AAA<\/p>\n
Rocky, the extraterrestrial creature befriended by Ryan Gosling\u2019s astronaut-scientist in the sci-fi dramedy Project Hail Mary, is such an odd creature that you\u2019ve almost certainly never imagined anything like him.<\/p>\n
And until the film\u2019s VFX team presented their rendering of him, nor had Andy Weir \u2013 despite the fact he dreamt him up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really have a very visual imagination,\u201d says the author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, the 2021 novel that has been brought to the screen by The Lego Movie directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. \u201cWhen I finished writing the book, I couldn\u2019t have drawn a picture of Rocky even if I had artistic skill, which I do not, because I didn\u2019t really know what he looked like.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s quite incredible, I suggest, because you do describe him in the book in some detail.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I knew his overall morphology as a creature, but I didn\u2019t really have an image of what he looked like,\u201d Weir explains. \u201cI describe him, but I describe him as \u2018well, he has five limbs and a central carapace\u2019 [shell]. I had this idea for what he looked like, but it was just a blobby carapace and I didn\u2019t know what the legs looked like. Were they thick, were they thin, were they smooth, were they crenellated? None of that was in my visual imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Grace](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/70bbf22867be5ca5120eae892d73a44254b3674d.jpeg\")
Grace in his pre-salvation-of-humanity mode. AP<\/p>\n
Weir places himself on the aphantasia scale, which rates people\u2019s ability to picture things from 1 (low) to 5 (high), near the bottom end. But while that might sound like an impediment for someone creating work that has a tendency to end up on the big screen, he reckons it isn\u2019t all bad.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther authors have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of what they saw in their head versus what\u2019s on the screen,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t have that problem. I\u2019m just like, \u2018Oh, so that\u2019s what Rocky looks like; now I know.\u2019 It just becomes canon in my head, so it\u2019s actually very easy for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Project Hail Mary \u2013 PHM for short \u2013 is both massive and intimate in scope. It\u2019s a story about the imminent end of the world (as a result of a sunlight-gobbling organism called astrophage) that will within decades make the Earth uninhabitable for humans and many other life forms. But it\u2019s also about the strange and touching friendship that develops between Ryland Grace (Gosling), a middle school science teacher who improbably becomes our only hope of survival, and Rocky, an engineer on a spacecraft from another similarly afflicted planet who is the sole survivor of his own rescue mission.<\/p>\n
It is tempting to see a big message in Weir\u2019s story \u2013 about overcoming differences (of appearance, of language, of physics) to find common cause and mutually beneficial outcomes, among other things. But the man himself is quick to brush aside such readings.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI never have an overall message,\u201d says the American writer of his approach to storytelling. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to make you think about anything. There\u2019s no subtext, there\u2019s no symbolism and no meaning. I want nothing more than to entertain. That\u2019s it. So when you\u2019re done with the book or when you\u2019re done with the movie, I want you to think, \u2018That was cool, that was fun. I\u2019m glad I did that.\u2019 And that is it. If people ascribe some meaning, like this is clearly a climate-change metaphor, they\u2019re just seeing that on their own. Nothing to do with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
One thing he does aim for, though: scientific accuracy.<\/p>\n
According to the official press notes for the movie, Weir has \u201cdeveloped a reputation for marrying rigorous science with emotional clarity in stories anchored in near futures\u201d. And there are plenty of people \u2013 scientists and otherwise \u2013 who would echo that, praising his work as \u201chard sci-fi\u201d full of \u201cgenuine problem solving\u201d<\/a> and for its treatment of science not as the domain of individual genius but of \u201ca co-ordination technology <\/a>we built to synchronise our predictions about nature\u201d.<\/p>\n But by the same token, there are those who insist his stories display \u201ca modicum of poor understanding <\/a>of science\u201d, and others who take issue with the author\u2019s mathematical calculations<\/a> (a central point of pride for Weir, a former computer programmer).<\/p>\n None of which troubles him in the slightest.<\/p>\n \u201cI absolutely get taken to task on the forums, all the time, and righteously so,\u201d he says gleefully. \u201cI write books and I say, \u2018this is scientifically accurate\u2019, and they\u2019re like, \u2018really?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cBy claiming that I\u2019m being as scientifically accurate as possible I\u2019m inviting that criticism, and I love it. These are my people.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing I find annoying,\u201d he qualifies, \u201cis when people really want to talk about a detailed math issue in The Martian or something that I wrote 10 years ago. I\u2019m like, \u2018Dude, I don\u2019t remember. You\u2019re probably right \u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But you\u2019re not going to show them your working?<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t find it,\u201d he laughs. \u201cI have the organisational skills of a writer.\u201d<\/p>\n Thanks to this adaptation, Weir now has the skills of a film producer too. Well, nominally at any rate.<\/p>\n \u201cFor The Martian, they just gave me a check and told me to go away, which worked totally fine with me. But they gave me the title of producer on this one so I can be involved in the front-end gross [profit participation],\u201d he says.<\/p>\n![\"Author](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/25086ab26d24952603e84abea17a1b30ed708add.jpeg\")
Author Andy Weir on set in England.AP<\/p>\n
![\"Family](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773290951_369_46021e4b2896028e2e665e5f778bf5332da56102.jpeg\")
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