Project Hail Mary

A man wakes alone aboard a spacecraft, light-years from home, with no memory of his name or why he is there.

As his past returns in fragments, he reconstructs the mission: Earth’s sun is being drained by a fast-spreading microorganism called Astrophage, and he has been sent to a distant star that has somehow resisted it, humanity’s last attempt to understand the threat before civilization freezes.

Alone with the problem, he works it the way a scientist would — observation, hypothesis, trial and error — until he discovers he is not alone in the system. What follows pairs that scientific puzzle-solving with an unlikely partnership across an enormous gulf of biology and language.

The novel keeps its stakes planetary and its method intimate: one mind, limited tools, and the slow, satisfying mechanics of figuring things out.