A man wakes up from a coma in a strange cylindrical room, with only a computer and robotic arms taking care of him. The reader knows he is on a spaceship, but the man himself has such a severe amnesia that he doesn’t even remember his own name. However, the man discovers he is quite competent in the natural sciences and gradually begins to recall flashes of his past too.

The story progresses on two timelines: the present on the spaceship and sometime earlier on Earth. The reader thus learns about the protagonist’s past at the same pace as the man himself. Gradually, it becomes clear that nothing less than the future of all humanity is at stake.

Weir is known for his first book, The Martian. In the movie based on that one everything goes wrong for Matt Damon and he ends up as a potato farmer on Mars. Hail Mary is Weir’s third novel, and Murphy’s Law is still strongly present. As a reader I found myself almost frustrated at some point, wondering if this thing couldn’t have gone reasonably well either.

In any case, the book was captivating, and the world that Weir had developed was detailed and interesting. The category is so-called hard SF, meaning science fiction that strives for scientific accuracy, or at least attempts to explain events scientifically, and for the lay reader, it certainly passes for the real deal. I recommend this one. 📚