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The Book Behind \u2018Project Hail Mary\u2019 Is a Sci-Fi Classic<\/span>Jonathan Olley<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”<\/i><\/p>\n Project Hail Mary is about a nobody who wakes up on a spaceship light-years from Earth with no idea who he is or how he got there. Which sounds like a neat metaphor for several Hollywood acting careers I can think of. Not Ryan Gosling\u2019s, of course. He\u2019s always looked like he\u2019s in on the joke.<\/p>\n In Project Hail Mary, which debuts in theaters this weekend, he plays a mild-mannered science teacher forced to piece his memory back together while on a mission to stop a mysterious, star-eating algae from killing the sun before Earth freezes over. Reviewers have gushed over the movie so far, some even mentioning it for an Oscars run in 2027<\/a>.<\/p>\n Directed by longtime collaborators Phil Lord and Chris Miller (21 and 22 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), the movie has the distinct energy of The Martian, which also followed a lonely scientist tasked with saving Earth from space in an orange spacesuit. Which is no surprise, as it is based on a book by the same author.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s one thing Matt Damon doesn\u2019t have in The Martian that Ryan Gosling does: a wisecracking little alien friend called Rocky. As it evolves, Gosling\u2019s tender relationship with Rocky starts to feel a lot like Tom Hanks\u2019 and Wilson in Cast Away. Only this time, the volleyball talks back.<\/p>\n But back to the book. Project Hail Mary is based on Weir\u2019s 2021 bestseller of the same name, which spent nine weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and narrowly missed out on the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel. If you want to know more about the novel that inspired Gosling’s film, keep reading below.<\/p>\n