trivia question about phm that’s been driving me nuts: how old is grace supposed to be exactly? i’ve seen him put in his mid-30s a lot (this may be movie canon? im not sure, im not as familiar with the movie)
he says in chapter 2, during his remembered conversation w Marissa, that he met her "almost twenty years ago in grad school." even if we assume that they met on the first day of grad school, and also that grace graduated college a few years early, that still puts him almost certainly in his early 40s during that conversation.
he also says in chapter 2 that he’s "in [his] mid-thirties," during a memory of watching a NASA broadcast. this isn’t super specific and could have occurred well before he talks with marissa, but the context of thinking about alien life suggests that this was after his convo w marissa. which in turn…implies that the oldest he could possible have been starting grad school was nineteen (again, assuming he and Marissa met very early in grad school). but ok, say he’s a genius and started grad school in his teens (this would be consistent with his insane behavior post graduation lmao). if he started at age eighteen and we say "almost twenty" means eighteen, he could be around 36 when the first astrophage sample was collected.
then he spent at minimum 13 months on stratt’s vat (based on the estimate he gives for how long it would take to breed the required number of astrophage for the ship). likely much longer, probably closer to 2 years (if this is stated somewhere and i forgot, pls let me know!). then the trip to tau ceti took around 3 years relative time. so he’s at minimum 40 (relative to him) and 50 (relative to earth) when the story proper begins.
but we can also count the other way. he says in the final chapter that 71 years have passed since he was born (not relatively). he also says he arrived on erid 16 years previously, making him 55 when he landed on erid. the journey to erid took about 10 years iirc (in non relative time), making him 45 when he turned back for rocky. then the journey to get to tau ceti was 13 years, making him 32 when he left earth. which means he would have been, at maximum, thirteen years old at the beginning of grad school.
the only way to make all this math match up is to say that grace started grad school at age like….10. however, this is totally inconsistent with his mention of his girlfriend moving in with him after college in chapter 15. he has to have been at least eighteen for that, surely?? which means he can’t have started grad school till after age 18.
the options, as i see them:
- i am bad at math (likely)
- andy weir is bad at math
- ryland grace is bad at math (unlikely)
- grace’s memories are fried in the first chapter of the book and they’re meant to be unreliable
- linda was not, in fact, his girlfriend and was instead his like, live-in nanny while he went to grad school at age ten and he refers to her as his girlfriend to disguise how insanely young he actually is
pls vote!
i am bad at math
andy weir is bad at math
ryland grace is bad at math
grace’s memories in the early chapters of phm are not reliable
insane linda theory
other? pls elaborate!
Voting ended onJun 9
