StarTalk Radio - Project Hail Mary with Andy Weir

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

What if a microscopic alien lifeform was slowly eating our sun? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice sit down with Andy Weir, the bestselling author of Project Hail Mary, for a deep dive into designing aliens, science fiction, and science behind the book (and the movie.) NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:  https://startalkmedia.com/show/project-hail-mary-with-andy-weir/ Thanks to our Patrons RT, Matthew Wessel, Tyler Walker, nuclear_detergent, Ryan Buchanan, The Lord of the Ganja, Tyrone Morgan, Ciara Steinert, Fabian De Rossi, Travis Anders, Dee El Dee, Lazzarous, Moshe Sedero, Sebastian Heineberg, David, Casey Sizeland, Anna, Simon Franklin, Chris Carley, ohhdontdoit, hilde, Jim Niemann, Jesse Lee, Sri Harsha Chennavajjala, grbac6800, Mike, Aviad Pineles, salima makitina, Gero Finke, Nick Charles, David Shapiro, Diyako Kochar Taymur, David Kunz, Bob, Doug, Aviral Bhatnagar, Matthew Sims, Squibb Thompson, Theta544, D00gster x702, Kyle Sullivan, John Hermansen, April Stearns, Brian Eastwood, jassim tazi, Kassious, Gustavo Rincon, Reloadown, Tom Kavanaugh, Kay 1, George Grimes, Barbara Lewis, Davey Maclaren, Blake Muccini, Sydney, MISFIT, Mohammed Nadeem Amin, JB, rasma, Chris, Glenn Whelan, Elizabeth Grey, Eli Hadden, Elias Holguin, Darrell Thayer, Jason, Shayla Hamady, Bradley Martin, jamie jarrard, Robert Douglas Brown, Michael Johnston, Kristine Nixon, VirusJTG, Briana Bartlett, Tim Rea, Leo Carrasco, Christopher Friedline, belle g, Carver Nevling, Emily Winter, Draxontheyeen, Leslie, Bombed Blonde, Shadow, Brian, Sam Smith, Brianna Smith, Evan Q, Anzhr, Jolo, Austin Applegate, Bryan Smarkola, Steven Patterson, Femke Seynaeve, Bee, Jeffrey Macris, Stan Ginsel, Bob M, Eric, and Yet Another Patron for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio ad-free and a whole week early.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andy, we're in the house. Yes, he is. Author of the novel Project Hail Mary. That's correct. We're going to talk to him, but there's going to be spoilers. Yeah, lots of spoilers. You know why? Because you didn't read the damn book.

That's right. That's the problem. Coming up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. StarTalk, Neil deGrasse, and you're a personal astrophysicist.

And right next to me, I got Lord Chuck Knight. What's up, Neil? How you doing, man? How you feeling? Man, I'm feeling great. Yeah. You look good. Well, thank you, sir.

You know, looking healthy. Well, that may not be the case, but, you know, it's good to look that way. You know, it's good if I'm actually healthy or not. As long as I look good. We got a good show today. We certainly do. Oh, my God. We have a repeat guest.

That's correct. Many times. Many times. I looked at the numbers. I said, hasn't boy been on this show that many times? Yeah. And I said, no, yeah. We have the one, the only, Andy Weir.

Andy. Hello. Welcome back to StarTalk. Thanks for having me again. It's like your sixth time. You think you guys would learn by now. You think? You keep writing books and we keep bringing you back.

I like it. You are birthed into this world as a, was it a software engineer? Well, it took me a while between birth and becoming a software engineer, but yes. I was going to say that is a, That was one seriously developmental womb. Yeah. There wasn't a lot of software engineering in 1972. I mean, there was some, though.

I mean, a Apollo program. Turned sci-fi novelist. Yes, sir. Extraordinaire. Man, from The Martian, a best-selling book. Yeah. Which became a best, very popular movie. A hit.

A hit movie. A hit movie with all kinds of marquee actors in it. Right. Jessica Chastain. Matt Damon. And Matt Damon. It was Mark Watley. Watney.

Was it Watney? It is Watney. Oh, okay. Says the guy who wrote it. Whatever. At the time I lived in Boston when I first started writing it and I lived alone because I was a loser. And I was like at the time I was really into Red Sox games and they had a sideline reporter named Heidi Watney. Oh, really?

And so that I'm like that name. I like that name. I'm taking it. Okay. So Heidi Watney, if you're out there, Mark's named after you. Heidi, no, no, no, no, he's not, because we don't want to owe you any money. Andy doesn't know what he's saying. He's been drinking since noon.

StarTalk personally takes responsibility for any monetary compensation. There you go. So what year did the Martian come out? Well, it took me years to write the book. I started writing it in 2009, finished around 2012. The book came out, I think 2013 or 2013. It's early teens. Yeah.

And so the movie comes out in 2015. 2015, the movie. So that's a quick turnaround between the men. Yes, it was very fast. So congratulations on that. Was the book that popular? It was like a meteoric rise through the rankings. Boom, let's make a movie.

I see what you did it in meteororic. Yeah, I see what you did there. My meteors usually go down. Right, that's true. That's not true. They also just go around. No, no. That's asteroid.

No, no. You're right. No. Correct. The moment they break the atmosphere, right. A meteor is doomed. It is doomed. Right.

See, because inaccurate fun is not fun, you understand. So anyway. You have been hanging out with the wrong people. So the Martian, you also bagged a marquee director for that. Yes, Ridley Scott. Yeah. And he did Blade Runner? I mean, the guy's pedigrating in this space.

No. Yes. Yes. That's the only one. Not alien two because that was James Cameron. Right. Congratulations on that. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, and so that was followed by Artemis. Artemis, which is the only one of my books not to be made into a movie. Yes, but it will be... Mark my words, I will make it happen. It is now a space program, though. Yes, that's true.

That's true. What more do you want? I want a movie. Good answer. Thank you. Wait, so how many total books do you have? Just three. But yeah, so that sentence, it's the only one of my books not to be made into a movie.

You only wrote three damn books, dude. Plural is the plural is correct in this case. I have had books made into movies. True. So we brought you here because you have your latest project. I see what you did there. See what I did there? Project Hail Mary.

Another best-selling book. It's still on the shelves. I see it wherever I go. And that's now a film starring Ken. That's right. Right. I didn't realize that. Also known as Ryan.

Oh, that's his name. He was a name. Yeah. That's right. He was such a good Ken. He was a great can. Hard for me to shake that. We're not worried about spoilers in this because the book predates the movie.

Right. So the storyline is out there. Yeah. It's not some secret. Right. But spare the viewer, listener, the ending. The finale. The finale.

Right. But catch us up on just the most important plot development of that story. You know, for the people who don't read. Well, the idea is that an alien microbe that they later name Astrophage, Astro was star. Yeah. Phage is... Eat.

Yeah. So it eats stars. Well, that's what they named it. That's what they named it. It's more like... They. They had anything to do with it. No, I...

The captains just went on their own and named it. Okay. Yeah. And they called it Astrophage. What it does is it lives on the surface of the sun and it absorbs energy and turns it into mass. It uses that mass to create light as propulsion so that it can migrate to a nearby planet with carbon dioxide so that it can get the...

heavier elements it needs to reproduce and then that and its sister cell or sorry the two daughter cells return back to the star and the cycle continues and so and it spores out away from stars to go infect other stars it's just basically like mold

or algae yeah yeah the problem is that there's it grows exponentially and there's now so much astrophage on our sun that it's going to dim it and it is dimming it already and it'll dim it to the point where earth is no longer No longer habitable by anything. But they notice all of the stars in our local cluster have the same problem.

They've all dimmed except Tau Ceti. So they're like, why didn't Tau Ceti have any dimming? So they're like, we're going to make an interstellar spacecraft to find out how. And it's like, how do we make an interstellar spacecraft with modern day technology? You use astrophage as the fuel. Of course. Because it does mass conversion propulsion. Right.

And that is the, the, the, pretty. principle conflict of the story. Now, do you want me to talk more about it? By the way, let me just say, will you hide when you thought of this? No. No? Like, because. You just rolled off his tongue.

I mean, yeah, you see how, I mean, and by the way, it's actually, it's completely feasible. It's circular and feasible all at once. Like, I mean, that's pretty wild. He said, like, yeah, of course, this is how that would have gone down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Very cool. Yeah. So, Andy, what we love. and deeply respect about you is how much attention you give to the scientific detail infused within your storytelling. Because most stories don't get that level of attention. I always imagine you looking over my shoulder now. No, I have that quote. Yeah.

I have the exact quote. I would quote it now. Here it is. Go ahead. Okay? It's from like 10 years ago or so. 10 years ago. Here it was.

Okay. And this is my second highest compliment I've ever gotten. All right. Okay. Whenever I was tempted to you. use hand wavy physics or take a shortcut and not be accurate.

I honestly thought to myself what if Neil deGrasse Tyson reads this? Wow. That's true. Man. Because he'd know I'd be tweeting about it. I imagine you looking over my shoulder while I'm typing. That's uh, yeah.

That would creep me out. That's not what he means by that. Oh, okay. Don't worry, man. He doesn't have to be be over your shoulder. He's got cameras in your house. True. So the astrophage,

we spent a little bit of time on your last visit talking about that, fascinating organism. And this one, it's one of the few sci-fi films where there's more than one kind of alien

in it. And so let's spend some time on the other alien who the lead character befriends. And this other alien, it kind of looks like a pile of rocks.

Yeah. But it moves like a crab. A little bit. Yeah. So what's your thinking behind that life form? Well, I started off with the exoplanet that he's from,

which was at the time, believed to be a real exoplanet, and has since been proven to be nothing more than like solar flare activity from Forty Eradani, which is a bummer. But within the context of when I wrote it, I started with what was known

about that exoplanet. For those who were never amateur astronomers. Okay. Because they're the ones who know the sky. They know everything. They know everything about the night sky. That's correct. The way we label stars and constellations that are sort of visible easily, we sequence them by Greek letter, and it's followed by the genitive form of the constellation name.

So the brightest star in the constellation, Cetus. Which means the whale. Cetus is the whale. Okay. The brightest will be Alpha Setti. Okay. Okay. The second brightest would be.

Beta Sedi. Bedi Sade. Third. Whatever comes after that. Gamma Ceti? Yeah. Gamma Ceti. Right.

So you move on your way down. So Tau Ceti is not one of the brighter stars in the constellation Cetus. Okay. Okay. And the genitive name for Cetus would be CETI. Then there are certain people who catalogued stars going much deeper than naked eye and binoculars. And then they just number the stars. And it's not as romantic, but it's very precise in cataloging.

Okay. Yeah. So what star system is this? Well, this would be in 40 Arodonni. Eradani. So that would be Eradonis? Arodinus. Which is the river.

The river. Okay. So there's a non-living thing in the sky. Yes. It's several, actually, but this is a river. And I've always disappointed with the river. Okay. Because I think it's just left over stars that didn't fit into other kinds.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Because it's just kind of there, you know. Let me grab a couple of these stars, a couple of those. And now call me something, Eridonis. So this other life form, which is rock. Rocky. Rocky.

Rocky is. Yeah. Well, eridion is what they, is what he would be known as because he's called eridient species, yeah. Yeah, so 40 eridani had, it was believed at the time, an exoplanet around 40 erudani A. If you'd like to describe the details of the trinary star system, you can now, or we can just skip over it. Skip over it, go on. Skip over it, okay, so 40 Eradani A is the primary star, and 40 Eradani A, B is the planet closest to that star. Okay.

And that was an exoplanet that was eight Earth masses, took about 46 Earth days to orbit the star, very, very close to the star. Turns out, doesn't exist at all. It was a mistake made, and now are more accurate methods of exoplanet detection have disproven it. But at the time... So he's not describing the plot of the film. Right. He's just the actual science behind. Which misled him initially.

Yes. To believing that it was there. Anyway, so starting from that planet, I said, well, it's going to be really hot because it's very close to its stars. It's closer to its star than Mercury is. Wow. And then I said, but because all life in the story was caused by a panspermia event that radiated out from Talsetti, including all life on Earth, including all life on Erid, which is the nickname of the planet, everything has to be water-based.

So how do we have liquid water on a planet that's really, really hot? And the answer is have a really, really high atmospheric pressure. Right. Because water won't boil. And, you know, so like there are oceans or over 200 degrees Celsius. Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at atmospheric pressure. At our atmospheric pressure, yeah. Increase, so they have 29 atmospheres at their surface,

and so water, even 200 degrees Celsius water won't boil away. Wait a minute. So you backed into these alien properties from what would have to be the properties of a planet that we would later show doesn't exist. Yes, that's right. Unfortunately, if I was going to make up a fake plant, if it was going to be an imaginary planet in the first place, I didn't have to constrain myself.

Anyway. No, constraints are the soul of creativity to all engineers. Yes. So anyway, I decided it would have to have a thick atmosphere. How do you have a thick atmosphere when you're that close to the sun? A star is like sandblasting your atmosphere off. So you've got two things you can do. You can do what Venus does or you can do what Earth does.

You can do what Venus does, which has really heavy molecules that are hard to knock out of the planet's gravity well. Venus has carbon dioxide. I decided 40 Eradani has a moment. There's monia everywhere in our system, so why not? And then the other thing you can do is have a really powerful magnetic field like Earth does. So I decided, for the eridani, I've decided erid rather, has a tremendous magnetic field. The way you get a magnetic field is, Neil, spin, baby spin. As a Mambo king.

No, you need a conducting core. Yeah, you need like a molded iron core with convection, but then also spin to make a dynamo. So their magnetic field is about 25 times as powerful as ours, and they rotate, once every six hours. Wow. So that planet spins like crazy. But with those two things combined... Rocky's dizzy.

Maybe. With those two things combined, I figured that's enough to protect the atmosphere. So now finally I have liquid water on this exoplanet. That was a long way to go. That was a long way to go. And then with those constraints, I'm like, well, I'm not sure light would make it to the surface through that thick and atmosphere. Right.

Ammonia has a color at large scales. So I decided that no light gets to the surface. and so the biosphere works kind of like an ocean. There's photophilic life up top that absorbs the sunlight and reproduces that way and then beneath that there's life that eats it, beneath that, there's life that eats it, just like our ocean.

Right, like our ocean. Yeah. And then so the apex predators or things that are the iridians, which are the intelligent species, they live on the surface. There's no light down there. There's no reason for them to evolve eyes.

Of course. And they do everything through echolocation, et cetera, et cetera. So bit by bit, I put it together. There's also no free oxygen in the air. So they have to have an enclosed body that deals with the carbon dioxide oxygen back and forth reactions. So they have different kinds of cells within their body. Everything's fine as long as they keep adding energy to the system.

So they need to eat food. That's found on the ground. That's why they're obligate predators. So all this comes about... It's kind of like some of the animals that live near volcanic vents here on Earth. Well, for their biosphere, they're not really extremophiles. This is the normal thing for them. But they are obligate carnivores.

And so if you imagine things that live on the sea floor, like crabs or things like that, so far down that the light isn't even reaching them, but there's still plenty to eat. Right. This is Ken, the nerdneck Zabera from Michigan, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson. It looks like a pile of rocks, an animated pile of rocks, but the appendages move into crab light. way. Well, he has five legs or arms. They can use them interchangeably that each end in three claws.

And so it's pentagonally symmetrical, you might say. And he doesn't actually move specifically like a crab. He walks on those legs, but he can walk on three of them while holding stuff with two of them. Or he can walk on two of them even if he needs to. I learned in the wiki fan page

of your book. Oh, excellent. An undeniable source of absolute truth. Oh, yeah. And I hadn't thought about it, and I read this before I saw a preview of your film. The creature does not have a front or a back. Right. Because it has, so the way it does a technical location is it has, I call him oracles, but they're basically like all over his body are just like we have nerve endings for touch.

He has nerve endings for sound. And so his body, his brain untangles. all that information. Like an octopus. He knows his body shape and his position. Like an Oridian might reach out his arm to get a better view of something. He's like, wait, let me hear this a little better. It's like this.

It's like this. That's a way of doing that. And also, wouldn't it be neat if you could just go like this and the room gets brighter for a second? You can be like, you know, because that's how that works. Because of that, they have a constant input of the, their 3D environment. Constantly going on in all directions.

There has to be some sound somewhere for that to be the case. That's true, but there's always ambient sound. This is wind or whatever. And if they don't have any, they can make some, right? But so they have this constant input of their 3D environment. So they don't have the part of their brain that we have that maintains cognition of what's around us. So you're looking at me, but you know what's behind you.

And your brain, you don't have to think about it. Your brain's just keeping track of that. You know there's a bookshelf there. In a way you can see it in your mind, you know where it is. And if I turn around, it's not there, I'll notice it's not there. You'll notice it's not there. They don't have that part of a brain. They don't have to track that because they constantly have 3.6 degree input.

Right. It's like if you had eyes all the way around your head. That's pretty brilliant. Now, if they suddenly can't hear anything, they will lose all of that information. If you close your eyes, you still know pretty much everything that's going on. Well, no. But in addition to that, just close your eyes. You know where everything is in the room.

I mean, not precisely. and you probably bump into stuff. But you know there's a table there, a microphone here, a chair here, bookshelves, kneels, but why wouldn't they be able to do the same thing we do? Because when we close our eyes, we have lost the input,

but what we're doing is recreating it in our mind. But your mind has a whole system of maintaining a 3D model of your environment because you can't look at it all the time. I understand what you're saying. Because our minds are acclimated to always tracking what's around us, and persisting it.

If we didn't have that, when that would be taken away, we'd be lost immediately because they don't need to do that. Basically, they don't have object permanence. Yeah, this is that famous test with infants. Yeah. It's a famous test.

The object's still there when it goes behind the wall. And until a certain age, it goes behind the wall, and then they just look somewhere else. It's gone. And then after a certain age, they'll look and they'll anticipate it coming out the other side. That's why peekaboo is so effective with infants.

You vanished from reality. I was going to say, I still like it. Chuck's still working on object permanence. Well, they do have object permanence. Irradiens, if something leaves their sensory input, they do. But they don't have that spatial map in their heads. Okay. Richard Dawkins thinks that bats that use echolocation being mammals,

that means they're structurally similar to us in important ways, he thinks they might use echolocation and map colors onto it. Interesting. He thinks they might be able to, because they have the capacity. to think of color, why not add color to equal to candid objects? I mean, why not? Why not?

Yeah. I mean, you know, the only we'll know is to ask a bat. Ask a bat. What color is this? Well, one thing I saw, interestingly, is they took a thing, you know, how the cones in your eye react to different wavelengths. So there's red, green, and blue cones, and there's overlap and stuff like that.

Well, there are some, there are, some activations that never happen because like any wavelength that's this you know any wavelength in this range will activate your greens a little bit and your blues a little bit and you and stuff like that and so what they did for the hell of it I think was they took somebody

they took human test subjects and shined lasers into their eyes to just activate the blue cones and so now their brain is getting a signal that has just blue cone activation and no green cone activation and that makes a new color because they have never experienced

that in their life. And they have a hard time describing it. They say it's like this really, really brilliant bright blue, which should surprise no one. But it's interesting. Imagine being able to go in and have somebody shoot a laser in your eye

and see a color you have never seen. Nor will you ever see again because you can only be done by specifically activating those. We are way off topic. No, I love me some color. Color is good. No, I love me some color.

So through your pen, through your mind, the main character names this life form, Rocky. Rocky, because he looks like a lot. It looks like a bunch of rocks. Very imagine. Okay. Then it took me a half second. I want to alert people of this so that they don't lose this half second. Everyone on Rocky's planet is facing the same fate as people from Earth.

And they both notice this one star that is not dimming. Uh-huh. And they got to find out what's going on there. and not over here. Gotcha. So they both arrive at the same star for the same purpose with the same mission.

Oh my God. And what an alignment that is. It is. It is. It's like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks at the Empire State Building. He asks Rocky, is there someone back at home? Yeah.

Okay. And Rocky goes, Adrian. And you can't understand. Okay. Well. And you can't understand. And so, okay.

I'll call you Rocky and I'll call your mate Adrian. Adrian. Okay. But you got to, that's very, that's very pop culture. Very pop culture. Retro. Decade. Decades. I'm from Philly. It's totally fine. We love it.

It's 50 years ago. I am decades retro. Yes. Yes, so am I. I am also from 50 years ago. As for Philly. Here's the thing. I wanted to do this as part of the publicity, but I came up with the idea too late. Everyone agrees it would have been a great idea.

We didn't say what's going on in case you don't know. Rocky, the movie with Sylvester Stallone. Yes. And he's from Philadelphia. Correct. And his wife's name is Adrian. His wife's name is Adrian. We all know that because there's a big scene.

Adrian! Adrian! But I wanted, from the marketing, I wanted them to either CG render or have the puppeteers to it to show Rocky from Project Hail Mary running up the steps of the Art Museum in Philadelphia. Yeah, the Art Museum in Philadelphia and put his little... Put its appendages up, you know? Why not? Because I came up with it.

It would have been, it would have taken too long and cost too much at the point that I came up with it. And it would have been stupid. Okay. What did it be stupid? What are you talking about? That's the first thing people do when they go to Philly is run up those damn stairs. How are you getting Rocky to Philly? How you get, what?

Through astrophage propulsion. Stupid. Come on, man. Duh. They did, they did little things with, They, you know, CGI put like Rocky on the red carpet for the London premiere, and he's like signing autographs.

Oh, that's cool. That's cool. You got it. So one thing that I didn't quite follow precisely, how, by what means and mechanism, was the lead character,

of course, played by... Ken. You know what? I can't think of his name now. You guys keep calling him Ken. By Ryan Gosling. Thank you. So he sets up his computer.

to, there's initially a shared vocabulary. They start with science and symbols and things. And then that rapidly becomes full on exchange of translated knowledge. So I didn't quite follow how that got so effective so quickly. Well, it's just he had his computer, like, be able to analyze the waveforms. And so Rocky would say a word. The acoustic waveforms, yeah. The acoustic waveforms that Rocky's making.

and it would say a word and then he'd put that in his program and say this and this is the word like hello and then when the computer heard something close enough to that it would then have a synthesizer voice say hello to be Rocky's voice

and Rocky is not speaking you know poetic very high end he's talking like real simple words for dumb human he's speaking sort of a pigeon you know, Erridian English hybrid thing

to try to keep the word simple and keep the sentence structure simple so that they can each talk to each other. Oh, cool. But there had to be some starter exchange of vocabulary. And they started with, I think, the number one. Yeah, this, this, this is my number one. One.

One. So what do you say for one? Okay, cool. Two. Okay. You know. Okay. That's cool.

That works. So I, I, oh, by the way, since you're talking about Rocky and Adrian, I'm surprised. Did you notice that the name of the ship is the Hail Mary, and it's full of... It better be grace, but... Grace. Wow.

The main character's name is Dr. Rylund Grace. Ah. The Hail Mary is full of grace. I could not resist it. Whoa. I am weak. I'm weak. But is the Lord with thee?

Well, the writer would be the Lord, right, in this case? Okay. I guess so. I guess so. I guess so. But are you blessed art thou? I don't want to know anything about the fruit of your womb. That's all I'm saying.

That's all I'm saying. Among women. Let me ask you this, though, because you seem to have this theme of alone in space. Oh. What is it that fascinates you about alone in the cosmos? Well, to be fair, Riland is not alone, right? He's got his brother from a rocky mother with him, right? But failing that, it's just a very convenient method of storytelling.

You have your hero is like completely isolated. When they're out in space, it's like even if all of humanity wanted to help him, which was the case of the Martian, there's very little they can do. So the lead character in this story is he's kind of a reluctant hero. To say the least. He's kind of a selfish coward. He doesn't want to save the world. He doesn't want to save the world.

He doesn't want, and yet he's cast into this spot kind of against his will. Reminding me of the great Shakespearean line. Yes. Some people, a born great, some people achieve greatness, other people have greatness thrust upon them. He had it thrust into him. It was not a good thing. He had greatness just absolutely injected into him. He was reluctant participant in this mission.

Right. But everyone knew they needed him. So they just drugged him and put him on. Yeah. That's a pretty big spoiler, by the way, for the movie. So you might want to make an extra warning. Okay. And the book also.

But yes, he was there against his will. And I wanted to make a likable protagonist. And it's, I think we can all feel like we've all felt at times that we are like unqualified, unwilling, and scared. I don't know, maybe not you. You just radiate confidence, but for the rest of us morals. But that's not interesting to a viewer. You want the person to overcome these weaknesses.

Which he does. And then triumph. Yeah. Yeah. Which he does. Yeah. Okay. All right.

I mean, that always redeems a character, too. Yeah. He can start off scared cowardly, but then overcomes that to do heroic feats. Right. You know, especially if they're selfless heroic feats. Right. I mean, the first time he was willing to really, risk his neck was because of the friendship he had made with Rocky.

Well, okay. So that's cool, man. That's cool. So he didn't want to save humanity, but he put his ass on a lot for some rock-ass alien. You know, D-Rawking on him. Yeah. Now I'm pissed off. Now I'm angry.

Within the context, saving humanity was a guaranteed death sentence. It was a suicide mission. Gotcha. Saving Rocky was high risk of death. It was a little different. Okay. That's an interesting. I like the distinction.

Yeah. High risk of death or certain death. Certain death. Yeah. I'm taking the high risk. Yeah. So I want to just compliment you on conceiving of aliens that are not just actors in a suit. Yeah.

So therefore, you have the freedom for them to not be humanoid. Right. Which is one of the weakest points of all Hollywood aliens. Well, to be fair, Hollywood aliens are usually not in $200 million movies, right? And so you've got to be realistic. Is that what the movie cost? Yeah. $200 million.

Actually closer to $250, but we got tax rebates from the UK for shooting there. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, we better make a lot of money on this. That's why he's got an expensive Panama hat. That's why I've got this expensive Panama hat. So half of that budget went to this year. All right.

But yeah, most of the time, you know, if you're going to write a science fiction story and you want to tell it in a reasonable budget, like an episode of Star Trek or something like that. You get the rubber costume. You get the, yeah, you get the forehead prosthetics. You have the alien be in the same environment. You're good.

But yeah, with the luxury of being able to do whatever you want, we can have our alien require, you know, xenonite barriers, you know, and stuff like that and be completely non-humanoid. Tell me about the barriers

because your alien requires a different environment. 29 atmospheres of ammonia. 29 atmospheres. A lot of pressure and pneumonia. And a lot of heat. Yeah, that's right. Hot, high pressure, and poisonous gases.

So... Sounds a lot like me and Melania. Anyway, sorry, go ahead. So how do you... After a lot of tacos. How... The boundary between the regular spaceship and the alien in the spaceship, what was that... It was transparent.

It was made of xenonite, which is a material that is somehow, one of the main components of it is xenon, a noble gas that doesn't normally react with things. What I wanted... It makes super bright headlights. Yes. So Riheland has no idea how that stuff works or how it's made. Oh, so it's a rocky, it's a rocky alloy. It's a Rydian technology.

Okay. And so what I wanted was I didn't want either species to be like completely scientifically more advanced than the other. From the Oridians point of view, we're kind of the advanced aliens because we have computers, we have better. technology across the board. But iridians have much better materials technology. So they're material scientists, basically. Yeah, their material science is far better than ours.

But they didn't understand relativity. The iridians didn't. They didn't understand. We've only known it for about 120 years, so don't get so high in my own. So why was it important that they didn't know relativity?

We figured out flight before we figured out relativity. Wow. Why was it important that they did not know relativity as a storyteller? Because it gave me an excuse to, if you calculate, if you assume Newtonian physics, which they did, they calculated how much fuel they would need to get from their home star 40-year-Dani to Talsetti and for a trip back. It was supposed to be a round-trip thing. And you calculate that fuel, you get a certain number.

The real amount of fuel you need to use is considerably less due to the time dilation and the relativistic effects you have when you're going there. So he ended up with a whole bunch of excess fuel, which enables him. There, I didn't catch that. There it is. So that's the evidence they didn't know relativity. Otherwise, they would have done the proper calculation. Right.

Right. And Rocky, it's in the book, but not in the movie. Rocky says they were very confused. It's like, okay, the planet was, you know, the other star was closer than it should be. So he slowed down, but then it got further away. Oh, so they're experiencing relativity, not knowing what the hell is going on? What is going on? Wow.

So do you regret that that wasn't in the movie? No, you had to cut things out. Yeah, so what's, okay. What, because you don't have final edit control, I presume, because you're just the author. Well, I'm also a producer, so I had to say. What were you executive producer? No, I was a real producer. Oh!

Wow. So is there a scene you felt should have been in the movie? Yeah, my only regret, and Drew and I both fought for this. Drew made, wrote the adaptation for it. I saw it. He credited him for that, huh? Drew Goddard. Drew Goddard. Drew Goddard.

Drew Goddard wrote the adaptation, did fantastic job. And he and I both wanted this one scene, and we just didn't have time for it because the runtime was going so long. But there's a scene in the book where they nuke Antarctica. They basically put... Back on Earth, yeah. On Earth, they set off a bunch of nuclear explosions in Antarctica to make an entire ice shell fall into the ocean so that it will melt and release all the methane, which is greenhouse gases, so that Earth will retain more of the heat that it is getting from the sun.

because they are because the astrophase is eating the sun. Dimming the sun. So, wow. So they're like, we need some global warming. Wow. And that's why.

Are you doing Trump? Is that it? And that's why. There's something between Trump and Fat Albert. It's somewhere, hey, hey, man. I think there's something wrong with your ears. No.

You have done a pretty gravelly Trump, my friend. No, if you've listened to him now, that's how he talks. Oh, yeah, okay. So I'm not doing rally Trump. I'm doing the Trump that talks in front of the cameras and want you to know that's great, frankly. So that's something that was not in the film where we don't see Earth descending into... Right, and that's also not in the book. We see in the beginnings of it in the book, there's issues, they're starting to have problems,

and a lot of their problems are caused by the amelioration techniques they're proactively doing. So they nuke in, things are going to get worse, but then we're going to need that heat. So we have a mouse problem. Well, let's get a bunch of hawks. And now we have a hawk problem. Exactly. That's the deal. All right.

And it was a stretch for me, if I may. You and are enemies now. No. Go ahead. It was a stretch for me to, as an... academic to completely embrace the idea that the entire world of biochemists is insufficient to handle this mission and they need the one guy who has the expertise that no one else has and he's a middle school a middle school chemistry teacher right so to be fair he was a you know

a speculative zino biologist. He is a PhD, you know, astrobiologist. So he had done that, and then he left that field. He'd written papers and stuff. But he wrote papers,

so the papers are out there and other people are still active. Right. And he's no longer active. Right. So why does he still become the guy? Because he's been part of the mission and the mission planning the whole time.

So he understands all the other aspects of the mission as well. He knows all about the Hail Mary itself. Oh. And they don't have time to train someone else up on all the other stuff. Oh. And he's as well trained as any of the other biologists in the way they need it to be. In the field that they need them to be.

Okay. Okay. That's what I'm going with. He got out of that one. I got it wriggled out of that one. So again, congratulations. Thanks so much. Some of your books getting turned into movies.

Two out of three. Some of your books getting turned into movies. Thanks, thanks. And it's a delight anytime you come visit us here. And for whatever might be your next book still, we want to stay on your tour. your tour list. Always. All right.

All right. Cool. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And any last, just bits of wisdom or advice for us all. How about aspiring writers? What might you say?

Aspiring writers? I've got three bits of advice for aspiring writers. One, you have to actually write. Ideating and imagining and World Building is not writing. You need to type. Number two is resist the urge. To execute the idea. Yeah.

Number two is resist the urge to tell your friends and family your story. Right. It satisfies your need for an audience and saps your will to write. Oh, very. Nice. So you can give them a chapter at a time as you write it to satisfy that. Write it. Don't tell them.

Don't tell them. Okay. And then the third one is there's never been a better time in human history to self-publish. There's no old boy network between you and the readers anymore. You can, for absolutely zero financial risk, you can put your book out there and millions of people have access to it. The man who's published with Penguin Random House. Okay. I was going to say.

You were initially published on Kindle Direct Publishing. Oh. But for all of you who aren't this talented. to don't quit your job. I didn't quit my job until I had a traditional publishing. All right. We're done here. That was Project Hail Mary.

Nice. Full of grace. Yeah. The Lord was with the. Well, Phil Lord. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always pleasure. And Andy, thanks for being high up on my compliment list.

Oh, thank you. And let me give you the highest compliment I could ever give. Don't stop moving the needle in your storytelling for Hollywood because it was looking like same shit, different day for so many years. And with your stories out there, it gives us something fresh to embrace and imbibe. Thanks so much. That means a lot to be. In the genre, Neil de Gratz-Tice and your personal astrophysicist, do keep looking up. Do-da-de-de-to-do.

So, and we got enough here. They say in that song they're going to Venus, and then they also say they have so many light years to go. Oh, God. Pisses me on. Oh, yeah, don't get me started. Yeah, God damn. That's awful.

But when you were starting, I did the Kessel Run in 12 Parsecs. That's the one. No, no, the Kessel. Hey, hey. No, no, that's, don't come after the fact and explain that. No, no, no. At the time, they didn't know what the... There are two black holes orbiting each other.

Don't make me slap you. And so if you go between the black holes, then you manage to do it in an under 12 parsecs. Everyone else goes around the black holes. Okay. I've heard that explanation before too. They're just bailing out there. Yeah. That's what we're doing.

Nobody has given me a compliment at all. I don't know what. I don't know, man. Way to escape Philly? Oh, that was. Man, that hurt. That one hurts.