Summary
Project Hail Mary is one of the biggest movies of 2026 so far, a terrific adaptation Andy Weir’s 2021 sci-fi novel that’s equal parts brains and heart. The movie tells the story of Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a schoolteacher who is also humanity’s last hope to figure out why the sun is dimming. He is sent light years away to the star of Tau Ceti, one of the few stars in this part of the galaxy not being affected by an alien microorganism called astrophage. There, he meets a five-armed, no-faced extraterrestrial he names Rocky, and the two of them try to solve the problem together. Andy Weir is also the author behind 2011 book The Martian, which was adapted into a 2015 movie of the same name. Both of these hard sci-fi novels are terrific, but fantasy author Brandon Sanderson reckons there’s a clear winner. Project Hail Mary is Andy Weir’s best book yet At least, according to another literary icon Sanderson is an incredibly prolific author behind series like Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive, both of which are currently being adapted for the screen. He also loves to stay in touch with his readers. In a March 16 playthrough of Halo 2, right before the Project Hail Mary movie opened in theaters, he revealed his thoughts on Andy Weir’s oeuvre: I really like The Martian. I like Artemis. And I like this better than either of those. This is more a Brandon book…I mean I love, The Martian, but who doesn’t love The Martian? This one has a little bit more science fiction to it. This one has a bit of a more complex narrative and a bit of a more interesting, complex character. And yet it has all the stuff I loved in The Martian. This is the stuff that Andy Weir is really good at…What I love that Andy does is, he shows that optimism can be compelling as a narrative. So far, Weir has only written three books: The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail, and two out of the three of them have been turned into hit movies. The third is on the way. It’s true that Project Hail Mary has “a little bit more science fiction to it” than The Martian, which is about an astronaut who is stranded on the Red Planet. There’s no alien in that one, and it’s no surprise that an author with Sanderson’s predilections would prefer something a bit more fanciful. And yet, it still has “all the stuff that [Sanderson] loved in The Martian.” So what stuff is he talking about? The Project Hail Mary book is still worth reading even if you’ve seen the movie You’re missing a lot of details Andy Weir is considered a “hard” sci-fi author, meaning he takes pains to make sure the science in his books is accurate, or at least accurate enough that a layperson will get the impression that it’s all plausible. Project Hail Mary is full of interesting scientific details. In the book, we learn about the genetic reasons behind why Ryland Grace survived a medically induced coma while his colleagues did not, and why he has amnesia afterward. We learn exactly how astrophage works, whereas the movie treats it more as a nebulous sci-fi power source. We learn a lot more about Rocky’s biology, and we spend a lot of time with Grace as he runs experiments, calculates chemical equations, and builds tools, with a lot of trial and error along the way. As Brandon Sanderson said on an episode of his Intentionally Blank podcast, he missed these aspects from the film: “They left out a lot of the science, the try-fails, the figuring out how everything works,” he said. That said, Sanderson still enjoyed the Project Hail Mary movie, saying that the cast and crew “did a fantastic job.” But you’re always going to lose something in the translation from page to screen, even if the adaptation is excellent. What’s next for Brandon Sanderson and Andy Weir There’s a lot on the way As mentioned, two of the three books Andy Weir has published have been turned into movies. The third, 2017’s Artemis, is in development, with Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller already attached. Artemis is set in the 2080s in a city on the Moon. It’s a heist novel that focuses less on engineering and problem-solving than The Martian or Project Hail Mary, but is still grounded in real-world physics. As for Brandon Sanderson, Apple is working on adapting his Stormlight Archive books as a TV show and his Mistborn books as a movie series. Sanderson writes fantasy, not sci-fi, but there’s often a lot of overlap between the two fanbases, so it will pay to keep an eye on how these projects develop. Books for everybody We’re living in a bit of a golden age for not only sci-fi novels, but for sci-fi novels getting translated for the screen. The Expanse, Silo, and Foundation are all fantastic sci-fi shows based on books made in the last 10 years, and there’s more on the way. Whether you’re a fan of fantasy, sci-fi, or stories that straddle the gap between the two, you have a lot of options before you.