Andy Weir isn’t as easy to pin down as you might think. Originally a self-published author who hit it big over a decade ago, today the author feels like a kind of science fiction guru from another era. And when you sit down and talk to him, you feel like you’re talking to someone who is still experimenting, still curious, not someone who is part of a stodgy establishment. He’s punk-rock and old-school, and, from The Martian to Artemis, to Project Hail Mary, author Andy Weir has been credited, along with authors like Cixin Liu and Kim Stanley Robinson, with a specific kind of renaissance in hard SF — the subgenre of science fiction books which favors realistic science applications over fantastical settings or plots.
In The Martian, the Weir hero, Mark Watney, famously said: “I'm gonna have to science the sh*t out of this,” which is essentially the 21st-century battle cry for a specific flavor of sci-fi adventure. That said, with Project Hail Mary, Weir didn’t attempt to replicate the fully realistic constraints he set for himself on The Martian. Comparing the two films and novels is natural, of course, as both feature a chatty protagonist who sciences the sh*t out of a problem to save the day. But there is an evolution at work here.
