An interview with Andy Weir about the accuracy of the science in Project Hail Mary. “I’m proud that the only true violation of physics in the story is something you have to go down to the quantum level to find.”
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Book and movie are both great. No notes.
The movie is great. But claiming scientific accuracy ... erm, where is the reaction mass you need to travel 11 light years in any kind of reasonable timeframe? If it's photons (or neutrinos) where did the energy come from to make that many astrophages?
The science is junk. But that's not the point: it's a movie about friendship and the people of the world uniting to deal with a threat to the climate which will kill billions of our children, like we are doing in reality ... oh, wait.
FWIW, the book does attempt to answer those questions (in fact it explicitly looks at the trade-offs that had to be made a planet scale to manufacture the fuel), though as Weir notes in the NYT interview one of those answers depends on a flight of fancy. Which is to say, he at least tried to make those things believable at a distance, which is more than the movie did. However, the movie was already 2:40 without trying to fully explain everything...
This movie didn't feel like it was 2:40 long, I could have watched another hour of it no problem
"The science is junk" is way too harsh. It's sci-fi...of course you're inventing science that isn't real. But everything else that can adhere to reality is legit (or at least Weir has tried to make it legit).
Saw a concise distinction of sci-fi (the rules are those of our universe) and fantasy (the rules are different) from Hank Green. Probably a sliding scale, like Star Wars is sort of fantasy set in space. Weir really tried to make PHM fit in our universe, to an extent that it feels almost plausible. More so than Ludicrous Speed™. I'm excited to see the movie, I've heard it's fantastic (ho ho!)
I liked the movie but didn't love it. I wasn't so much bothered by whether it was sticking to the laws of physics (although I had the same questions about near-light-speed travel, etc.). What bothered me was how it portrayed the process of science more generally. Ryan Gosling's character is the only scientist in the world with the knowledge and ability to figure this stuff out? Come on! The scenes of him alone in the lab doing all manner of different experiments were absurd to me. Science doesn't look like that. Couldn't they have at least hired a few extras to show that science is a team sport? I do a lot of work with scientists as a documentary filmmaker and the thing that seems to bother them the most about how science is portrayed in media is this "lone genius" trope.
I challenged my two boys to read the book with me in the lead up to the movie. I assumed it would be a tough hill to climb since I have become a slow, distracted reader over time, with so many unfinished books reminding me of my failures. Nonetheless, this book was engrossing and a fun read. I sometimes read a few pages, other times several chapters. It was a rewarding experience and now I know I’m capable of reading entire books. I just need motivation.
One of my sons didn’t quite finish it, so I can imagine the ending was an interesting surprise for him. I think that having the character build up and context around the story would make the movie better not knowing how it ends. I’m looking forward to the next book-to-movie adaptation to test my theory.
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