"I’m pretty much fucked," reads the opening passage of Andy Weir’s The Martian. After barely surviving a catastrophic accident that leaves him stranded alone on Mars, those are the first words protagonist Mark Watney writes in his journal. The passage is followed by an elaboration: "That’s my considered opinion: fucked."
I knew immediately that I was going to like this book. After all, even if I were a highly skilled and trained astronaut, the first thing I’d say in that kind of situation wouldn’t be a Star Trek style stoic affirmation—it’d be a lot of swear words. It’s only human, and Watney, for all his otherworldly genius, makes a remarkably accessible everyman.
Set in the near future, The Martian tells his story. Watney is an astronaut and member of mankind’s third manned Mars landing, and he finds himself stranded alone on Mars after his crewmates are forced to abandon him during a dust storm (hence the gloomy tone of the book’s opening passage). Watney must attempt to survive using only leftover tools and components from the abandoned mission, because there is no Home Depot on Mars. Fortunately, he has a few tricks up his spacesuit sleeves: he’s damn smart, damn resourceful, and really, really damn optimistic.
We won’t spoil whether or not Watney manages to escape Mars (at least, not until the end of this piece, in a section clearly marked "HERE BE SPOILERS"). But Weir’s "Apollo 13 meets Cast Away" story managed to break into the New York Times’ Best Seller list twice, with the hardback version peaking at the number 12 and the just-released paperback currently at number seven. The book has also infiltrated the Ars Orbital HQ to become a staff favorite, and we’re not alone in liking it. The book’s movie rights were bought up by Twentieth Century Fox, and Sir Ridley Scott (of Alien and Blade Runner fame) is currently directing the film version. It's tentatively set for release next November.
Weir was gracious enough to make time for an interview, and we talked for more than an hour about the wild ride he’s taken with The Martian, transforming from a mobile app developer with a self-published serial to a bona fide bestselling author. In addition to all his success, the author was happy to talk about the future of NASA, too.
Andy Weir is Mark Watney
Let's get this out of the way immediately: talking to Andy Weir in real life is basically exactly like having a conversation with Watney. He’s self-deprecating, funny, and sharp—and hella good at math.
"He’s like all of my good qualities—and better at them—and none of my bad qualities," Weir joked. "He’s really brave, I’m not. I’m a smart-ass, he’s a serious smart-ass!" As we talked, it quickly became clear that Weir and Watney have an additional trait in common—an almost pathological tenacity and problem-solving drive.
Many other news outlets have interviewed Weir and told the story of how The Martian came to be, so we won’t re-re-rehash the story beyond a quick summary. The Martian was written in installments and put up for free on Weir’s website, receiving good reviews from a small community of readers. However, attempts to shop the book to publishers were met with failure. After receiving reader requests for a way to read the book outside of a Web browser, Weir repackaged it in .epub and .mobi formats, eventually submitting it to Amazon’s online store so it could be loaded on Kindle readers. Doing so required Weir to attach a price, since Amazon won’t let you publish Kindle books for free. So Weir sold copies for the minimum of $0.99. Weirdly enough, far more people paid to download the Kindle version than downloaded it for free, and word of mouth pushed the book into the top download lists on Amazon. From there it attracted the attention of Crown Publishing, a Random House imprint, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The book starts as a series of journal entries by Watney, describing his efforts at using his mission’s landing site as a base to survive. After a bit, the narrative expands. The journal entry style takes a backseat and readers get third-person viewpoints from people back on Earth. Weir originally planned the story to only be told from Watney’s viewpoint, but he realized that wasn’t practical. "I had a general idea of how it was going to end, but I didn’t know how I was going to get there. But the further I got into it, the more I realized there’s just no way NASA wouldn’t notice he was still alive—it was inevitable they’d figure out he was still alive, and I’d have to show what’s going on there and what they do….And that ended up making it a much better story, so I’m glad I sort of bungled into that direction, because showing the other crew and the folks back at NASA was a great device, and broke up the monotony of log entry after log entry."
The view from Earth adds context to Watney’s struggles to survive, and, frankly, the people back home are all good characters. The cast list expands to include NASA administrators, engineers, technicians, and also Watney’s crewmates, safe aboard their Hermes spacecraft hurtling back toward Earth. The chapters that focus on these characters also give some much-needed breathing room for the audience, because when Weir turns his narrative lens back on Watney, all hell inevitably breaks loose.
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