Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

Ryland Grace is a junior high science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship with amnesia and two dead crewmates. As his memory returns, he discovers he's humanity's last hope — sent to another star system to find a solution to a crisis that will render Earth uninhabitable. What he finds instead is an alien, a problem, and the most unlikely friendship in the universe.

30 characters, locations, and items in this world codex.

Characters

• Annie Shapiro — The backup science specialist who died alongside DuBois — two deaths that made Grace's forced recruitment inevitable.
• Commander Yao Li-Jie — The Hail Mary's mission commander — a CNSA astronaut who volunteered for a one-way trip to save humanity and died in his sleep before he could try.
• Dimitri Komorov — The Russian scientist who looked at the thing eating the Sun and realized it could also fly a spaceship — turning humanity's greatest threat into its
• Dr. Francois Leclerc — The climatologist who calculated how long Earth had before the cold killed everyone — and proposed nuclear detonations in Antarctica as a way to buy t
• Dr. Irina Petrova — The Russian astronomer who first saw the infrared thread between the Sun and Venus — and named the thing that was killing humanity's star before anyon
• Dr. Lamai — The Thai medical specialist who figured out how to put people to sleep for four years and keep them alive — most of the time.
• Dr. Lokken — The Norwegian scientist who realized you can't do microbiology in zero gravity — and redesigned the entire spacecraft around that problem.
• Dr. Robert Redell — A disgraced engineer pulled from prison because his blackpanel technology was the only way to breed enough Astrophage to fuel a starship — proving tha
• Dr. Ryland Grace — A middle-school science teacher who woke up twelve light-years from home with no memory, two dead crewmates, and the fate of humanity in his lap — and
• Eva Stratt — The woman the United Nations gave unlimited authority to save the world — and who used it without flinching, without apologizing, and without sleeping
• Martin DuBois — The Hail Mary's intended science specialist — killed in an Astrophage handling accident before launch, creating the vacancy that Grace was forced to f
• Olesya Ilyukhina — The Hail Mary's engineer — a Roscosmos cosmonaut who was blunt, capable, and dead before the mission even started in earnest.
• Rocky — An Eridian engineer who crossed the void in a ship three times the size of Grace's, lost twenty-two crewmates to radiation, and still greets the stran
• Steve Hatch — The optimistic engineer who designed the Beetle probes — humanity's backup plan for getting the data home even if the crew didn't make it.

Locations

• 40 Eridani — Rocky's star — dimming under the same Astrophage infection that threatens Sol, proving that the crisis is not humanity's alone.
• Adrian — The CO2-choked planet where Astrophage breed and their natural predator was waiting — the answer to everything, orbiting a star no one was watching.
• Earth — Home — seven billion people waiting for an answer from a man who didn't volunteer, carried by a ship named after a prayer.
• Erid — Rocky's homeworld — a super-Earth of crushing gravity, ammonia storms, and total darkness, where a civilization of blind engineers built a space eleva
• Petrova Taskforce — The international scientific body assembled to prevent human extinction — named after the astronomer who first saw the problem, led by a woman who wou
• Tau Ceti System — The one star in the neighborhood that isn't being eaten — and the twelve-light-year question that two civilizations bet everything on answering.
• The Blip-A — Rocky's Eridian starship — three times the size of the Hail Mary, built of xenonite, and home to the last survivor of a twenty-three-member crew.
• The Hail Mary — Humanity's last-chance starship — a spinning centrifuge of desperation, dead crewmates, and one very confused science teacher, twelve light-years from
• Venus — The CO2-choked planet where Sol's Astrophage breed — humanity's crisis nursery, orbiting one planet over.

Items

• Astrophage — A single-celled organism that eats stars — humanity's extinction event and its only ticket to the stars, wrapped in the same microscopic package.
• Beetle Probes — Four unmanned probes named after the Beatles — humanity's insurance policy, carrying five terabytes of hope at ninety-three percent the speed of light
• Blackpanel — A solar energy conductor designed by a prisoner — the technology that bred enough Astrophage to fuel a starship, because sometimes salvation comes fro
• NannyBot — The robotic arm system that kept three comatose astronauts alive for four years — and succeeded with one out of three, which is technically a passing
• Spin Drive — An engine that tricks starlight-eating microbes into pushing a spaceship — 1,009 of them strapped to the Hail Mary, burning six grams of impossible fu
• Taumoeba — The natural predator of the thing eating the Sun — an amoeba that envelops and kills Astrophage, found on a planet twelve light-years from the problem
• Xenonite — An Eridian super-material made of pure xenon — the strongest substance either civilization has ever produced, until the cure for extinction learned to

View full codex at Simulacra.Ink