Project Hail Mary with Andy Weir

Andy we're in the house. Yes, he is.

Officer 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 Start Talk.

Welcome to Start Talk.

Your place in the universe

where science and pop culture collide.

Start talk begins right now.

This is Start Talk.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

And right next to me, I got Lord Chuck Knight.

What's up, man?

I'm feeling great.

Yeah, you look good.

Well, thank you, sir.

Yeah, looking healthy.

Well, that may not be the case, Brad.

You know, it's good to look that way.

Whether or not you act too hard.

If I'm actually healthy or not,

it's long as I look good.

We got a good show today.

Certainly, we have a repeat guest.

That's 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 Start Talk.

Thanks for having me again.

You're six times.

You think you guys would learn by now?

You say that.

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,

that was one of the coasters of developmental wound.

Yeah.

There was a lot of software engineering in 1972.

I mean, there was some, though.

I mean, a polyprogram.

It turned sci-fi novelist.

Yes, sir.

Extraordinaire.

Man.

Extraordinaire.

The Martian,

a best-selling book.

Yeah.

Which became a best,

no, a very popular movie.

A hit, a hit movie.

Yeah, movie with all kinds of marquee actors in it.

Right.

A Jessica Chastay.

Right.

Matt Damon.

Matt Damon.

Who was Martin.

Who was Martin.

Martin.

Well, I was a Watney.

It is Watney.

Oh, okay.

It says the guy who wrote it.

Yeah.

Whatever.

What was it?

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, I 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.

Actually, Heidi, no, no, no, he's not

because we don't want to owe you any money.

Okay.

And he doesn't know what he says.

He's been drinking since.

Okay.

Start talking.

Personally, it takes responsibility

for any monetary compensation.

There you go.

So what year do the Martian come out?

Uh, 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 early.

To early teens.

Yeah.

And so the movie comes out in 2015.

2015, the movie.

Yeah.

So that's a quick turnaround between them.

Yeah, it was very fast.

So, like, congratulations on that.

Was the book that popular?

That it was like a meteoric rise

through the rankings?

I see what you're saying.

Let's make a movie.

I see what you did in meteoric rise.

Yeah, see what you did there.

We meteors usually go down.

Not out there.

Yeah.

So they also just go around.

No, no.

That's asteroid.

No, no, no, no.

Right.

No, correct.

A meteor.

At the moment they break the atmosphere right.

A meteor is doomed.

All right.

Yeah.

See, because inaccurate fun is not fun.

You understand.

So anyway, you have been hanging out with the wrong.

So the Martian, you also bagged a Marquis director for that.

Yes, really, Scott.

You know, Scott, yeah.

Yeah.

If he does a blank runner,

he's the guy that's incredibly in the space.

No, yes.

Yeah, at least one.

That's the only one not the only two,

because that was James Cameron.

Right.

Congratulations on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that was followed by by Artemis.

Artemis, which is the only one of my books not to be made into a movie.

Yes, but it will mark my words.

It is now a space program, though.

Yes, that's true.

Yeah, that's true.

We're more than you want.

Jesus.

I want a movie.

Good answer.

Thank you.

Wait, so how many total books do you have?

Just three.

But yes, so that sentence is the only one of my books not to be made into a movie.

You only wrote three damn books, dude.

If plural is the plural is correct in this case,

I have had books made into movies.

It's real.

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.

Yeah.

Another bestselling book.

It's still on the shelves.

I see it wherever I go.

And that's now a film starring Kim.

That's right.

That's right.

I didn't realize that.

Yes.

Also no one is running out of his name.

Right.

He was such a good Kim.

I can't shake him.

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 it catches 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 named astrophage.

Astrophage star.

Yeah.

Fages eat.

Eat.

Yeah.

So it eats stars.

Well, that's what they named it.

That's a name.

It's more like.

They say.

They know what he had anything to do with it.

No, yeah.

The characters went on their own.

Yeah, they named it.

Okay.

Yeah.

And they called it an 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.

Oh, and so and it spores out away from stars

to go in fact, other stars.

It's just basically like mold or allergy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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 you are viable.

No longer habitable.

Right.

By anything.

And so but they notice all the stars in our local cluster have the same problem.

They've all dimmed and accept Towsetti.

So they're like why didn't Towsetti 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 it does mask conversion propulsion.

Right.

And that is the the principal conflict of the story.

Now do you want me to talk more about that way?

Yeah, let me just say.

Will you have when you thought of it?

No, no, like

because first roll 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 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 I most stories don't get that level of attention.

I always imagine you looking over my shoulder.

No, I have that quote.

Yeah, I have the exact quote.

I would quote it now.

Here it is.

Go ahead.

Okay.

That's from my 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 use hand-wavy physics,

we'll take a shortcut and not be accurate.

I honestly thought to myself,

what if Neil deGrasse Tyson reads this?

Wow.

It's true.

Man.

Because you know, I'd be treating about it significantly.

Looking over, I imagine you looking over my shoulder while I'm typing.

That's, yeah, that would creep me out.

No, that's not what he means by that.

Don't worry, man, he doesn't have to be like,

be over your shoulder.

He's got cameras in your house.

So the astrophase, we spent a little bit of time on your last visit

talking about that fascinating organism.

Right.

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 be friends.

And this other alien,

it kind of looks like a power rocks, 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 40-year-old Donnie, which is a bummer.

But within the context of when I wrote it,

I started with what was known about that exoplanet.

Those who would never amateur astronomers.

Okay.

Okay.

Because they're the ones who know the style,

they know everything about the nice guy.

Okay.

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-setty.

Okay.

Okay.

The second brightest would be

beta-setty.

beta-set-third.

Whatever comes out of that.

Gamma-setty.

Yeah.

Gamma-setty.

Right.

Okay.

So you move on your way down.

So tau-setty is not one of the brighter stars

in the constellation Cetus.

Okay.

Okay.

Right.

And the genitive name for Cetus would be

Cetus.

Then there's certain people catalog stars

going much deeper than naked eye and binoculars.

And then they just, they just number the stars.

And it's, 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 Aradani.

Aradani.

So that would be Aradani's?

Aradani's.

Which is the river.

The river.

Okay.

So there's a non-living thing in the sky.

Yes.

Well, there'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 stars.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Because it's just kind of there,

you know, we grab a couple of these stars,

a couple of those,

and now call me something,

Aradani's.

So we, so this other life form,

which is rock.

Rocky.

Rocky is.

Yeah.

Well, Iridian is what they,

is what the,

what he would be saying is that's good.

He's called the Iridian species.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So 40 Aradani had,

it was believed at the time,

an exoplanet around 40 Aradani 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.

Skip over it.

Okay.

So 40 Aradani A is the primary star,

and 40 Aradani 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 accurately,

are more accurate methods of exoplanet detection

have disproven it.

But that's what he's not describing

the plot of the film.

Right.

It's the actual science behind which

miss led 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 star.

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 pan spermia event

that radiated out from talcety,

including all life on earth,

including all life on arid,

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 so like there are oceans

or over 200 degrees Celsius.

Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius

at atmospheric pressure.

Right.

At our atmospheric pressure.

Yeah.

And so they have 29

atmospheres at their surface.

And so water,

even 200 degrees Celsius water won't boil.

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.

Unfortunate.

Anyway,

I mean, if I was going to make up a fake plant,

if it was going to be an imaginary plant in the first place,

I didn't have to get straight in my soul.

Right.

Anyway.

Focus straight is the sole

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 sand blasting your atmosphere off.

So you 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 is have really heavy molecules

that are hard to knock out of the planet's gravity well.

Venus has carbon dioxide.

I decided 40-Arodani has ammonia.

There's ammonia 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 40-Arodani,

I've decided Arod, rather,

has a tremendous magnetic field.

The way you get a magnetic field is Neil spin,

baby spin.

Well, I'm pushing it in.

The mumbo king.

No, you need a conducting core.

So I am.

Yeah, you need like a core.

More minor in 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 is dizzy.

They're 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.

Yeah.

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.

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 like 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.

Like ocean.

Yeah.

And then so the apex predators

are things that are the irradiants,

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 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 they're still plain to eat.

Right.

This is Ken the Nerdnack Zebara from Michigan.

And I support Star Talk on Patreon.

This is Star Talk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

It looks like a pile of rocks.

An animated pile of rocks.

But the appendages move in the crab-like way.

Well, he has five legs or arms.

They can use them interchangeably

that each and 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, 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.

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 them 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.

You know his body shape and yeah, he knows his body shape

and his position like an arridian might reach out

as armed to get a better view of sight.

He's like, wait, let me do this a little better.

Yeah.

It's like this.

This is the real truth.

That's his way of doing that.

And also, wouldn't it be neat if you could just go like this

and the room gets a brighter for a second?

Uh-huh.

He could be like, you know, because that's how that works.

Because of that, they have a constant input

of their 3D environment constantly going on

in all directions.

It has to be some sound somewhere for that to be the case.

That's true, but there's always ambient sound.

Yes, okay.

It's wind or whatever.

And if they don't have any, they can make some, right?

But so there's, 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 it.

So you're looking at me, but you know what's behind you.

Right.

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.

Absolutely.

In a way you can see it in your mind, you know where it is.

Right.

And if I turn around, it's not there.

I'll notice it's not there.

You'll notice it's not there.

Right.

They don't have that part of a brain.

They don't have to track that because they constantly

have to reintroduce an infinite input.

Right.

It's like, if you had eyes all the way around your head.

That's pretty brilliant.

If they suddenly can't hear anything,

they will lose all of that information.

Right.

If you close your eyes, you still know

pretty much everything is going on.

Right.

I know.

But in addition to that, it just close your eyes.

You know where everything is in the room.

Yeah, I mean, not precisely.

And you probably bump into stuff.

But you know there's a table there.

A microphone here, a chair here.

Right.

Bookshelves, deals, deals.

Well, but why would 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.

So that's it.

Yeah.

Because our minds are acclimated.

Yeah.

To always track in what's around us.

And persisting.

And persisting.

But if we didn't have that,

when that would be taken away,

we'd be lost immediately.

Yeah.

Because they don't need to do that.

Basically, they don't have object permanence.

Yeah.

This is an advanced test.

With infants.

Yeah.

It's a famous test.

That's that.

Although you're still there when it goes behind the wall.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

That's why peekaboo is so effective with infants.

You vanish from reality.

Which I'm going to say.

Yeah.

I still like it.

I'm just walking on object permanence.

Well, they do have object permanence.

The audience, if something leaves their sensory input,

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.

Yeah.

He thinks they might be able to see it.

But because they have the capacity to think of color,

why not add color to echolocation objects?

I mean, why not?

Why not?

Yeah.

I mean, not, you know,

the only way we'll know is to ask a bats.

Ask a bats, right?

Well, what color is this blitz?

Exactly.

Well, I thought interestingly as they took a,

they took a thing, you know, how you're,

you're the, the cones in your eye

are 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, 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 it's like that.

And so what they did for the hell of it,

I think, was they took somebody,

they took tests, human test subjects and shine

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 kind of, they have a hard time describing it.

They say it's like this really,

really brilliant, bright, bright blue,

which should surprise no one.

But it's interesting, imagine being able to go in

and have some 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.

Now let 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,

he 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 start for the same purpose

with the same mission.

Oh my god.

And what an alignment that is.

Yes, 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.

Well, and you can't understand.

I understand.

Well, you got really good.

And so, okay, I'll call you Rocky

and I'll call your mate Adrian.

Adrian.

Okay, but you got it.

That's that's that's that's that's that's every part culture.

Very pop culture retro decade decades.

I'm from Philly.

It's totally fine.

We love it.

I have 50 years ago decades.

Yes.

Yes.

So am I.

I am also.

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.

But 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.

And his wife's name is Adrian.

We all know that because there's a big scene.

It was Adrian.

Adrian.

But I wanted from the marketing.

I wanted them to see G.

Render or have the puppeteers do it to show Rocky

from Project Hail Mary running up the steps of the

marketing scene.

That's all right.

Yeah, the art he's going to put his little

put his appendages off you know,

like that.

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.

Well, it would have been stupid.

Okay.

What are you talking about?

What are you talking about?

That's the first thing people do when they go to Philly

is run up those damn stairs.

So I'm like, are you getting Rocky to Philly?

How do you get what?

Through astrophase propulsion.

Stupid.

Come on, man.

They did they did little things where they,

you know, CGI put like Rocky on the red carpet

for the London premiere.

And he's like signing autographs.

Oh, okay.

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

that of course played by Ken.

Ken.

Ken.

You know what?

I can't think of his name now.

I mean, you guys can call 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 he had his computer like

be able to analyze the waveforms.

And so Rocky would say a word acoustic waveforms.

Yeah, the acoustic waveforms that Rocky's making.

And it would say a word.

And then then he'd put that in his program and say

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.

So and Rocky is not speaking full, you know, poetic, very high.

And he's talking like real simple words for dumb human.

You know, he's speaking sort of a pigeon,

you know, iridian English hybrid thing to try to keep the word simple

and keep the sentence structure simple so that they can

you talk to each other.

Oh, cool.

And but they would put they had to be some starter

exchange of vocabulary.

And they started with I think the number one.

Yeah, this 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.

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, yeah.

What mean character's name is,

Dr. Ryland Grace.

The Hail Mary is full of grace.

I could not resist it.

What?

I am weak.

I'm weak, Neil.

But I'm weak, but is the Lord with me?

Well, the writer would be the Lord, right?

In this case, okay.

I guess.

No, I guess so.

But are you blessed art now?

No, I don't want to know anything about the fruit of your

wound.

That's all I'm saying.

I don't want to get out 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, Ryland is not alone, right?

He's got his brother from a Rocky mother with him, right?

Okay, 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, 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, and yet he's cast into this spot,

kind of against his will,

reminding me of the great Shakespearean line.

Yes, some people are born great,

some people achieve greatness.

Other people have greatness thrust upon them.

He had it thrust into him.

It was not a good hero.

He had greatness just absolutely injected into him.

Injected into him.

He was reluctant participant in this mission.

Right. But everyone knew they needed him.

So they just only tried to 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, 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 think not you.

You just radiate confidence.

But it's not interesting to a viewer.

You want the person to overcome these weaknesses.

Which he does.

And then try them.

Yeah, yeah, which he does.

Yeah, okay.

All right, that always redeems a character too.

And he can start off scared cowardly,

but then overcomes that to do heroic feats,

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, that's cool, man.

That's cool, so he didn't want to save humanity,

but he put his ass on the line for some Rocky ass gang.

The context, saving humanity was guaranteed death sentence.

It was a suicide mention.

Gotcha.

Saving Rocky was

a high risk of death.

It was a little different.

Okay.

That's an interesting distinction.

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, you've got to be

realistic. So you're a movie cost? Yeah. $100 million. Actually closer to $250, but we got tax

rebates from the UK for shooting there. Yeah. Why? We better make a lot of money on this. That's

why he's got expensive Panama hat. That's why I got this expense. So half of that budget went to

this. 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. Yeah, you get the forehead prosthetics. You have the alien being

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. $29,000. $29,000. $29,000. $29,000. A lot of pressure and pneumonia. And a lot of heat.

That's right. High pressure and poisonous gases. So sounds a lot like me and Melania.

And it went so good. So how do you have to do a lot of tacos? How that the boundary between

the regular spaceship and the alien in the spaceship 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 to things. What I wanted is super bright headlights. Yes. So

Ryland has no idea how that stuff works or how it's made. So it's a rocky. It's a rocky.

Yeah, it's a really in technology. Okay. And so what I wanted was what I didn't want either,

either species to be like completely scientifically more advanced than the other.

From the Aridians 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 the material scientists basically? Yeah, their material science is far better than ours.

But are like like they didn't understand relativity. The iridians didn't. Or they didn't understand it.

We've only known it for about 120 years. So don't get so high in my knees.

But so why was it important that they didn't know relativity? We figured out flight before we

figured out relativity. 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,

Fortier Donny to Talsetti. And for a trip back, it was supposed to be around 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.

I didn't catch that. There it is. So the evidence they didn't know relativity. Others

they would have done the proper calculation. 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. What?

Oh, so they were experiencing relative. I mean, knowing what the hell going on?

What is going on? So do you regret that that wasn't in the movie? No. Yeah, to cut things out.

Yeah. So what's what? 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? I know. I was a real producer. 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. He credited it for that. Drew, the full name, 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, they dropped, 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 astrophages eating the sun,

so wow. So they're like, we need some global warming. Wow. And that's why.

Are you doing trumpet? Is that it? And that's why

between Trump and fat Albert, it's like, hey, man, I think there's something wrong with your ears.

You've done a pretty gravelly Trump, my friend. No, if you've listened to him now, that's how he

talks. Okay. So I'm not doing rally Trump. I'm doing that Trump that talks in front of the cameras

and once you know, once you know, that's great. 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're going to get worse

because then we're going to need that heat. So we have a, we have a mouse problem. Well,

let's get a bunch of hawks. Yeah, we have a hawk problem. Exactly. That's the deal. All right. And

it was a stretch for me. If I may, you and our enemies now. It was a stretch for me 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, middle school chemistry teacher. Right. So to be fair, he was a,

you know, a speculative xenobiologist, he is PhD, you know, astrobiologist. So he'd done that.

And then he'd left that field. He'd rip your papers. 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. And they don't have time to train someone else up on all the other stuff. And he's as well

trained as any of the other biologists in the, in the way they need to feel that they need him to be.

Okay. Okay. That's exactly where he got out of that one. I got to wriggle out of that one.

So again, congratulations. Thanks so much. Some of your books getting turned on two, two,

two, two, two, three, two, three. Some of your books getting turned into movies. 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. Okay. 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 would you say? Aspiring writers. I 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, execute the idea. Yeah. Yeah. Number two is

resist the urge to tell your friends and family your story. It satisfies your need for an audience

and saps your will to write. Oh, very nice. So you can, you can give them a chapter at a time as

you write it to satisfy that need for 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 with public with with Penguin Random Race.

Okay. I was going to say initially published on Kindle Direct Publishing.

Oh, but for all of you who aren't this talented, don't quit your job.

I don't quit my job. I just published. We're done here. That was Project Hail Mary.

Nice. Full of grace. Yeah. The Lord was with me.

Well, Phil Lord.

Chaco, you're good to have you, man. Always Lord. Nice. 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 the same shit different day for so many years. And with your stories

out there, it gives us something fresh to embrace and in vibe. Thanks so much. That means a lot to

in the genre. Neil, the grass takes you in your personal astrophysicist. Do keep looking up.

So.

Right. 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. This is me. Oh, yeah. Don't get me started. Yeah. God,

damn it. That's awesome. But we don't start with the I did that Kessel run in 12 parsecs.

That's no. No, no, the cast. Hey, hey, no, don't come after the fact and explain that. No,

not at the time. They didn't want the two black holes already. Don't make me slap you.

And so if you go between the black holes, don't make me slap you. Then you managed to do it

in an under 12 parsecs. Everyone else goes around the black holes. Okay.

So I heard that was I've heard that. That's that's the explanation before to bailing out there.

Yeah. Um, that's what we're doing. Nobody has given me a compliment.

I don't know, man.

We did. We did. We did. Escape Philly.

Oh, that was bad. Oh, man. That hurt. That one hurt.

I don't know.