Andy Weir

Early life and education

Weir was born and raised in California, the only child of an accelerator physicist father and an electrical-engineer mother who divorced when he was eight. 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.

Writing

Weir began writing science fiction in his twenties and published work on his website for years. He also authored a humour web comic called Casey and Andy featuring fictionalized "mad scientist" versions of himself and his friends (such as writer Jennifer Brozek) from 2002 to 2008; he also briefly worked on another comic called Cheshire 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, a one-act play, and is the overarching concept of "Everybody," the third album by American rapper Logic.

Weir is best known for his first published novel, The Martian. He wrote the book to be as scientifically accurate as possible, and his writing included extensive research into orbital mechanics, conditions on the planet Mars, the history of manned spaceflight, and botany. Originally published as a free serial on his website, some readers requested he make it available on Amazon 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 (slightly edited from the original) of the novel 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". It was made into a film starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain, which was released October 2, 2015.

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.

Weir is working on his second novel, provisionally titled Zhek. He described it as "a more traditional sci-fi novel. It has aliens, telepathy, faster-than-light travel, etc."

He has since stated that that project was "back-burnered" and has moved to another hard sci-fi novel, titled "Artemis", with a female protagonist, based on the Moon and set in the 2080s-2090s. The near-future thriller follows a woman named Jazz, a twenty-something constrained by her small town which is also the only city on the Moon. With debts to pay and a salary that barely covers the rent, she can’t say no when a life-changing opportunity drops in her lap. But she then finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy for control of the city itself.

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

In 2017 CBS picked up a pilot written by Weir titled Mission Control, following a group of young NASA astronauts and scientists.

Personal life

He lives in Mountain View, California, in a rented two-bedroom maisonette. Since he has a 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. In 2015, with the help of therapy and medication, he was able to fly to Houston to visit the Johnson Space Center, and to San Diego to attend Comic-Con.

Weir has stated that he is agnostic. He has described his political views as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

Works

Weir lists his works on his original website.

Professionally published

Novels and long stories

Short stories