Andy Weir on life after ‘The Martian’ and his latest endeavor
Like his first book, “The Martian,” one of the biggest publishing successes of 2014, Andy Weir’s follow-up novel is out-of-this-world storytelling. “Artemis” welcomes readers to the first city on the moon.
The late-21st-century colony is located in the Sea of Tranquillity, where 2,000 full-time residents have turned the historic Apollo 11 landing site into a tourist destination.
One of the citizens of Artemis is Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara, a smart-aleck smuggler who gets mixed up in a get-rich-quick sabotage caper. After the scheme goes horribly wrong, she eludes relentless assassins, uncovers a plot to seize control of the city and races the clock to save the lives of everyone on the moon.
“I’m a sci-fi and space nerd, but I’ve also always loved crime and heist stories,” Weir says. “I thought it would be fun to put those genres together.”
Weir was a software engineer who moonlighted as a writer before “The Martian” spent more a year and a half on the New York Times best-seller list. It sold more than 4 million copies worldwide and inspired a blockbuster movie starring Matt Damon. Now writing is Weir’s full-time job.
His book tour for “Artemis” fittingly includes a visit to Space Center Houston on Friday and Saturday. We got to chat in advance about “Artemis” and the lifechanging success of “The Martian.”
Q: Do you believe there will be a colony and tourism on the moon before the end of this century, as you have predicted in the book?
A: It’s definitely possible. We’re starting to see private companies like SpaceX and others working to drive down the cost of launching humans into space. For the first time, we’re having genuine innovation in the private space industry.
Once we have an economically viable space industry, once we drive the price down enough that middle-class people can afford it, once it makes sense to build a tourist destination on the moon, then it will become a multitrillion-dollar industry. Q: Jazz has traits in common with Mark Watney, the marooned astronaut of “The Martian.” They’re resourceful in pressure situations, and they have irreverent senses of humor. But they also differ in many ways: Jazz is a criminal and a liar — and, of course, she’s female. What’s her story? A: The first thing I did for Artemis, before I had characters or a story, is I designed the city itself. Once I had that set, I started coming up with stories that could take place in it. In the first idea I had, Jazz was a minor character, very tertiary, a lovable rogue smuggler for one or two scenes. I made her a woman from Saudi Arabia, just for the hell of it. But I wasn’t liking how the plot was shaping up, so I ditched it. When I came up with a different story idea, Jazz was a little more essential but still very much a secondary character. That story idea didn’t work either. But I thought, “This Jazz is kind of interesting.”
So in the story that is this book, Jazz became the main character. By then, she was so cemented in my mind as a Saudi woman that I wouldn’t have been able to change her. That happens sometimes with characters. They muscle their way to the front of your brain.
Q: Did you check with experts to make sure everything in “Artemis” is scientifically accurate?
A: I actually didn’t run it past anyone. If you get 10 nerds in a room, you’ll get 11 opinions. So I did my own thing. I suppose I’ll get plenty of feedback. But my priority was to write an entertaining story.
Q: How is life different now, after the success of “The Martian”?
A: I had no idea it would be so popular. I thought I was writing for a small group of hard-core science and sci-fi fans. It turned out there are a lot more people like that than I imagined.
I have more money now and a nice house. But the main way it changed my life is the tradeoff I made career-wise. When I was a computer programmer, I worked as part of a team of engineers making a product. Now I work from my home office, and I’m by myself most of the time.
I’ve got to admit: I miss being part of a team. I miss the five of us working together on software: “You write this part, and I’ll write that part.” I liked being an engineer. But I like being a writer even more.