Funny / Project Hail Mary

• After discovering the Hail Mary's well-equipped lab and realizing he must be a scientist, Ryland excitedly tries to come up with some kind of science he can do. Unfortunately, the only "idea" he can come up with is that he's hungry.
  Ryland: You have failed me, brain.
• Before he remembers his real name, Ryland makes a brief Running Gag out of giving joke answers whenever the computer asks him to state his name. Highlights include Captain Comatose and The Great Philosopher Pendulous.
• Ryland pulls a Mistaken for Pedophile on himself, as he remembers that he's a single man living alone who really likes kids before he remembers his job.
  Ryland: Oh thank God, I'm a teacher.
• It takes Ryland a couple days to realize why Strat is so insistent that he be the only one who handle the strange alien life before anyone else.
  Stratt: Also, most infections take three days to show any effects.
  Ryland: Wait a second, you're using me as a guinea pig!
  Stratt: It's not like that.
  Ryland: [glares]
  Stratt: Okay, it's exactly like that.
• Stratt sends Grace a notice by simply slapping a post-it note on his forehead while he was still sleeping.
• When Ryland tries to teach Rocky the metric system he gives him a measuring tape. Rocky, due to being Eridian, is blind and unable to see the marking on the tape, doesn't understand its purpose and seems to assume that it's a toy, much to Ryland's frustration.
• Ryland is horrified when he realizes that everyone on the base assumes he's sleeping with Stratt. Worse, when they find out he isn't, everyone points out that maybe he should be. Would probably do both of them some good.
• While retrieving the beetles so he can use them as emergency engines, Ryland loses a screw to the vastness of space. When he asks if Rocky can make new screws, Rocky chides him to hold on to them better. Ryland points out that he needs one hand to work the screwdriver and one to hold onto the ship. Rocky tells him to use a third hand to hold the screws...then stops mid-sentence when he remembers humans only have two hands.
• DuBois. Just DuBois. Basically a heterosexual Captain Holt whose blunt sexual exploits with Shapiro have Grace scrambling for Brain Bleach!
• Ryland and Blip-A make first contact through flashing lights. Then Ryland has to engage the centrifuge, and Blip-A starts spinning too. Ryland promptly realizes that he's now also responsible for the first miscommunication with an alien race.
• Eridians are especially vulnerable when they sleep and thus have a heavy cultural emphasis on only sleeping when a trusted friend is on guard, so Rocky offers to keep watch on Ryland as a gesture of good faith. All of this flies over Ryland's head (and the reader's, as it's only explained later), so Ryland is left with a metal alien spider insisting that he watch Ryland sleep.
  • Taken to greater heights when Ryland teaches Rocky the "fist bump" leading to Rocky later asking Ryland, "Fist me!"
• Rocky, who can best be described as a five sided rock spider, wears a version of overalls and a tool belt for his work.
• Grace accidentally oversleeps one of his first scheduled meetings with Rocky leading to the discovery that the Angry Fist-Shake is literally a universal gesture.
• Meta Funny. Compared to the Sir Swears Alot attitudes of the characters in Weir's novels The Martian and Artemis, Ryland's Gosh Darn It to Heck! tendencies are hilarious. Justified given he starts as a teacher to middle school students.
  • Ryland breaks this pattern when he first sees the Blip A and realizes he has just made first contact with intelligent alien life. “Holy fucking shit!”
• Rocky criticizes "Tau Ceti e" as a "boring" name for a planet. Then it turns out that Rocky's culture has named the Venus-equivalent planet in their own system as something that translates as "Planet Three".