Weir, a former software engineer, said he wrote his book with one overarching thought in mind: It should be as scientifically accurate as possible. In an interview from his home in Northern California, Mr. The story, which braids Watney’s efforts to survive with the struggles of the world’s space agencies and his departed crewmates to bring him home, can have meaning even to those who haven’t taught themselves how to use a slide rule for the archaic challenge.

When the astronaut Mark Watney, left on Mars with nothing but his considerable storehouse of snarky one-liners and powerful brain to save him, says a more profane equivalent of, “I am going to have to science the heck out of this” - a line recently endorsed by the astrophysicist and nerd icon Neil deGrasse Tyson - it won’t just be the geeks cheering. Its heart, humor and rousing story of perseverance and global collaboration promise to broaden the film’s appeal well beyond nerds. “The Martian” is closer to classically optimistic science fiction than the dystopian works that have crowded the genre of late. Imagine that instead of Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg is the star of “Mission: Impossible.” The intellectual swashbuckler is the hero, not the plucky, comic-relief sidekick. This hypertechnical genre, deeply developed by novelists like Neal Stephenson, does something that classic thrillers do not: It puts the nerd (male and female) in the center of the action.

Weir, from online serial to book to screen, has brought a little-appreciated genre into the mainstream: the nerd thriller. Writing about “ The Martian” seems to be bringing out the geekiness in your humble correspondent. Now 20th Century Fox is bringing out the movie, starring Matt Damon and a cast so full of stars that it’s like the monolith at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”Īnd before you stop me to say that Keir Dullea doesn’t actually say, “My God, it’s full of stars!” in the movie, that it’s from Arthur C. People really liked it - so much so that Crown Publishing came calling. He hadn’t had any success with publishers in the past, so he started posting chapters to his website.

Andy Weir started writing a book about an astronaut stranded on Mars.

Andy weir the astronaut