as Jesus, only to deny, and say he thought he was a doctor there…

Now back to Project Hail Mary: it has some good sides – of course it does, it would not be such a success, except if we take Mencken into account – including the fact that it is not Panglossian, oops, that is the opposite of what I like, yes, it means being stupid, believing in rosy, corny reality, all will be well and nice…

 

Candide https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/candide-or-optimist-by-voltaire.html has this character who says something like ‘we live in the best of all possible worlds’, but then they have the earthquake that caused the calamity in Lisbon…in Project Hail Mary I liked the fact that some of the things are believable

You do not start with the assumption that we will have a happy end, counterintuitively, we know that the hero must die, early on (no spoilers needed here) and then there is that surprising story of how he got on the ship, I keep mum on this, because it is not divulged so soon, but other things are just hard to accept

 

Nonetheless, I will refer now to According to Mark: ‘the novelist has an infinity of choices, He chooses what is to happen, to happens, and in what way he will relate what happens, the picture he constructs is complete on its own terms…when he says this is the story and the whole story we must accept it…perhaps novelists are the only people telling the truth’ concluding hence that the writer is god, and Andy Weir has created a narrative that proves a wonderful imagination  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/according-to-mark-by-penelope-lively.html