Andy Weir

**Andy Weir** is an American author, known for his novels *The Martian*, *Artemis*, and *Project Hail Mary.* His debut novel, *The Martian*, has also been made into a film of the same name.

"*He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight.*"
―Author bio[src]

## Life

Andy Weir was born June 16th, 1972.

Weir began writing science fiction in his 20s and published work on his website for years. His first work to gain significant attention was "The Egg", a short story that has been adapted into a number of YouTube videos and a one-act play.

Weir received the John W. Campbell Award for "Best New Writer" in 2016.

Weir wrote *The Martian* to be as scientifically accurate as possible and his writing included extensive research into orbital mechanics, conditions on Mars, the history of manned spaceflight, and botany. He even wrote his own program in order to predict the best launch dates and the orbit distances between Earth and Mars.

He was a computer programmer, but with his success as an author has left programming in order to focus more on writing. Andy Weir personally created software to calculate the ship's arrival times (on Earth and on Mars) down to the exact minute in his novel.

## Work

Weir originally published *The Martian* as a free serial on his website, before making it available on Kindle. First sold for 99 cents, the novel made it to the Kindle bestsellers list. Weir was then approached by a literary agent and sold the rights of the book to Crown Publishing Group. The print version of the novel (slightly edited from the original) debuted at #12 on *The New York Times* bestseller list. *The Wall Street Journal* called the novel "the best pure sci-fi novel in years".

A fan-fiction story written by Weir, "Lacero" was published in the 2016 edition of *Ready Player One*, making it canonical to the book's fictional universe. The work functions as a prequel to the main novel.

In 2016, Weir released *The Principles of Uncertainty*, a collection of short stories on the TAPAS app platform for short fiction.

Weir is working on another novel, initially titled *Zhek*. He describes it as "A more traditional sci-fi novel. It has aliens, telepathy, faster-than-light travel, etc."

However, he put *"Zhek"* on hold for another more science-based story called *Artemis*, which is about the life and times of Jasmin "Jazz" Bashara, a young woman living in the titular Artemis, the first city on the moon set in 2080-2090 and was released in November 2017. He has another book out called *Project Hail Mary* which Ryan Gosling has signed on to produce and star in the movie version.

He's also working on a TV pilot for CBS called *Mission Control* formerly known as *Durga* for a brief period of time. The show has Simon Kinberg as its Executive Producer and he's worked on the likes of many *X Men* films, *Legion* (TV), *Star Wars Rebels* (TV), *Cinderella* (2015) and *The Martian* as a producer; plus Director Jeremy Podeswa (*Game of Thrones*, *True Detective*).

They have reportedly cast Peyton List (Mad Men, The Flash, Tomorrow People), David Guintoli (Grimm), Poppy Montgomery (Without A Trace), Ellen Wroe, Chrisina marie Moses (The Originals), Mercy Malick, Leiv Fiehler, Deke Anderson, Karan Oberoi, Ben Levin, Alfred Hsing, Vinny Chhibber and Kyle Pierson.

## Biography

Weir was born and raised in California. He is an only child. His father is an accelerator physicist and his mother an electrical-engineer who divorced when he was 8. Weir grew up reading classic science fiction such as the works of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

At the age of 15, he began working as a computer programmer for Sandia National Laboratories. He studied computer science at UC San Diego, although he did not graduate. He worked as a programmer for several software companies, including AOL, Palm, MobileIron and Blizzard, where he worked on the video game *Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness*.

Weir began writing science fiction in his 20s and published work on his website for years. He also authored a web comic called "Casey and Andy" featuring fictionalized "mad scientist" versions of himself, Casey and his friends (such as writer Jennifer Brozek) from 2002 to 2008; he also briefly worked on another comic called "Chesire Crossing" bridging *Alice in Wonderland*, *Peter Pan* and *The Wizard of Oz*. The attention these gained him has been attributed as later helping launch his writing career, following the failure to publish his first novel attempt called "*Theft of Pride"*. His first work to gain significant attention was "The Egg", a short story that has been adapted into a number of YouTube videos and a one-act play.

He currently lives in Mountain View, California, in a rented two-bedroom maisonette. Since he has a deep fear of flying, he never visited the set of the film adaptation of *The Martian* in Budapest, where most of the scenes set on Mars were shot at Korda Studios. however, in 2015, with the help of therapy and medication, he was able to fly to Houston to visit the NASA Johnson Space Center, and to San Diego to attend San Diego Comic-Con.

Weir has stated that he is agnostic. He considers himself to be a fiscally conservative social liberal, and tries to keep his political views out of his writing.

## Works

### Novels and long stories

* *The Martian* (2011)
* *Theft of Pride*
* *Artemis* (2017)
* *Project Hail Mary* (2021)
* *Bonnie MacKenzie: The Life Story of a Mermaid* (ongoing)
* *Moriarty* (Holmesian fanfiction)
* *The Romana Chronicles*/*The Xoloans* (Doctor Who fanfiction)
* *The Principles of Uncertainty* (2016) Serial Novel
* *Zhek* (WIP)

### Short stories

* "The Egg" (Youtube)
* "Diary of an AssCan"
* "The Chef"
* "Access"
* "Annie's Day"
* "The Real Deal"
* "Meeting Sarah"
* "The Midtown Butcher"
* "Antihypoxiant"
* "Bored World"
* "Twarrior"
* "Lacero" (2016 print release) — prominent *Ready Player One* fanfiction
* "Rat"

## References

1. ↑ Lutkus, Tony. “Andy Weir Wins John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.” *Penguin Random House*, 23 Aug. 2016, prhinternationalsales.com/2016/08/23/andy-weir-martian-wins-john-w-campbell-award-best-new-writer/. Accessed April 29, 2021