MALE SPEAKER:
Welcome, everybody.
Six days ago, astronaut
Mark Whatrey--
ANDY WEIR: Watney.
MALE SPEAKER: --became
one of the first men
to walk on the surface of Mars.
Now he may be the
first man to die there.
Will he?
Andy Weir's brilliant
debut novel, "The Martian,"
is a gripping story of
survival against all odds.
The astronaut is stranded
millions of miles
from the nearest human
being with no way
to even signal Earth
that he is alive.
And even if you he
could get word out,
his food would be gone years
before a rescue mission could
arrive.
Andy Weir, he's our neighbor
here in Mountain View,
a longtime programmer.
He got his first job at 15 years
of age at Sandia National Labs.
He wrote code for Warcraft II.
And he's now working
at MobileIron,
where he's working
on Android codes.
And actually, we talked a little
bit how he likes the platform,
and he didn't have
too many complaints.
I guess this is kudos to you
guys from the Android group.
I am pleased to present
the book, "The Martian."
Andy will be talking
to us today about it
and showing some of the
technical details that
went into the book.
And please give a warm welcome.
[APPLAUSE]
ANDY WEIR: So, like he
said, I'm Andy Weir.
And I wrote "The Martian."
I'm going to be talking
to you about that today.
When they told me that I'd
be doing a Google Talk,
they said, you're
going to want to make
about 40 minutes of content.
I don't think I'm going to
make 40 minutes of content.
But I'll just say what I have
to say until I'm out of stuff
to say, and then
I'll take questions.
So you just got the
summary of the book.
But I'm going to do a reading.
I'm going to start us
off with a reading.
And then I'm going to
start talking about some
of the technical stuff that
went into making the book.
The reading's going to
be about 10 minutes.
And it's just the first chapter.
So it's about four
or five pages.
Also, the reading will
include profanities.
I hope nobody's
bothered by that.
I don't see any
children out there.
So I'm just going
to jump right in.
Log entry, Sol 6.
I'm pretty much fucked.
That's my considered opinion.
Fucked.
Six days into what should be the
greatest two months of my life,
and it's turned
into a nightmare.
I don't even know
who'll read this.
I guess someone will
find it eventually,
maybe 100 years from now.
For the record, I
didn't die on Sol 6.
Certainly the rest of
the crew thought I did.
And I can't blame them.
Maybe there'll be a day of
national mourning for me.
And my Wikipedia page
will say Mark Watney
is the only human being
to have died on Mars.
And it'll be right, probably.
Because I'll surely die here.
Just not on Sol 6 when
everyone thinks I did.
Let's see.
Where do I begin?
The Ares program-- mankind
reaching out to Mars
to send people to another
planet for the very first time
and expand the horizons of
humanity, blah, blah, blah.
The Ares 1 crew did their
thing and came back heroes.
They got the parades and
fame and love of the world.
Ares 2 did the same thing in
a different location on Mars.
They got a firm handshake
and a hot cup of coffee
when they got home.
Ares 3?
Well, that's my mission.
Well, not mine, per se.
Commander Lewis was in charge.
I was just one of her crew.
Actually, I was the very lowest
ranked member of the crew.
I would only be in
command of the mission
if I were the only
remaining person.
Hey, what do you know?
I'm in command.
I wonder if this
log'll be recovered
before the rest of the
crew die of old age.
I presume they got back
to Earth all right.
Guys, if you're reading
this, it wasn't your fault.
You did what you had to do.
In your position, I would
have done the same thing.
I don't blame you.
And I'm glad you survived.
I guess I should explain
how Mars missions work
for any laymen who
may be reading this.
We got to Earth orbit the normal
way through an ordinary ship
to "Hermes."
All the Ares
missions use "Hermes"
to get to and from Mars.
It's really big and it cost a
lot, so NASA only built one.
Once we got to "Hermes," four
additional unmanned missions
brought us fuel and supplies
while we prepared for our trip.
Once everything was a
"go," we set out for Mars,
but not very fast.
Gone are the days of
heavy chemical fuel
burns and trans-Mars
injection orbits.
"Hermes" is powered
by ion engines.
They throw argon out
the back of the ship
really fast to get a tiny
amount of acceleration.
The thing is it doesn't
take much reactant mass.
So a little argon and a
nuclear reactor to power things
let us accelerate constantly
the whole way there.
You'd be amazed how
fast you can get
going with a tiny
acceleration over a long time.
I could regale you with
tales of how we had great fun
on the trip, but I won't.
I don't feel like
re-living it right now.
Suffice it to say we
got to Mars 124 days
later without
strangling each other.
From there we took the
MDV, Mars Descent Vehicle,
to the surface.
The MDV is basically a big
can with some light thrusters
and parachutes attached.
Its sole purpose is to get
six humans from Mars orbit
to the surface without
killing any of them.
And now we come to the real
trick of Mars exploration--
having all your shit
there in advance.
A total of 14 unmanned
missions deposited everything
we would need for
surface operations.
They tried their best
to land on the supply
vessels in the same general area
and did a reasonably good job.
Supplies aren't nearly
so fragile as humans
and can hit the
ground really hard,
but they tend to
bounce around a lot.
Naturally they didn't
send us to Mars
until they confirmed that
all the supplies had made it
to the surface and their
containers weren't breached.
Start to finish,
including supply missions,
a Mars mission takes
about three years.
In fact, there were Ares 3
supplies en route to Mars
while the Ares 2 crew
were on their way home.
The most important piece of the
advance supplies, of course,
was the MAV, the
Mars Ascent Vehicle.
That's how we would
get back to "Hermes"
after surface operations
were complete.
The MAV was soft landed
as opposed to the balloon
bounce fest the
other supplies had.
Of course, it was in constant
communication with Houston,
and if there had been
any problems with it,
we would have passed by Mars and
gone home without ever landing.
The MAV is pretty cool.
It turns out through a neat
set of chemical reactions
with the Martian atmosphere,
for every kilogram of hydrogen
you bring to Mars, you can
make 13 kilograms of fuel.
It's a slow process, though.
It takes 24 months
to fill the tank.
That's why they sent it
long before we got there.
You can imagine
how disappointed I
was when I discovered
the MAV was gone.
It was a ridiculous sequence
of events that led to me
almost dying, and an even
more ridiculous sequence that
led to me surviving.
The mission is
designed to handle
sandstorm gusts
of up to 150 KPH.
So Houston got
understandably nervous
when we got whacked
with 175 KPH winds.
We all got in our
flight suits and huddled
in the middle of the Hab just
in case it lost pressure.
But they Hab wasn't the problem.
The MAV is a spaceship.
It has a lot of delicate parts.
It can put up with storms
to a certain extent,
but it can't just get
sand blasted forever.
After an hour and a
half of sustained wind,
NASA gave the order to abort.
Nobody wanted to stop a
month-long mission after only
six days, but if the MAV
took any more punishment,
we'd have all gotten
stranded down there.
We had to go out in the storm
to get from the Hab to the MAV.
And that was going to be risky.
But what choice did we have?
Everyone made it but me.
Our main communications
dish, which relayed signals
from the Hab to "Hermes,"
acted like a parachute getting
torn from its foundation and
carried with the torrent.
Along the way, it crashed
through the reception antenna
array.
Then one of those
long, thin antennae
slammed into me end first.
It tore through my suit like
a bullet through butter.
And I felt the worst pain in my
life as it ripped open my side.
I vaguely remember having
the wind knocked out
of me-- pulled out
of me, really--
and my ears popping
painfully is the pressure
in my suit escaped.
The last thing I remember
was seeing Johanssen
hopelessly reaching
out toward me.
I awoke to an oxygen
alarm in my suit,
a steady obnoxious
beeping that aroused me
from a deep and profound
desire to just fucking die.
The storm had abated.
I was face down, almost
totally buried in sand.
As I groggily came
to, I wondered
why I wasn't more dead.
The antenna had
enough force to punch
through the suit
and my side, but it
had been stopped by my pelvis.
So there was only one
hole in the suit--
and a hole in me, of course.
I'd been knocked
back quite a ways
and rolled down a steep hill.
Somehow I landed
face down, which
forced the antenna into a
strongly oblique angle that
put a lot of torque on
the hole in the suit.
It made a weak seal.
Then the copious
blood from my wound
trickled down toward the hole.
As the blood reached the site
of the breach, the water in it
quickly evaporated from the
air flow and low pressure,
leaving a gunky residue behind.
More blood came in behind it
and was also reduced to gunk.
Eventually it sealed
the gaps around the hole
and reduced the
leak to something
the suit could counteract.
The suit did its job admirably.
Sensing the drop in
pressure, it constantly
flooded itself with air from
my nitrogen tank to equalize.
Once the leak became
manageable, it only
had to trickle new air in
slowly to relieve the air lost.
After a while, the CO2, carbon
dioxide, absorbers in the suit
were expended That's really
the limiting factor to life
support-- not the amount of
oxygen you bring with you,
but the amount of
CO2 you can remove.
In the Hab, I have the
oxygenator, a large piece
of equipment that breaks apart
CO2 to give the oxygen back.
But the space suits
have to be portable.
So they use a simple
chemical absorption
process with expendable filters.
I'd been asleep long enough
that my filters were useless.
The suit saw this problem and
moved into an emergency mode
the engineers call
"bloodletting."
Having no way to
separate the CO2,
the suit deliberately vented
air into the Martian atmosphere,
then back-filled with nitrogen.
Between the breach
and the bloodletting,
it quickly ran out of nitrogen.
All it had left
was my oxygen tank.
So it did the only thing
it could to keep me alive.
It started back-filling
with pure oxygen.
I now risked dying
from oxygen toxicity
as the excessively
high amount of oxygen
threatened to burn up my nervous
system, lungs, and eyes--
an ironic death for someone with
a leaky space suit, too much
oxygen.
Every step of the way would
have had beeping alarms, alerts,
and warnings.
But it was a high oxygen
morning that woke me.
The sheer volume of training for
a space mission is astounding.
I'd spent a week back on Earth
practicing emergency spacesuit
drills.
I knew what to do.
Carefully reaching
the side of my helmet,
I got the breach kit.
It's nothing more than a funnel
with a valve at the small end
and an unbelievably sticky
resin on the white end.
The idea is you have
the valve open and stick
the white end over the hole.
The air can escape
through the valve
so it doesn't interfere with
the resin making a good seal.
Then you close the valve,
and you've sealed the breach.
The tricky part was getting
the antenna out of the way.
I pulled it out as
fast as I could,
wincing as the sudden pressure
drop dizzied me and made
the wound in my side
scream in agony.
I got the breach kit over
the hole and sealed it.
It held.
The suit back-filled the missing
air with yet more oxygen.
Checking my arm readouts, I saw
the suit was now at 85% oxygen.
For reference, Earth's
atmosphere is about 21%.
I'd be OK so long as I didn't
spend too much time like that.
I stumbled up the
hill back to the Hab.
As I crested the
rise, I saw something
that made me very
happy and something
that made me very sad.
The Hab was intact.
Yay!
And the MAV was gone.
Boo!
Right at that moment,
I knew I was screwed.
But I didn't want to just
die out on the surface.
I limped back to the Hab
and fumbled my way out
into an airlock.
As soon as it equalized,
I threw off my helmet.
Once inside the Hab,
I doffed the suit
and got my first good
look at the injury.
It would need stitches.
Fortunately, all of
us had been trained
in basic medical
procedures and the Hab
had excellent medical supplies.
A quick shot of a local
anesthetic, irrigate the wound,
nine stitches, and I was done.
I'd be taking antibiotics
for a couple of weeks,
but other than that I'd be fine.
I knew it was hopeless,
but I tried firing
up the communications array.
No signal, of course.
The primary satellite dish
had broken off, remember?
And it took the reception
antennae with it.
The Hab had secondary and
tertiary communication systems,
but they were both
just for talking
to the MAV, which would use
it's much more powerful systems
to relay to "Hermes."
The thing is, that only works
if the MAV is still around.
I had no way to
talk to "Hermes."
In time, I could locate
the dish on the surface,
but it would take weeks for
me to rig up any repairs
and that would be too late.
In an abort, "Hermes" would
leave within 24 hours.
The orbital dynamics made
the trip safer and shorter
the earlier you left.
So why wait?
Checking out my suit,
I saw the antenna
had plowed through my
biomonitor computer.
When on an EVA, all
the crew's suits
are networked so we can
see each other's status.
The rest of the crew would have
seen the pressure in my suit
drop to nearly zero
followed immediately
by my biosigns going flat.
Add to that, watching me
tumble down a hill with a spear
threw me in the
middle of a sandstorm?
Yeah, they thought I was dead.
How could they not?
They may have even
had a brief discussion
about recovering my body,
but regulations were clear.
In the event a crewman dies
on Mars, he stays on Mars.
Leaving his body behind reduces
weight for the MAV on the trip
back.
That means more disposable
fuel and a larger margin
of error for the return thrust.
No point in giving that
up for sentimentality.
So that's the situation.
I'm stranded on Mars.
I have no way to communicate
with "Hermes" or Earth.
Everyone thinks I'm dead.
I'm in a Hab designed
to last 31 days.
If the oxygenator breaks
down, I'll suffocate.
If the water reclaimer breaks
down, I'll die of thirst.
If the Hab breaches, I'll
just kind of explode.
If none of those
things happen, I'll
eventually run out of
food and starve to death.
So yeah, I'm fucked.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
So that's chapter one.
Of the things that was
really important to me
in writing this was
I wanted everything
to be as scientifically
accurate as possible.
So for starters,
all the technology
mentioned in the book is real.
It takes place in
a slight future,
so some of the technology is
much more efficient or much
more effective than the
versions of it we have now.
But it all actually exists.
And what I'm going
to talk to you today
about-- being a Google
crowd, I thought
you might be interested
in some software I wrote
to make one part of it
as accurate as possible.
It has to do with the way that
"Hermes" got from Earth to Mars
and back.
"Hermes" is an ion engine ship.
And for those of you who don't
know what ion engines are--
I mean, I described it
briefly in the chapter--
but basically, instead
of a chemical propellant
going out the back
of the ship providing
a large amount of impulse,
it's a very small amount
of acceleration caused
by magnetic fields
throwing ions out
the back of the ship.
Now the benefit to
this is that you
can have much, much,
much less reactant mass.
And I believe-- and this is
just my own subjective opinion--
we have to improve on the
technology that we have
and just keep working that.
I think that's
the only way we'll
be able to send humans long
distances out into space.
The amount of
chemical propellant
you would need to send
something big enough
to support humans for
several months out to Mars
would just be huge, huge.
I mean, you'd be putting
millions and millions
of kilograms of just fuel
into space to do this.
So you need to
minimize how much you
launch from Earth to
make that efficient.
So that means for "Hermes,"
I decided, oh, OK,
so it's got a slow constant
acceleration from ion engines.
It's got a nuclear
reactor aboard
to create the energy necessary
to throw the particles.
And so that means I needed to
figure out how it gets there.
And it turns out for a point
acceleration, when you just
say, oh, I want to go on
a transfer orbit from here
to here.
And then there'll be
a point thrust here,
and then another
point thrust here
to match Mars, boom,
that's how we do it.
It's very simple.
Well, I mean, for
a dork like me who
likes orbital dynamics,
that's very simple.
With a constantly accelerating
ship, that's very hard.
I could not wrap my
head around the math.
I couldn't find
anybody who could
wrap their heads
around the math.
And what I found out by
doing further research
is NASA does this by
computer simulation.
So that's what I did.
I wrote this program
called Orbits.
I don't how well
that's showing up.
Let me take a look.
Are you able to see?
Yeah, you can kind of see.
It's a little darker
than I'd like.
But this-- well, I've got
a mouse-- this circle here,
this red circle, is Mars' orbit.
The blue circle
is Earth's orbit.
And the gray line is
the course of the ship.
So the way this works is I can
mess around with the vector
that the ship is presenting
with respect to the sun.
So in other words, if I were
to point it directly away
from the sun, then I can
show where that vector's
going to be anywhere
along the trip.
You see how it's always
pointed away from the sun?
The red vector that's
following the mouse?
That's how this works.
And so I can do
something like this.
I can point it-- well,
directly toward the sun
leads to your immediate death.
But point it, say,
perpendicular to the sun,
you can see it's
just always trying
to go perpendicular to the sun.
So what I wanted
to do here is, say,
this is the start
point of Earth.
And as you see, if
I move along, it
shows me where
Earth and Mars will
be as they're going
along in their orbits
from my chosen launch window.
And then the idea is
to try to find a way
to make this get to Mars
with course changes and stuff
and work that out.
This would not be
a successful trip.
But after all a whole bunch of
work and just fiddling around
with it, I managed to figure out
this path that actually starts
here, then intercepts
Mars, and then
doesn't do any thrusting
or anything for a while.
It's just at Mars.
And then comes back to Earth.
I also set up this
app to animate.
So I can just press Space,
and you can watch it happen.
There it goes to
Mars, hangs out there
for their planned
31-day mission,
and then comes back
to Earth like that.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] a year.
ANDY WEIR: It takes a
little bit more than a year.
I don't know if you can
read it up in the corner.
Mission day 396 is
when it completes.
Now, then, as I
mentioned in the book,
they had to abort after only six
days on Mars due to the storm.
And I mentioned,
the orbital dynamics
make it cheaper the
earlier you leave.
And this is why.
Because if you
leave earlier, you
can take a slightly
different course
and get back to Earth earlier.
And that's, of course,
what anybody would want.
Any NASA mission
designer worth their salt
would want to do
something like this.
Another thing I did
was-- it came up
a lot in the story-- I
wanted the transmission
times to be accurate.
So when later on in the story
they're talking to the ship,
they're talking to Mars,
Mars is talking to Earth,
all these entities
are communicating,
and I wanted to know what the
transmission time would be.
So I set it up so that
wherever the ship is--
I can just move the
mouse around and wherever
I'm pointing on that-- it'll
tell you what mission day it is
and what the current
distances are
between Earth and Mars,
Earth and "Hermes,"
and "Hermes" and Mars.
Those are those three numbers up
top, and the light transmission
time between them
so that I could
have that be accurate
in the story, too.
So I'm going to give a
little bit of a spoiler here.
The final path that "Hermes"
ends up taking is this.
And so--
AUDIENCE: It looks
like the other one.
ANDY WEIR: So I am giving
a bit of a spoiler,
but basically they have
to go back to Mars.
And so I'll describe what
happens as it's happening.
Here they go.
They're going to Mars.
After six Sols,
they have to abort.
So they're headed back to Earth.
They need to go back to Mars.
Boom, sling shot off of
Earth, back around the sun.
And now they need to
do a flyby of Mars.
So they're not going
into orbit, they're
just-- doink-- doing a flyby.
And then we got to
get back to Earth.
So that was a lot of
work to figure that out.
And this is all done
within this simulation,
this ship "Hermes," has a
total constant acceleration
of the two millimeters
per second per second.
That's it.
That's all it gets.
So yeah, after five
seconds of doing that,
it would be moving one
centimeter per second.
So that's the software I wrote
that I wanted to show off.
I thought the Google crowd would
like to see how that works.
And that's about it, actually.
That's all I really
had to show you.
I was going to do the reading.
What are we at here?
Oh, 20 minutes in.
AUDIENCE: I really like that.
So that's great.
And it seems beyond
what you had to do.
Are the orbits elliptical?
And could they be skewed?
ANDY WEIR: Those are the
actual orbits of Earth and Mars
correctly oriented.
And the launch window--
I won't tell you
the date because I may have a
contest someday to have people
figure out the launch date from
the information in the book--
but it is based on
a real-world date.
And to be thorough,
the book tells you
what day everything is on.
So it's like, log entry, Sol 6.
Log entry, Sol 27.
Log entry, Sol 412.
Whatever.
So it's actually very
time specific, just
the narrative style it has.
And so I made sure that I knew
the actual real-world date
for each-- on any given
day in the book, what
the real-world date is so that
I could mention things like, oh,
by the way, today's Christmas.
And it is.
There were sometimes
I had to keep myself
from over clever-ing things.
There was one kind of major
plot point that happened.
And I'm looking
at my spreadsheet.
And I'm like, oh, this happens
to be on Valentine's Day.
I should mention that.
But it would just seem
stupid to the reader.
It would be like out of nowhere
someone's like, by the way,
it's Valentine's Day.
It's like, no, that's just dumb.
The trickiest part in this
was I did all sorts of math.
I checked all my physics,
math, science, everything.
And the hard part was not
bragging to the reader.
It was not showing my work
and trying to go, look at me.
I'm so cool.
I just needed to keep
the story moving along.
And I wanted it to be accurate.
That's all.
AUDIENCE: So I read the
book about a year ago.
What I enjoyed the
most about it were
two things about the character.
One was how resourceful he is.
He always figures out how
to get out of his situation.
The other was his attitude.
He's cut off.
He has so many setbacks.
And he always keeps his head up.
I was wondering,
was there anything
that inspired you to make
a character like that?
Or was there any kind
of message you're
trying to send to make
somebody so resourceful and so
optimistic in such
a bad situation?
ANDY WEIR: Well, I
mean, I tried to make
it a pretty upbeat book.
It could've been really
dark and depressing, right?
It's like the guys
trapped alone.
He could be just having
this crippling psychological
problems of loneliness
and all these other things
that most people would face.
I figure I can buy
my way out of that
by saying he's an astronaut.
Astronauts are a cut above.
And so he doesn't
sink into depression.
He just goes into
problem-solving mode.
And I made him this really
flippant, smart-ass personality
because I had to
tell a whole story.
If I'd done just
blank narration, just
omniscient narration even,
it would have just seemed
like a technical manual or a
really dry sequence of events.
I needed something in
the narration itself
that would keep the
user interested.
And so having it told by a
self-effacing smart-ass seemed
liked a good idea.
AUDIENCE: So I'm thinking
about buying this book.
ANDY WEIR: $10 right over there.
AUDIENCE: How do you
think I should buy it?
ANDY WEIR: I think you should
buy one for all your friends.
AUDIENCE: It's $10
right over there,
but there's also a lot
of digital distribution
around these days.
Do you have thoughts as
an author about that?
And what works best for you?
What do you like as a reader?
And what do you think about
ebooks in general as an author?
ANDY WEIR: Well, ebooks are
how I got into the industry,
so I'm extremely grateful.
I think they're great.
And as for buying a
physical book or an ebook,
that's a matter of
personal choice.
I still read physical
books, but that's
just because I'm
kind of a Luddite.
Eventually, I will
get a proper e-reader.
And then I'll probably be
hooked on that from then on.
For those of you who
don't know, "The Martian"
was originally
just a serial story
that I was posting
to my website just
as a hobby doing
in my spare time.
And then I finished
and some people
said, hey, I don't like
reading this on web pages.
Can you put it up
in an ebook format?
And so I'm like, OK.
So I made an EPUB
and MOBI version.
And I posted them on the
website and said, there.
There you go.
Free download,
knock yourself out.
And then some people
were like, well,
I'm not really
technically savvy.
And I don't know how to
get an ebook downloaded
from the internet
onto my Kindle.
Is there a way you can
just put it up on Kindle?
And so I looked into it.
And anybody can post
their stuff onto Kindle.
Which is important-- remember
that-- because anybody
who wants to be a
writer, you just can.
You can just write your
story, post it on Kindle.
All they do is
they check to make
sure there's nothing illegal or
really, really evil about what
you're posting.
And so I posted it up on Kindle.
But Amazon is not a charity.
They're in this to make money.
They have a minimum
price that you're
allowed to charge,
which is $0.99,
or at least it was at the time.
And so I said, OK, I'll
set the price at $0.99.
I'm not allowed to charge less.
And I told everybody,
hey, here it is.
It's $0.99 because I can't
charge less than that.
Just look at it this way.
If you want to pay $1
to have it conveniently
delivered to your Kindle,
that's what you're paying for.
I got $0.30 or something
out of that per copy.
I mean, I was not doing
this for the money.
And then that's when
I learned how deep
Amazon's reach into the
readership market is.
Many, many, many more people--
many multiples more people--
bought it from Amazon than
downloaded it for free
from my site.
AUDIENCE: Such a deal.
ANDY WEIR: Such a deal.
I'm like, OK.
And that caused
it to start making
its way up the top
sellers charts.
And then once it got into
the top 10 on sci-fi,
then it started to really sell.
Because of course, people
are like, I want a sci-fi.
What's in the top 10?
So once you break
into that list,
your sales go really well.
And it sold well
enough that it got
the attention of a guy
named Julian Pavia at Random
House, who was an editor there.
And he said, I like this book.
I think I want to talk to this
reader and offer a print deal.
But first I'm going to run
it by a colleague of mine,
a guy named David Fugate,
who is a literary agent.
He said, hey, why don't
you read this book,
tell me what you
think, and do you
think I should offer
this guy a print deal?
David read it and said,
I think it's good.
I think you should
offer him a print deal.
Now hang on a second.
I'm going to go
become his agent.
So he did.
And then he turned
around and said,
so Julian, let's talk money.
So that was pretty cool.
So my whole experience
with publishing
has been completely backwards.
I wrote what I intended
to be just a free thing
and then got forced
to charge for it.
And then an agent came
knocking at my door.
And then a publisher came
offering me a contract.
And I did nothing to
promote it ever, by the way.
All I ever did was just post it.
I didn't even try
to go to forums
or do events or anything
to get people to read it.
It just spread by word of mouth.
So the long-ass winded
answer to your question
is I'm a big fan of digital
books because that made me.
Sorry, one last addendum--
and it can make anyone.
That's what I think
is awesome, is
it's become a pure meritocracy.
It used to be sort of
an old-boy network.
You had to know somebody to get
into the publishing industry
at all.
Or you had to dedicate your
life to doing scutt work
and working your way
up through journalism
until someone would take
you seriously enough
even to consider reading your
book at a publishing house.
But now you can post it yourself
with no intervening steps
and, if it's good,
people will buy it.
AUDIENCE: So your ion drive,
is the reaction mass just small
enough so that you don't
account for the change
in how much acceleration
it can give?
ANDY WEIR: I cheated.
The answer is it
wouldn't quite be.
It wouldn't quite be.
And the simulation could
have accounted for it
since it's doing
incremental-- every step,
I think I had it do it
in one-hour segments
to run the simulation forward.
And so I could have
accounted for the mass loss.
It is very small.
It's on the order of-- I
can't remember exactly-- it
was on the order of 10% of
the ship's mass, though.
Normally if you
were going to do--
to get to Mars using
a Hohmann transfer,
it would take five
kilometers per second delta
V, which would be
for a ship like this
that I later defined as
being 110,000 kilograms,
would be millions and
millions of kilograms of fuel.
I mean, the vast majority of
the starting mass would be fuel.
And so once I checked
the specific impulse
of ion engines,
it's so much better
than I just said, eh,
I'll approximate it out.
AUDIENCE: In talking about
how to read the book,
I wanted to put in a plug
for the audio book, which
I listened to.
It's a great way
to experience it.
I think you got a really
wonderful narrator.
ANDY WEIR: Yeah, the
narrator's name is RC Bray.
And he's a veteran narrator.
He's done over 100
books, I think.
And he's got a
really good voice.
And he puts a lot
of feeling into it.
And since this is
first-person, you
can kind of feel, OK, this
is Mark's voice, basically.
AUDIENCE: The one thing I wanted
to ask about that was there
are a couple of technical
terms that he, let's say,
mispronounces that--
ANDY WEIR: Yep, yep.
AUDIENCE: --kind of take you
out of the story for a moment.
ANDY WEIR: What?
You don't know about
the ASC2 standard?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, the ASC2
standard is the best one.
ANDY WEIR: ASC2.
Yep.
AUDIENCE: But you get past that.
ANDY WEIR: Well, so what
I wanted to do, actually,
was make my own mapping
standard for letters to numbers.
And I was going to call it ASC.
And then I'd make an improved
version and call it ASC2.
And that way I'd
retroactively be correct.
No, yeah, he messed that up.
Which is funny
because they called me
for a bunch of pronunciations
on, OK, what is this?
And how's it pronounced?
How do people say this?
But nobody ever asked me
how to pronounce ASCII.
They are making a
new version of it,
which I'm not sure
if it's out yet.
But they're re-recording
it from scratch
because there were a
lot of edits and changes
between the original
Kindle version
and what's releasing now.
No significant plot
changes, nothing like that,
but a lot of the wording.
It's much more polished.
And it's much better now thanks
to Julian at Random House.
And so the audio book guys,
Podium Publishing, decided,
well, we'll re-record
it from scratch.
And I told them, A-S-C-I-I-
is pronounced AS-key.
So I think they'll get it
right in the newer version.
AUDIENCE: So I listened
to the audio version, too.
I really liked it.
So there was a lot in the
book about NASA politics
and what happened inside NASA.
Did you just dream that up?
Or did you know
somebody on the inside?
Or how did that work?
ANDY WEIR: Made it all up.
AUDIENCE: It sounded very real.
ANDY WEIR: I thought so.
Well, I've worked for
the government before.
As he mentioned, my first
job was Sandia National Labs
as a little weaselly computer
programmer at age 15,
as opposed to the
41-year-old weaselly computer
programmer I am now.
And I just saw how
things worked there.
And I said, like, well,
NASA's a big federal agency.
So was Sandia.
So I'll just assume that
they're kind of similar.
But, yeah, I made all that up.
I had no contact with NASA
or astronauts or anyone
in the industry at all
before writing the book.
And I've since gotten a
lot of emails from them.
And they say that
that's about right.
AUDIENCE: Not really
a question, I'll
just note that
besides Amazon Kindle,
it's also available
at Google Play Books.
ANDY WEIR: All right.
There you go.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
ANDY WEIR: It's also available
on barnesandnoble.com.
MALE SPEAKER: Andy, what's
on your reading list?
ANDY WEIR: What's
on my reading list?
I really like to read the old
classic sci-fi stuff, which
I've read before and just
keep reading again and again.
So Heinlein, Clarke,
Asimov, that sort of thing.
Those are my favorite authors.
And then also anything by
Terry Pratchett, completely out
of the sci-fi world,
but Terry Pratchett.
Also I really like
Robert Asprin.
But he died.
But that apparently
didn't stop him
from making new
books because I see
there's a new release
that's by Robert Asprin.
And I'm not sure
how that happened.
So either someone
else has taken up
the role of writing
Robert Asprin.
Books.
Or it's some manuscript
he was partially through,
or I don't know.
AUDIENCE: So right
after "The Martian,"
I read-- speaking
of old sci-fi--
if I read "When Worlds Collide,"
which is from 1933, I think.
And the jump from
scientific accuracy
to scientific hand-waving
was never so great.
Because there was a spaceship.
And they fly.
And they just sort of say, yeah,
let's build a spaceship now.
And we'll fly to
this new planet.
And that'll work.
ANDY WEIR: It seems reasonable.
Or when they're like--
oh, I never read the book
but I saw the movie
from the '50s--
and they land their
spaceship on the new planet,
the one that just destroyed
Earth, and they're like,
well, let's go outside.
And they're like, what?
You don't know if the
atmosphere is good.
And it's like, well,
if it's no good,
we're all going to die anyway.
Yeah, it's good.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Yeah,
speaking of old sci-fi,
there was a couple of the
early Doc Smith novels
that had roughly the
same set-up-- guy
crashes on an
outer system planet
and has to build up civilization
until he can make a radio.
Have you read any of those?
And can you bring yourself to
having done the research now?
ANDY WEIR: I did not
read any of those.
As for the research, that was
just really important to me.
I just wanted to be as
accurate as I possibly could.
There are a few places
that are inaccurate.
The biggest place
that's inaccurate
is right at the beginning.
Don't tell anybody, but if
you're in a dust storm on Mars,
you're not even
going to feel it.
Mars' atmosphere is
less than 1% of Earth's.
So a 150 kilometer an
hour wind would feel
like about a 1 kilometer
an hour wind does on Earth.
It wouldn't do any
damage to anything.
Shh.
I had other ways of doing it.
I had an idea where the MAV
would have some sort of failure
that caused an explosion
which does all the damage.
And they're short on
time because the MAV fuel
tank is leaking, so
they need to lift off.
And they're sure Mark's
dead and stuff like that.
But most people don't know
how Martian dust storms work.
Most people don't
realize that it's not
like being in a sand blaster.
And it's just more
dramatic that way.
So I just made that concession.
I know I'm a liar.
I just wanted that more.
It was more dramatic.
AUDIENCE: So there used to be a
sci-fi story by George Landis.
The title was "A
Walk in the Sun."
There was an accident,
and an astronaut
has to survive by her
own on the moon for one
month until rescuers arrive.
So that's very similar
to this set-up.
Have you read that?
ANDY WEIR: I haven't.
AUDIENCE: OK.
ANDY WEIR: But
basically "The Martian"
can be described as Robinson
Crusoe on Mars, right?
Except for there
was a movie called
"Robinson Crusoe on
Mars," and my story
does not have a monkey sidekick.
AUDIENCE: You should
consider a monkey sidekick.
Yeah, are you considering one?
ANDY WEIR: There should
have been a monkey sidekick.
I see that now.
AUDIENCE: If they adapt this
for Hollywood, [INAUDIBLE].
ANDY WEIR: There's clearly
going to be a monkey sidekick.
There would have to be.
Well, they might adapt
it for Hollywood.
20th Century Fox optioned
the movie rights.
So they could make a movie.
We'll see.
AUDIENCE: The most important
question, when can we
expect another book from you?
ANDY WEIR: Well, I'm
working on a pitch
right now for my next book.
But I've been so
busy with the-- it's
real busy for a
writer around the time
his book comes out,
let me tell you.
So I've been doing
stuff related to that.
But as soon as things calm
down, I'll work on the pitch.
And then if they like it,
I'll start writing it.
And it'll probably
take me maybe a year.
AUDIENCE: Or you could just
self-publish it and put it up
on Amazon if they don't like it.
ANDY WEIR: If Random House
gives me a bunch of money,
they're going to want me
not to put it up for free.
AUDIENCE: Not
free, but you know.
As long as you write something.
I mean, seriously,
this is the best
book I've read in a long time.
ANDY WEIR: Well, thank you.
Glad you liked it.
AUDIENCE: I will say I'm
only halfway through it.
But that's got to be
the best first line
since "it was a dark
and stormy night."
ANDY WEIR: Thank you.
I figure you have one line
to convince the reader
to read the first paragraph.
And you have one
paragraph to convince
them to read the first page.
And if they read the
first page, you've
probably got them
for a while anyway.
But that first
line is important.
AUDIENCE: I was going
to say, partially
to what you were saying before,
even if the atmosphere is
really thin but it's blowing
around chunks of sand,
wouldn't the mass of the sand
moving at that speed still
cause a lot of damage?
ANDY WEIR: Right, but the
sand that it's blowing around
in a dust storm is basically
like talcum powder.
AUDIENCE: Fair enough.
ANDY WEIR: It's not
like big granules.
AUDIENCE: The actual
question I was going ask
is how much of the ending
and sort of storyboard
was known when you
started the book,
and how much was made
up as you went along?
ANDY WEIR: Most of it was
made up as I went along.
I had some ideas for
how the ending would go.
And it didn't go that way
because it didn't make sense
with how the story developed.
They say there are two kinds
of writers-- the plotters
and the pantsers, right?
Plotters work everything out
in an outline format and say,
this is what's going to happen.
Pantsers are like, eh,
let's just see what happens.
And I'm the latter, for sure.
So at the end, I
had this in my mind
the whole time I'm
writing the book is here's
what the final
scene's going to be.
And it's going to be awesome.
Here's how it's going to be.
And it couldn't be that way.
AUDIENCE: So related to
that, your protagonist
has to overcome a
lot of problems.
So which came first?
The problems that you'd have
to find a clever solution for?
Or you came up with
the solution and said,
how do I get in that situation?
ANDY WEIR: I would
start with the problems.
What I wanted to do
was have the problems--
I didn't want him to just
get struck by lightning
over and over, figuratively.
I didn't want there to
be too many coincidences.
So I wanted all of his
problems to either derive
from the fact that he's
using outdated equipment,
or that he's using
equipment in ways
that it wasn't
intended to be used.
So the solution to
his previous problem
would often cause
the next problem.
And so I would try to come
up with the problems first.
Then I'd come up
with the solutions.
The cool thing is, though,
being a writer I can cheat.
So every now and then,
I'd get him into trouble,
and I'd be like, he
can't get out of this.
He's going to die.
OK, I'm going to go
back a few chapters
and put in some stuff that,
oh, and this leads to that
and this leads to that.
And here's this thing
that he'll have access
to which can solve this problem.
AUDIENCE: I don't know how much
insight you have into this,
but which of your
sales channels seems
to be doing best in
this day and age?
So I've found the book
on [INAUDIBLE] blog
and read it in
the last few days.
How much does that
sort of thing help?
And electronic versus physical?
ANDY WEIR: The answer
is, I don't know.
I do know that right now, in
this release-- so it released
officially two
days ago, so we're
just right at the
beginning-- I do know
that the digital
version is outselling
the physical version.
That's usually the case early
on because there's still
pipelining and delivery
hiccups here and there
for various bookstores.
And we also don't get a lot of
our reports from bookstores.
But anyway, more
specific than that,
when it comes down
to how did somebody
end up at the page
where they buy it?
I don't know.
I don't have that data.
AUDIENCE: But you do
think that posting
to whatever was a good idea?
ANDY WEIR: Oh, well, so that was
mostly-- in fact, all of that--
was arranged by Random House's
marketing and publicity.
So they said, like,
then they arranged it
with the site owners and blogs
and stuff like that, and said,
we'd like you to
be on all of these.
Let's see which ones of them
are interested in having you.
And they do that
kind of matchmaking.
I have this big
folder full of what
I called homework, just essays
and articles and things that I
write, which was one
of the reasons I've
been too busy to work
on the next book.
AUDIENCE: So do you
still have a day job?
Or are you now a
full-time writer?
ANDY WEIR: I still
have a day job.
I work for MobileIron.
I am an Android programmer.
And I've warned everybody at
my company so they know this.
If I get an advance for this
next novel that I'm pitching,
then I'm going to
quit the day job.
AUDIENCE: Maybe you don't
know the specifics of this,
but what with the vagaries of
having been published twice,
are you eligible for
next year's Hugos?
ANDY WEIR: I don't know.
I hadn't thought
about awards at all.
(WHISPERING) I'll find out.
AUDIENCE: What did you think
of the movie "Gravity"?
ANDY WEIR: I liked it a lot.
I thought it was really
beautiful cinematography,
first off.
And it had a bunch
of accuracy problems.
But, I mean, you
can't get too picky.
It wasn't supposed to be
a space station tutorial.
It was supposed to
be an exciting movie.
And what was it?
Like for one thing,
ISS and the Hubble
are in orbits that are
nowhere near each other,
nowhere near the same velocity.
In fact, NASA did, at one
point, try to arrange a mission
where they would repair
the Hubble from ISS.
And they could not find
any way to make that work.
So there are few
errors in "Gravity,"
but I liked it a lot.
It is kind of inconvenient,
though, because I released
"The Martian" before
"Gravity" came out.
I wrote it all before
"Gravity" came out.
Now the re-release
of "The Martian,"
people are like, oh, hey,
this is like "Gravity."
I'm like, no,
"Gravity"'s like me.
AUDIENCE: I was
wondering, did you
manage to get any
input on the cover?
I mean, it looks really nice.
ANDY WEIR: Thanks.
That's actually funny.
I didn't like it.
And they said, hey, here's
the cover we're going to go.
The Random House's
art department
said-- here's this
whole big thing
that they did-- and
they said, here it is.
And I said, I don't like it.
But everybody else does.
So I'm glad I was wrong.
Or I'm glad-- how do I put it?
I'm glad I didn't have any say.
Although I did point
out one problem.
Originally, in the-- that's an
actual photo of an astronaut
who is on a space shuttle
mission at the time
this photo was taken.
I mean, obviously all the
red stuff is Photoshopped.
But in his helmet, you
could see the reflection
of the space shuttle cargo bay.
And I pointed that.
I'm like, nah.
So they fixed that.
AUDIENCE: What would you prefer?
ANDY WEIR: I imagined--
well, the Dutch cover--
so every language
that's selling-- it's
getting translated
into 21 languages
and pretty much every one of
them has their own cover art.
And the Dutch cover is
kind of what I liked.
It's just basically a
lone figure, very small,
like, in the middle there and
just big, empty Martian scenery
just to show there's
isolation and stuff.
And I thought that was cool.
But this is like--
there are actually
websites that just judge
books by their cover.
Like that's literally
what they do.
They say--
[LAUGHTER]
Literally all they
do is they say,
like, we're rating
covers of new release,
not the content of
the book, nothing.
Just think of them as
artistic analysis websites.
And they loved the
cover of "The Martian."
AUDIENCE: By the way,
great title, too.
ANDY WEIR: Thanks.
Yeah, a lot of people will
say, oh, like pro tip,
there's no actual
Martians in this.
There's no aliens.
He's the Martian, you see,
because he's stuck there.
MALE SPEAKER: Tell me,
so how did you actually
start to think about writing
a story of somebody on Mars?
I know we talked a
little bit about this
before the talk itself.
We're sort of an Apollo
generation type of thing.
But what was that
moment that's, hey,
I'm going to write
a story about Mars.
Why?
ANDY WEIR: Well,
dork that I am, I
was imagining how a manned
Mars mission could work.
And so I was just trying
to say, realistically,
how do you get the
astronauts to Mars?
How do you build a ship
big enough to support them?
How does that work?
How do you get it there?
That's why I had use ion
engines because it was just
too implausible otherwise.
It's like once they're
there, what do they do?
How do they get back?
And, oh, you could send all
the supplies in advance.
It uses heavily from
Mars Direct, which is--
MALE SPEAKER: Zubrin's plan.
ANDY WEIR: Yeah,
Zubrin's suggested
way of doing a Mars
mission, which if and when
we have a Mars mission
in the real world,
it will almost certainly be
something very much like that.
Anyway I was considering all
the things that could go wrong.
I was saying, any
mission plan has
to account for things that
can go wrong and say, oh,
if this happens, then the
astronaut should do this.
If this happens,
they should do this.
And I started thinking of
all these failure scenarios.
And those started to seem
really interesting to me.
So I made a poor,
hapless main character
to suffer through them all.
MALE SPEAKER: The readers won't
suffer if they read this book.
I'm sure about that.
So please give
thanks to Andy Weir.
[APPLAUSE]
