Author Discusses How ‘The Martian’ Went From Blog To Blockbuster

This weekend’s top grossing film — “The Martian,” starring Matt Damon — began its journey from very humble origins: A blog post.

A self-described “space dork,” Andy Weir was working as a computer programmer when he got the idea for a book about a mission to Mars. He had already tried his hand at being a published author, but had largely come up empty with no agent and no published book.

So this time, he said he thought he’d do it himself. He began posting chapters to a personal blog and soon his story had taken off, literally. An agent came calling and soon after that, book and movie contracts.

It’s one of self-publishing’s modern-day success stories, but while Weir might have the resourcefulness of his protagonist, Mark Watney, he doesn’t have his same passion for spaceflight. Weir said he’s afraid of flying, which is perhaps ironic for a man whose career has literally skyrocketed.

He spoke with “To The Best Of Our Knowledge” executive producer Steve Paulson recently about the book’s origins and its commitment to actual science.

Steve Paulson: How did you come up with the idea for the book?
Andy Weir: I’m a space dork. I’m a big fan of manned and unmanned space flight, and I was sitting around at home and just as a thought experiment, began imagining how we could do a manned Mars mission. So I figured out, ‘OK, here’s how we get ’em here, here’s how we get ’em back, here’s how long they can stay.’ Then, I thought, ‘OK, how do we deal with things going wrong … how do we make sure the crew doesn’t die?’ At some point, I realized this could make a good story so I made an unfortunate protagonist and subjected him to all of it.

This wasn’t your job, though — just something you were doing in your spare time?
At the time I wrote “The Martian,” I was a full-time computer programmer. I programmed computers for 25 years. I only quit last year because I’m now able to make a living off of writing.

Your story is full of science, math and engineering. And your character Mark Watney is kind of like MacGyver in a space suit.
Yup, pretty much. That’s what I was going for!

How important was it to you to get the science right?
It was really important! I’m a science geek. It’s painful to me to see science fiction that breaks the rules. But what’s interesting is, there’s this weird thing I call the uncanny valley of scientific accuracy. If you go way overboard and make stuff up that’s completely off the rails, then everyone will accept it. If you say ‘I’ve got a warp drive, it makes my ship go faster than light,’ everyone says ‘OK, no problem.’ But if you say, ‘I’m going to walk around on the Moon without a spacesuit just by holding my breath,’ everyone’s like ‘No. You’ll die.’ So there’s this region where if you’re kind of accurate but not accurate enough, you will really alienate the audience.

“The Martian” was not originally published as a book — it was just a series of chapters you began self-publishing on your own website?
Right. Initially it was just a labor of love. I was posting one chapter at a time to my website, about every six to eight weeks. I got a lot of feedback from my readers, which was cool — they’re scientifically-minded dorks like me, so they would point out scientific errors. No magical tech is allowed, because if you start hand-waving on the physics and science in a story like this, then all the challenges go away. If you say, ‘Oh, he uses his chemistry skills to make a thing that generates water,’ then all the drama goes away. But if you’re accurate, if you actually do the math and show all your work, it illustrates how incredibly difficult this stuff is.

And to pick up the story of the publishing, first you were posting these chapters on your website, then you self-published on Amazon, and next you got a contract from a major publisher.
Yeah. An editor at Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, heard about the book but wasn’t sure whether or not to read it. He talked to a colleague of his, the literary agent David Fugate, who said, ’Well, I’ll read it and let you know.’ So David read it and liked it and said, ‘Hey, you need an agent?’ Earlier in life, I’d spent three years trying to get a literary agent and couldn’t get any interest, and then one comes knocking on my door! And he’s like, ‘Hey, need an agent?’ and I’m like, ‘Sure.’ And so then, David turned around to Julian and said, ‘Hey Julian, how much you gonna pay us for this book?’

What I heard is that in the same week, you got both a book and a movie contract.
Fox came for the movie rights around the same time we were negotiating the book contract. So they were being negotiated at the same time and we had verbal agreements on them four days apart. It was a little stressful. You know, you daydream and fantasize about this stuff when you’re writing, but you never imagine it’s actually going to happen.

What do the scientists at NASA think of your book?
Oh, they love it. They rarely see a book that puts that much effort into scientific accuracy, so they completely forgive me for the areas where I’m wrong. Also, I’m sure NASA likes the fact that they’re portrayed in an extremely positive light. They feel it might reinvigorate interest in the space program.

Suppose there was a mission to Mars and you were offered a seat on the spacecraft. Would you go?
No, I would politely decline. I write about brave people but I’m not one of them. I don’t have the right stuff. (laughs)

I’ve heard that you are actually afraid of flying. True?
Yeah. I’m getting better at it. I hadn’t flown since 2007, but then NASA offered to give me several days of VIP tours at Johnson Space Center in Houston. I live in Northern California, so I sucked it up and flew.

That’s kind of ironic — you wrote a book about space travel to Mars and you don’t even like getting on an airplane.
Like I said, I’m a guy who sits around and imagines cool stuff. But I don’t actually do the cool stuff myself.