History Literature / ProjectHailMary

* FromBadToWorse: Earth's hypothetical demise is explained in detail, that starting with crop failures, things would compound to rapidly accelerate how fast humanity would die off. Ecologically, species going extinct will further the climate decline, driving more species extinct, etc. Stratt knows from her history studies that once food and drinkable water become scarce, there will be war between nations, destroying most of the remaining food production so that the invader can steal the rest.
* GadgeteerGenius: Rocky is no scientist, but he's ''very'' good at working machinery and building gizmos on the fly.

** It's known from the beginning that the ''Hail Mary'' will be a SuicideMission, as there isn't enough fuel to return to Earth from Tau Ceti. The three crew members are giving up their lives for humanity.

* HumansAreDivided: Stratt has been given unilateral powers to prevent this from harming the mission. To accomplish Project Hail Mary she's been granted all the authority and her budget is YES.

* NecessarilyEvil: Stratt is never malicious, and certainly not self-interested, but she's utterly committed to saving humanity from destruction and in that role, she's quick to disregard moral objections to anything she considers necessary for the mission. This includes [[spoiler:nuking the Antarctic, paving over the Sahara Desert, and impressing people into the project against their will and by force, up to and including force someone onto a suicide mission]]. Importantly, she predicts that she'll ultimately be punished for all of this and probably spend the rest of her life in prison, but regards her own well-being as no more consequential as any other consideration
* NextSundayAD: Chronologically, the story begins pretty much in the present day.

* AmbiguousSituation: The DistantEpilogue [[spoiler:confirms that Earth was saved and human industrial civilization still exists, but nothing more than that -- Grace has no idea how bad things got before the beetles arrived, and can only cling to hope that ApocalypseAnarchy didn't get too bad. It's also not specified whether Stratt was PromotedToScapegoat as she expected.]]

* AmnesiacResonance: Grace instinctively uses metric units when doing calculations regarding time and motion, but thinks in Imperial units otherwise. This, combined with the fact that he knows how to do said calculations at all, brings him to the conclusion that he's a scientist, and most likely from the United States or United Kingdom.

** [[spoiler:Grace has to use what fuel he has left to save not only Rocky, but the Eridian race itself, by carrying Rocky home, leaving the Beetles to bring info back to Earth. Fortunately, the Eridians treat him very well, doing everything they can to make his new home pleasant. It also turns out that he succeeded in his own mission, as Sol is observed to be brightening. And he is doing the thing he loved most, teaching again (to Eridian children, who are as excited as Earth children would be to be in a class taught by an actual alien!) But he is still basically stuck in a small domed habitat on an alien world that he can never really explore, and Erid's high gravity is starting to take its toll on his body.]]

* CentralTheme: Food. Food is everything. The conflict of the story is that Astrophage is eating the sun's energy, meaning that Earth is going to cool down, disrupting the food chain resulting in famine. [[spoiler:Grace and Rocky solve the problem by finding a natural predator. The problem is, once the predator escapes confinement it eats the Astrophage being used as fuel. Grace is unable to return to Earth because, after he's taken Rocky home, he doesn't have enough food to last the journey.]] In [[Literature/TheMartian another book]] by [[Creator/AndyWeir the same author]] the protagonist solving the food issue is the central plot of the book. [[spoiler: In this book, it is very clearly stated that the protagonist ''can't'' solve the food issue the way Mark Watney did. Thankfully he befriends an alien who manages a way to feed him.]]

** Rocky and Ryland managed to learn each other's language in a few weeks. Justified on Rocky's end by Eridians' eidetic memories and on Grace's end by creating and studying from a dictionary, which he updates as he learns new words. Also justified in that they neither party is fluent in the other's language; they've just picked up enough to communicate important ideas in simplified terms.

** [[spoiler: After the reveal that Grace had to be forced onto the mission and spending most of the novel dreading his eventual death in space, Grace finally proves once and for all that he's no coward when he willing chooses to give his own life (seemingly) to rescue Rocky and the Blip-A, and by extention the Eridians.]]

* NecessarilyEvil: What Stratt acknowledges herself to be, but she's weighing whatever she does against the odds of humankind's survival, even if that includes [[spoiler:nuking the Antarctic, paving over the Sahara Desert, or ''forcing'' someone to go on a suicide mission]]. Repeatedly.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: One of Stratt's responsibilities is preventing exactly that.

* SadisticChoice: Near the end of the book, [[spoiler:Grace has to choose between returning to Earth and saving himself, or going back to save Rocky and the Eridians with the knowledge that he'll starve to death when supplies run out in a few years. He chooses the latter. Thankfully, the Eridians manage to figure out a better menu for him to survive on their planet, and it's confirmed that the beetles made it back to Earth and Sol was saved anyway.]]

* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Stratt runs roughshod over the law to get the manpower and resources to stop the astrophage, and to delay humanity's extinction as long as possible to buy time for ''Hail Mary'' to find a solution. She fully expects all her chickens to come to roost the moment she's done everything she can to save the world until the ''Hail Mary'' comes up with a solution.

** Stratt was very careful to never let the primary and backup crews for the ''Hail Mary'' take the same transportation, so that even if one crew met with an accident, the other would still be able to take over. The same restriction was not on keeping crews in the same buildings. [[spoiler:As a result, the primary and backup biologists are both killed in an explosion, forcing Stratt to find a new biologist [=ASAP=].]]

* TechnologyLevels: Discussed by Grace and Rocky. When Grace wonders at how unlikely their meeting was, and how similar their technology is, Rocky points out that less advanced civilizations would be unable to do anything about astrophage and die, and more advanced civilizations would be able to take care of the problem it poses without having to leave their own solar system. [[AnthropicPrinciple Only at their specific technology level would it be both possible and necessary for a civilization to send a mission to Tau Ceti.]]

* TooMuchInformation: [=DuBois=] and Shapiro share the fact and frequency of their physical relationship once they deem that there should be no secrets in the group, much to Grace's consternation.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Stratt. And every 'evil' she does is justified. She's made her peace with her eventual [[PromotedToScapegoat promotion to scapegoat]], as long as the goal is met.

* SoleSurvivor: Grace and Rocky are the sole survivors of their respective missions. Grace's crewmates died of unspecified medical complications during their comas; Rocky's died of [[spoiler:radiation poisoning]] because the Eridians [[AliensNeverInventedTheWheel didn't know that was a thing]] (Rocky survived because his "quarters" were behind the engine, which had to be made extra-dense to function properly, which also made it stop [[spoiler:radiation]]).

* TwoGuysAndAGirl: Discussed, the original mission plan involves sending two men and a woman, all heterosexual, which Stratt hates due the gender setup having few benefits and mostly [[BelligerentSexualTension down]][[{{Cockfight}} sides]]. If Ilyukhina hadn't been the best candidate for engineer and Shapiro the alternate candidate for biologist, she'd have sent all heterosexual men to minimize the odds of messy conflict.

* OnlyFriend: It dawns on Grace that Rocky is his only real friend he's ever had, being single on Earth and not wanting to risk putting himself out there and get a life. [[spoiler: This is a major contributing factor to him choosing to return to the Blip One over going back to Earth]].

* GoneHorriblyRight: When Grace and Rocky realize that astrophage is part of the native ecology of Tau Ceti, they set out to find cells that prey on on it. [[spoiler:Their entire fuel supply also consists of astrophage, and they soon realize that the predator cells are ''really'' good at killig them.]]

** Both Rocky and Grace manage to accidentally figure out ways of communicating with the other before they knew anything about each others' biologies. For example, Rocky picked a translucent form of xenonite to build most things with because that's the one panel (of several) from the xenonite wall that Grace first pushed his face against, having no idea that the human can see.

** While the very nature of the ''Hail Mary'' and it's propulsion is new technology, all machinery and lab equipment ''aboard'' it is existing off-the-shelf technology with many thousands of hours of consumer testing, save for the coma apparatus and medical droids. Its CentrifugalGravity mode, though experimental, spared them from having to design a whole university's worth of new, untested scientific apparati that work in microgravity. Microsoft Office may not be flashy, but it works reliably.

* GlobalWarming: Actively accelerated to buy time against the sun's dimming. This goes as far as [[spoiler:nuking Antarctica to dump methane in the atmosphere and keep the Earth warm for as long as possible.]]

** While the very nature of the ''Hail Mary'' and it propulsion is new technology, all machinery and lab equipment ''aboard'' it is existing off-the-shelf technology with many thousands of hours of consumer testing, save for the coma apparatus and medical droids. Its CentrifugalGravity mode, though experimental, spared them from having to design a whole university's worth of new, untested scientific apparati that work in microgravity. Microsoft Office may not be flashy, but it works reliably.

* DueToTheDead: Ryland dresses his deceased crewmates in their uniforms before performing a BurialInSpace for them. When he does this he hasn't yet recovered his memory of who they were (or even thier names) but still feels the need to handle their bodies respectfully.

* AbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder: Discussed -- although Eridians normally mate for life, Rocky worries that his mate ("Adrian") may have moved on while he is in space. [[spoiler:The epilogue reveals that [[IWillWaitForYou she waited for him]]]].

* GodzillaThreshold: Stratt has been crossing every line in order to give humanity the best chance of survival. [[PressGanged Forcibly recruit]] anyone who has even a sliver of applicable knowledge for the project? Pave over the Sahara desert to generate enough fuel for an interstellar spaceship?[[spoiler:''Nuke Antarctica'' to generate enough greenhouse gases to keep Earth warm for a few more years?]] She'll stop at nothing to prevent humanity's extinction. [[spoiler:Even forcing a civilian onto a suicide mission, because there was no other choice.]]

** While their ammonia-based atmosphere blocks out all sunlight from their surface, the Eridians themselves actually don't "breathe" at all, either ammonia or oxygen. That is, they don't use "cellular respiration" for gaseous exchange: they do cycle air through tubes, which is also how they make noises audible to humans, but this is purely used to regulate internal temperature. Thus the pressure differential, not difference in chemical composition, is what makes them unable to live in an Earth-like atmosphere.

* SoleSurvivor: Grace and Rocky are the sole survivors of their respective missions. Grace's crewmates died of unspecified medical complications during their comas; Rocky's died of [[spoiler:radiation poisoning]] because the Eridians [[AliensNeverInventedTheWheel didn't know that was a thing (Rocky survived because his "quarters" were behind the engine, which had to be made extra-dense to function properly, which also made it stop radiation)]].

* SoleSurvivor: Grace and Rocky are the sole survivors of their respective missions. Grace's crewmates died of unspecified medical complications during their comas; Rocky's died of [[spoiler:radiation poisoning]] because the Eridians [[AliensNeverInventedTheWheel didn't know that was a thing]].

* CultureClash: Downplayed. Differences between Earth and Eridian cultures lead to some misunderstandings between Grace and Rocky, but they don't significantly affect the overall plot.

The main character is Ryland Grace, an astrobiologist turned school teacher, who happens to wake up intubated, in an unknown environment, and with no recollection of who he is or how he came to be there. Also, there are two corpses with him in the room. Suffice it to say Grace has his work cut out for him.

* DownToTheLastPlay: Invoked by the title. A Hail Mary pass is a desperate, down-to-the-buzzer play that is understood to have little chance of success, specifically throwing the ball very far down the field as possible in the slim hope that somebody can catch it. Its name was popularized as Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Roger Staubach (who happened to be Catholic) stated in an interview that he recited the eponymous prayer in his mind as he launched a particularly memorable (and successful) one of those.