Haha. Yeah the early chapters really set a brilliant tone. I thought the smart bit was implied. I would think if we were going to send someone to another star system to research how to stop our species from dying out - we'd send someone of the intellectual elite at the very least, "kicking and screaming"
I meant that writing a believable normal person is hard. Most people are normal.
But writing a smart person is hard, because you often just have to have them solve problems faster/remember more/have information that the reader doesn't.
Project Hail Mary did a wonderful job of showing that a smart person doesn't necessarily think "The same, but faster", but that they think differently and deliberately
What a brilliant book.