Andy Weir

It's my hobby, my passion.

This is what's interesting to me.

Everybody's good at their hobby, right?

If I was a gearhead, if I was way into cars, then maybe I'd write stories about cars, you know, but I'm all about the science.

So that's just what I'm into.

If you just write down the basic plot outline of

of my stories without any editorializing or any opinion they're very well trodden ground an astronaut is stranded on mars okay like there was a movie in the 1950s called robinson crusoe on mars where he is stranded on mars like the exact same plot right my second book artemis that no one remembers that's like a criminal a low-stakes criminal living in a city in space

That's not new.

And then finally, Project Hail Mary is like a first contact story.

It's been done.

So the only thing that I bring to the table is I try to do it with my own obsessive attention to scientific detail.

And that ends up taking the story in places that a lot of the other ones don't.

So while I appreciate you claiming that I have original ideas, I think I don't.

I think I just have like my own way of doing really, really well-trodden ideas.

Yeah, what is it they say?

There's like seven stories or something like that.

See, that's the part of writing that I love, the research and conceptualizing and glorious spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets everywhere.

Like two or three spreadsheets open and then four Google searches for different things.

I just love the ideating.

I wish I had like some secret silent partner who would do the writing for me and I'd just do the research.