The Martian

by Andy Weir

The Martian

I’ll be honest here – I wrote THE MARTIAN with the idea that it would appeal to a teeny, tiny niche of hardcore science dorks. I had no idea it would gain mainstream appeal. It’s basically a long series of high school algebra word problems that ended up becoming a huge hit. I still don’t know what I did right. But hey, I’m glad it happened.

An ironic death for someone with a leaky space suit: too much oxygen.

I always thought it was interesting that oxygen can kill you in high enough quantities. Though it won’t happen right away, it will mess up your lungs, your eyes, and harm your skin. We think of oxygen as being our friend. But it’s one of the nastiest, most reactive, most destructive elements in the world. If it weren’t an integral part of our biosphere and 21% of our atmosphere, it would probably be illegal to possess just due to the sheer damage it can do.

They say no plan survives first contact with implementation. I’d have to agree.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from 25 years of being an engineer: The first thing you try probably won’t work. You can plan, plan, and plan all you like, but in the end you just have to try stuff out to see what works.

VENKAT KAPOOR returned to his office, dropped his briefcase on the floor, and collapsed into his leather chair.

When I first started writing the book, I planned to have the entire thing be just Mark’s log entries. And I didn’t plan to have NASA find out he was alive at all. He would get to the Ares 4 site on his own and just be there waiting for them when they landed. The book would end with a very surprised Ares 4 crew reporting to Earth that Watney was still alive and joining them for the mission. As I worked on the book, though, it just didn’t seem likely. There’s no chance that NASA wouldn’t at least take a look at the Ares 3 landing site with one of their many satellites. Why wouldn’t they? If nothing else to track the effects of weather on their equipment and see what they can learn. NASA seeks knowledge any way they can get it. The further into the story I got, the more I realized NASA would find out. And once they did they’d move heaven and Earth to help him any way they could. And it would be interesting as hell to see them working the problem from their end. So I made a major change to my plans and included NASA and their machinations into the plot.

How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.

After the book came out, I received many, many, MANY answers to this question by devout comic book fans. So, here’s the answer: Aquaman is a very powerful telepath. His ability to command animals isn’t limited to sea life. In fact, in some cases he’s actually used his telepathy to control humans. But he has more experience using telepathy to control sea life because that’s what he has access to. So, just as he can control fish, he can also control whales, dolphins, and even seagulls.

Once I got home, I sulked for a while. All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy!

The eternal bane of scientists everywhere. Put in simple terms, entropy is the tendency for systems to even out. Let’s say you’re magic and you use your ability to push all the air in an airtight room into one half of the space. Then you let it go. What happens? Whoosh! That’s entropy. Things “even out” over time. One place where this really causes headaches for scientists and engineers is with heat. Like everything else, heat tends to balance out. And when it does, it can really ruin your plans.

Maybe I’ll post a consumer review. “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10.”

THE MARTIAN is a very sciencey novel. And it seems super-futuristic because Mark is constantly surrounded by the best technology NASA had to offer. So I was worried the reader might lose sight of the fact that it’s supposed to be the very near future, not some far off century. So I added contemporary “clues” as often as I could. Mentioning online consumer reviews, Wikipedia articles, and old TV shows helps remind the reader this is all happening now-ish.

Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.

If it moves but shouldn’t: Duct tape. If it doesn’t move but should: WD-40. These two items cover all of your needs. Everything else in science is secondary.

As with most of life’s problems, this one can be solved by a box of pure radiation.

Mark has a tendency to use hyperbole. I love that kind of humor because it really brings the situation to light. Also, I don’t want the reader to lose track of the feeling that this is an everyman stuck in extraordinary circumstances. A little reminder here and there that the situation is almost absurd helps keep things grounded.

Only an idiot would keep that thing near the Hab. So anyway, I brought it back to the Hab.

Mark doesn’t have a big ego. It’s one of his best qualities. He doesn’t think he’s “the schizz”, even though he actually is the schizz. He’s an astronaut who beat out god-knows how many other candidates for a seat on a mission to Mars. He is one of the best in the world at what he does. But he’s still humble and ready to question any of his conclusions. I wanted to show that without beating the reader over the head with it. So I gave him a ton of self-effacing humor.

I tested the brackets by hitting them with rocks. This kind of sophistication is what we interplanetary scientists are known for.

There’s a great story (I don’t know if it’s true or not) about the difference between science and engineering. A toothpaste factory was having a problem. Once in a while, the assembly line would churn out an empty box with no tube of toothpaste in it. The empty box would end up packed with a bunch of normal boxes in a crates and sent off to stores. The retailers would then get mad that they got a factory dud. So the management called in experts to look over the assembly line. The experts did a bunch of analysis and found the problem. Unfortunately, it would cost millions to redesign the relevant parts of the assembly line and it would have to be offline for months during the retrofit. Management didn’t want to do that, so the experts offered the next best thing: They can’t fix the problem, but they could put a scale in at one point to identify the problem and automatically stop the production line. Then a worker could remove the bad box and they could start the line again. Management opted for that solution. For the first month or so, the line stopped once or twice a day as a result – each time due to an empty box. Problem solved! But then, after a month, the line never stopped again. Had the detection system stopped working? Management sent someone down to investigate. They discovered that the workers had positioned a large industrial fan next to the assembly line right before the detector. It was strong enough to blow an empty box off the conveyor belt but not strong enough to blow a full one off. They had solved the entire problem, permanently and at zero cost, because manually removing the box and restarting the line was a hassle. That’s the difference between a scientist and an engineer. Mark Watney is an engineer at heart.

It’s true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.

When I wrote the book, I had no idea it would be successful, let alone made into a film. And I certainly didn’t know it would be directed by Ridley Scott. So I have an homage to a Ridley Scott film (Alien: “In space, no one can hear you scream.”) in a story that eventually got adapted to film by Ridley Scott. The screenwriter, Drew Goddard, really wanted to put that line in the screenplay, but Ridley said no. He didn’t want to homage himself in his own film. Reasonable of him, but a missed opportunity.

THE MARTIAN changed my life. I get to do my dream job from now on. I can’t even express what an amazing ride my life has been since the book came out. I’m now the “realistic science fiction” guy. And I love it. And hey, if you liked THE MARTIAN, please check out my latest book: PROJECT HAIL MARY – available May 4, 2021. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54493401-project-hail-mary