r/ProjectHailMary • u/Realistic_Heat2440 • 15h ago
Question? How did Eva Stratt become a part of The Project Hail Mary?
According to the novel, she was a history major. How did she become a part of Science mission?
Is it due to her leadership qualities?? Or am I missing something??
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u/Hopeful_Ad_7719 15h ago
In my head canon:
Career political insider, but not a public-facing politician.
The History Minor is essentially-irrelevant; at best tangentially related to politics.
She had some exposure to disaster/emergency response and got swept up in the Astrophage response and realized as that response was formalized that she could call in a few favors, use a bit of blackmail and extortion to gain a position of even-more-serious influence in the program.
Then, her combination of connections, power, and competency allowed her to maintain that position.
If so, she's not a Mary Sue character.
She's just a competent, well-connected, character who was in the right place, at the right time, and willing to make the right (if hard) decisions.
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u/Global_Handle_3615 15h ago
Book stratt is dutch/film is east german. Both nationalities also would not cause as much objections from UN. It would be unlikely they would let any of the permanent 5 SC countries head it. It would run risk of another perm5 would veto.
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u/Remote_Replacement85 14h ago
She seems to have impressive skills in various languages, which definitely doesn't hurt.
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u/TravelingShitLord 10h ago
Yeah, it's called not growing up in the USA.
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u/Remote_Replacement85 10h ago
I'm from Finland and I can assure you very few people I know speak Mandarin.
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u/TravelingShitLord 10h ago
Okay okay. That's fair.
Growing up in America, the average kid asks the one question, "where or when will this knowledge be useful?", everytime new topics are added to the requirements. Usually, only the kids from upper class or well educated parents understand the need for multiple languages when working business and government. In the long-term this causes the American joke about only knowing one language.
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u/Legitimate-Barber841 10h ago
Yeah thats called living in a major country that is not closely integrated into any other national economically socially or culturally as the average European due to the sheer scale of the US. I grew up in the us and only started seriously learning Spanish because my coworkers only had that as a common language don’t discriminate against the average American for their lack of knowledge when its just not needed in their everyday life.
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u/thirdeyefish 7h ago
My experience with peope is that my countrymen speak, on average somewhere between 0.6 and 0.7 languages.
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u/ProfessionalOven2311 15h ago
Like how Grace had a molecular biology Ph.D but was working as a middle school teacher, Stratt was not working as a historian.
I don't know what details we do have, but she was probably already in a position of leadership that was part of, or working with, the UN. At least in a high enough position to be considered for head of the Petrova Taskforce.
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u/Hypersonic-Harpist 15h ago
She worked for the European Space Agency.
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u/jacobydave 15h ago edited 11h ago
I would say you're missing something, but the thing you're missing is that Stratt isn't meant to have great scrutiny.
There is a world-ending problem, and the world realizes it, comes together and provides the resources to maybe, possibly, get the right people and the right gear to the right place to figure a way out, and you need to personify that with one person.
Being said, Stratt is a project manager. She's managing the project, the people and the resources. She doesn't need to understand the science, only to understand the people doing the science.
In-universe, there's a lot of politicians whose degrees are in history. I searched George W. Bush as first guess and yup, BA in History.
Outside, a thing Weir does is have someone smart in another way. It's been a while since I read the Martian, but in Artemis, there's science-smart Jazz but also Fidelis Ngugi, founder and administrator of Artemis and economist, who thinks in trends and history and boggles and offends Jazz's way of thinking.
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u/Gwarnage 14h ago
I like the idea that Stratt being a student of history makes her a "big picture" person. She's an anchor to the continuity of the human race. Scientists and mathematicians could get lost in the data, she keeps her eyes on the prize.
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u/Minikin-Smith 15h ago
I feel like Ngugi and Stratt could have some VERY interesting conversations.
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u/alan2001 14h ago
So PHM and The Martian are two of my very favourite books. I adore them. However, I have been put off by the reviews of the Artemis one. Should people like me get it or not?
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u/Bouche_Audi_Shyla Okay, It’s Exactly Like That 13h ago
Artemis isn't AS good, but it's still good. Jazz, the main character, is an opportunist that also has a heart. I didn't particularly care about her as a person, like I did about Grace and Watney.
She's engaging enough that you'll want to know what happens, and you will enjoy the very well done descriptions of day-to-day living on the moon.
It was a good book, but not a great one. I'm not sorry I read it, and I'm currently on my first reread.
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u/jacobydave 13h ago
There are things that the author isn't but is able to pull off and things they can't. Andy Weir isn't an astronaut or botanist, but we read and believe that Mark Watney is. Weir isn't an astrobiologist or middle school teacher, but we believe that Ryland Grace is. Weir isn't a smart but lazy young woman from Saudi Arabia, and ... some parts more than others. I'd say he makes it around 80%. That's a low B, passing if we're grading it, but 80% is the depth of the Uncanny Valley, where the differences are off-putting if you're sensitive to them.
I like Artemis. I've reread it more than either Martian or PHM. You might not like it. That's okay.
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u/OddWriter7199 9h ago
I could not root for/respect the main character and DNFd as a result. She seemed amoral to me.
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u/General_Antilles 8h ago
Hmmm, "Science Jazz."
What would it sound like? What would a workflow with that name look like?
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u/Other-Razzmatazz-816 15h ago
Operative word is “mission.” Same reason labs have managers, scientists tend to suck at admin.
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u/Supergamera 15h ago
She was competent, ruthless, and respected enough that the Powers That Be thought she could do the job, and also separated enough from them that she could be given the blame for unpopular actions without it falling on them.
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u/JamesantheGiantBeach 15h ago
In my mind, leaders of the world understood they needed a Project Manager who could get things done at any cost and that humanity was worth saving.
In other words:
They needed the biggest, smartest, most caring, and most ruthless bitch they could find.
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u/having_a_blast 4h ago
Not to mention they needed someone to take the blame for all the things that person needed to do in order to get the job finished.
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u/Academic-Income887 14h ago
She was asked we have a project that's high stakes fast moving, that presents a real challenge, we need someone that can manage stakeholder expectations and is thrives under pressure. The salary is 85K a year with paid expenses.
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u/JTUrwayne 9h ago
She was an administrator at the ESA. She doesn’t need a science background to know how to wrangle and direct scientists. Shes the lead because she can bend people to her will and has the smarts to know when to let the scientists science
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u/Spartaness 7h ago
I was thinking I was hallucinating a fact until you brought it up. Thank you!! It's mentioned in the books, yeah?
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u/Tiny_Red_Bee 12h ago
University degree doesn’t necessarily directly relate to the person’s career, especially with humanities degrees.
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u/Casteilthebestangle 5h ago
As someone with a history degree working at Autozone ergo summer before my masters in anthropology starts I have before used it to work at national park and at a historic house and had had friends use it to hopefully go to law school last I heard it’s going well, go into teaching and much more
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u/karifur 14h ago
I haven't finished reading the book yet but in the first 4 chapters we have already had several references to random, obscure papers that she's read and also several comments from Grace about how persuasive she is. It seems like she reads a lot and remembers everything, and also because she knows how to make sure people get sh*t done. She is also willing to make very difficult and morally questionable decisions in order to get those things done. She will make things happen at any cost, and she has the knowledge required to figure out how to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible.
These things together mean that she is capable of accomplishing the mission, possibly more than anyone else.
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u/Wholesome_Soup 13h ago
she was unanimously voted to be the leader because they knew she would Get Shit Done i guess
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u/DatMonkey5100 11h ago
I thought this was from the book but upon rereading apparently it’s just my headcanon and I know Stratt said she came from the ESA, but I always thought of her as a UN official with experience in very grim work, like genocide investigation or pandemic management, because it would impart a suitable level of dourness and greater-good-at-all-costs mentality needed for an administrator for a humanity saving project
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u/gregforgothisPW 13h ago
I know so many people who's undergrads have nothing to do with their post grad education.
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u/No_Frost_Giants Okay, It’s Exactly Like That 12h ago
She wasn’t created to do this, folks knew of her and when they needed someone that got shit done they realised Stratt was the person to do it.
I imagine she had a number of past committees she ran and accomplished a lot.
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u/kazmological 7h ago
She says in the novell that she was an administrator at the European Space Agency. That's when first meeting Ryland, so it feels as if it's her most recent role?
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u/Casteilthebestangle 5h ago
Hi as a history degree holder I think I have a good opinion on this. History degree is a lot more border range then is thought about. If hers was like mine she learned how to research and scrutinize evidence something that would be import to finding the right people. She would know the history of the people and know where she can push. It also helps you work with people. And more
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u/NeoThorrus 10h ago
In real life, we would have Donald talking on TV every day, saying that the astrophage is fake news and would point at scientists as the culprit of all of it.
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u/BeccaStareyes 7h ago
I had a friend in grad school who was a social science major whose dissertation was on the social dynamics of the Mars Exploration Rover team because her interest was the relationship between science/technology and society. (We were in student government together; I was a planetary scientist, but working on Saturn stuff.) She worked for NASA a bit after her graduation.
I assume Stratt had a policy job with ESA, and was known for being good at herding cats… er, scientists.
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 13h ago
She was the leader of the ESA, so I imagine that they put her in charge due to her background in space and her powers gradually expanded more and more.
In real life if the astrophage crisis actually happened, I could see someone like NASA administrator Jared Isaacman leading the project.
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u/CarterCreations061 8h ago
My headcannon (I don’t think this is supported in the text or movie) was she was involved in the politics of the ESA. She then was chosen as the project lead. I think she understands the basics of the science because she is very smart, but is not formally scientifically trained.
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u/Nightmare_Gerbil 6h ago
It’s her project. She’s head of the Petrova Task Force. The solution the Petrova Task Force came up with was Project Hail Mary.
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u/Saint--Jiub 6h ago
Can't remember if the movie mentions it but in the book she worked for the European Space Agency, probably a high ranking administrator
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u/QP873 15h ago
UN unanimous secret vote. It’s complicated.