PROJECT HAIL MARY FIC RECS INCOMING
First and foremost:
Saving Grace by CptnBara. Easily one of the pillars of the fandom, it's the entire book written from Rocky's pov and tied into the canon lore so well that it might as well be canon. Absolutely incredible. 108k, 22 chapters, warning for book spoilers if you want to finish reading that first but I cannot recommend it enough.
Others (not ranking any of them this is just the order I'm thinking of them):
Red Thread Tying Us Together by alatarmaia4, incredible time travel fic that starts out going exactly where you think it will and then abruptly decides to not do that. Absolutely delightful love it so much
Discordant by EvieNyx, equally awesome time travel that takes the concept in the complete opposite direction. Grace thinks he's dreaming and continually confuses the crap out of everyone he interacts with
The entire Platonic cuddling series by Likelightinglass, some fantastic touch-starved Grace and Rocky figuring out how to fix it. Lots of fluff and soft feels with some solid hurt/comfort mixed in
Message in a Beetle by ConalltheLibrarian. Eva Stratt pov, the beetles come back to Earth. Does and incredible job of dealing with the lingering guilt and other emotions the people on the project have to deal with after sending the Hail Mary off
Unconventional Social Group by Clare_Hope, extremely good, collection of moments as Grace & Rocky travel to Erid and keeps almost making me cry and/or explode
An Empty Space and a Formless Shape by stormpetrel, fantastic species swap au. it's so good.
Forgive me, Saint Christopher, for the boy will drown by Sherb42 another very good species swap
Cosmic love by thanotaphobia (blue000jay), a "what happens once they get to Erid" I've been really enjoying
The Astrobiology Immersion Program by startingatmidnight, SO GOOD. BODY SWAP AU. what do you do when you're in an alien body you have no idea how to use and all thr tools you would use to figure it out are in a different atmosphere? Featuring Grace and Rocky have a hard time and learning a lot about each other, and Rocky gets to see pretty things.
okay that's probably enough to get you started lmao, let me know what you think :D i love hearing ppls thoughts on things i recommend
oh wait hold up, shameless self-promo: I also wrote one! It's called Windows Far Away and it's about Grace discovering the WindowSwap website on the way to Erid and having a lot of feels about it :3
ohhh~✨✨✨
I already got to about three of those but the rest Is New Fresh Tasty Stuff✨:D
Good soup💖