Andy Weir Reveals The Tricky Issue With The Project Hail Mary Audiobook [Exclusive]

"Project Hail Mary" pulled off a bit of a magic trick, mixing hard sci-fi with a family-friendly adventure to create something that's part Disney movie, part "Interstellar." That unlikely mix is encapsulated in Rocky, the crab-like alien from the planet Erid with whom Ryan Gosling's space traveler Ryland Grace forms an unbreakable bond. Rocky was puppeted and voiced by James Ortiz, alongside several other puppeteers, and he's not only a lovable supporting character who wouldn't be out of place in a Pixar film, he's a representation of Andy Weir's hard sci-fi leanings to boot.

The author, who wrote the 2021 novel on which "Project Hail Mary" is based, chose not to use a humanoid form for the alien, in defiance of years of Hollywood tradition. He also chose to have Rocky communicate in a uniquely alien way. Indeed, the Eridian uses musical tones and chords to speak, prompting Grace to create a makeshift translation system that allows him to converse with Rocky. In the audiobook, however, Rocky's unusual form of communication presented a challenge.

Weir has spoken positively about the "Project Hail Mary" audiobook, which is narrated by the great Ray Porter. Porter speaks as Rocky as well, but he's accompanied by musical tones to represent the actual sound of the alien's communication. A lot of thought went into defining Rocky's voice for the audiobook this way, too, as /Film's Jeremy Mathai when he interviewed Weir about this choice.

In "Project Hail Mary," James Ortiz provided the perfect voice for Rocky, not only striking an endearing, friendly tone for an alien unfamiliar with human customs but also the feel of the computerized translation system. In fact, the Rocky actor previously pointed out a subtle detail most will have missed in "Project Hail Mary," whereby he introduced glitchy computer sounds into his actual on-set performance.

For the audiobook, however, Ray Porter was in charge of reading Rocky's dialogue, and while he was more than capable of the task, Andy Weir and the team behind the audiobook's creation wanted to convey the alien's musical form of communication at the same time. In his interview with /Film, Weir recalled how there were "a lot of discussions on how to do special effects" for the "Project Hail Mary" audiobook. "How do we do Rocky in the book, because the movie hadn't come out yet?" he continued. "So, it was just, how do we present these musical notes? Well, we can play musical notes."

The "Project Hail Mary" audiobook begins with Porter reading Rocky's translated dialogue accompanied by these musical notes to represent how the alien's language sounds pre-translation. But as the story goes on, Ryland Grace gets to the point where he's able to understand his alien pal without needing a translation. As Weir explained: 

"It's like, 'Okay, but later on, Grace is just understanding what Rocky's saying,' and so they did this transition of the musical notes are loud toward the beginning of the book, and then by the end of it, you can barely hear the musical notes at all. That's supposed to be representative of Grace learning the Eridian language more and more."

"Project Hail Mary" is full of hidden details, and it seems the same is true of the audiobook, which is surely one of the best examples of the form in recent years. Ray Porter is an excellent Ryland Grace, winning the 2022 Audie Award for Science Fiction and Audiobook of the Year for his performance. But Andy Weir and the producers also clearly thought very hard about how best to convey Rocky's unique form of communication, revealing a deep attention to detail. As Weir put it, "I thought they did a great job, but we went back and forth, had a lot of conversations about how to make that happen."

The pairing of musical notes with Porter's narration is, itself, a great representation of how the audiobook maintains that remarkable mix of hard sci-fi and wholesome entertainment that makes the original book and its film adaptation so effective. To be sure, while Porter keeps listeners invested with his enthusiastic, genial narration, the music maintains a sense of this being a truly alien and otherworldly experience. Making the music fade as Ryland Grace becomes more familiar with Rocky's language is just the cherry on top.

For now, Weir isn't planning a sequel to his original story. But in the meantime, there are plenty of sci-fi books you simply have to listen to if you loved Ray Porter's "Project Hail Mary" narration.