Possible Project Hail Mary Sequel Plot Teased by Andy Weir Himself at C2E2
- Antal Bokor
- 7 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Project Hail Mary is still going strong at the box office, so it’s no wonder that Andy Weir was in such a great mood during his panel at C2E2. And that room was packed. I’ve never seen a side panel room get filled to the brim, but Mr. Weir attracted a sizable chunk of Sunday’s C2E2 attendees.
Andy Weir doesn’t just write know-it-alls, he’s a surprisingly educated and quick witted waggish sort that had the crowd both in awe of his intellect and rolling with his humor–even if the humor wasn’t always the most appropriate. There were also a few science lessons, too. Did you know that neutrinos are passing through you right now? I had no idea. Even at night, because they pass through the earth, too.
The panel started off with Weir pointing out some Project Hail Mary merchandise in the front, as if he was complimenting them only for him to jokingly say “I want you to know that none of that is legitimate.” Then host Mike Zevin. Sorry, Doctor Mike Zevin, Astrophysicist at the Adler Planetarium, backed Weir up saying “”So, Andy’s going to be collecting money at the door as you guys are leaving.” with Weir interjecting “No, you’re going to be hearing from my lawyer!” And this set the tone for the next 45 minutes as Weir and Zevin played off of each other and the crowd.
Panel host Dr. Mike Zevin, who is as much a fan of the science that goes into Weir’s work as we all are asked Weir about his sources, saying “Your stories stay so true to so much of the science and what amazes me is, I mean, they span from astrophysics to Aerospace engineering to botany and molecular biology. How do you learn all of this stuff” I mean, relativity, which is one of my favorite topics…” with Weir interjecting with, simply: “Google.”
Weir goes on to explain that scientists love to get their information out there, and it’s easily accessible on the internet.
Dr. Mike Zevin at one point asked Weir:
“What do you think happened to Earth during the time when Grace was not in contact and what happened after they solved their problem?”
Weir starts with, “Well, I appreciate you asking me to write a sequel right here.” and goes on to say, “ I have lots of ideas for that, but I'm not going to talk about that right now because it might be in future books…so. Yeah, um, yeah, no, I have lots of ideas on that sort of thing.”
So it sounds like some solid foundations for a sequel have been laid, at least in Weir’s mind, who admitted he lets ideas roll around in his head for a while before committing them to paper. And based on his process, this idea might morph into a whole other project. When he was talking about how Project Hail Mary formed, he said:
“Well, (Project Hail Mary) is actually sort of a pastiche of, like five different story ideas that I had, none of which were a good story. But when I glued them together, they made a pretty good story.
Like, so I had one idea about, like, ‘What if humanity had access to a mass conversion fuel? That'd be cool.’ And then another one was like, ‘I want to write a story where a guy just wakes up on a spaceship with amnesia, no further information.’ And I always wanted to write a first Contact story. And in a book that I wrote, I got 70,000 words into and then dumped it because it sucked, there was a character who was a woman who was given, like, just unbelievable amounts of endless authority to solve the next essential threat. And I liked her, so I pulled her out of that book and put it in here.” Which is undoubtedly a reference to the character of Eva Stratt, who was played by Sandra Hüller in the film.
Weir goes on to say, “The main impetus, though I would say, was the idea of: I wanted humanity to get a mass conversion-based fuel. And my original idea was like, we get this fuel somehow, and then, like, not in a thousand years, but, like, today. My original idea was, we colonize the solar system not in, like, centuries, but like, now. There's like Britney Spears fans on Mars. You know what I mean? I thought that'd be an interesting dichotomy. And, and then I'm, like ‘ But where would they get that? It's a bit much to say we magically invented it. Maybe they find it on a crashed alien spaceship. Well, then, wouldn't the rest of the tech on the space ship be more interesting? Okay, what if it all rotted? And all that's left is the fuel. Well, then, once we use the fuel, we're out of the fuel. Okay, well, what if the thing is reversible if you shine light at it, it makes more fuel and I'm, like, ‘well, that sounds like a life form.’ You got something that absorbs energy and makes copies of itself. Okay, so what if it's like an Interstellar life form? Like, why would that happen? I'm like, okay, it's like a mold that lives on stars. And it breeds. I'm, like, okay there. Finally, I did all the BS necessary to get humanity a mass conversion fuel, now I can write my story about colonizing the Solar System and I’m like ‘oh yeah, that would really suck if that got on our star.’ And then I was like ‘Oh, yeah, okay, that’s the story.”
And now Rocky is a pop culture icon that host Mike Zevin said may be even more popular than Grogu. Personally, I’d love to see more Rocky and Ryland Grace in the future, so I’m hoping Andy finds another 5 great ideas he can turn into a sequel.