Weir, Andy

Entry updated 3 August 2026. Tagged: Author.

(1972- ) US author who has also written as by Jack Sharp and has self-published fiction at his Galactanet site [see links below] since 2009. His first novel, The Martian (2014), initially self-published as a free online ebook in 2012, describes in considerable detail the travails of an astronaut stranded on Mars as fellow-Scientists work out a way to rescue him. His survival techniques include growing potatoes in his departed team's Martian habitat module, and burning hydrogen to make water. The datedness of the tale – no real-life Mars expedition could plausibly be contemplated for the now looming Near Future third decade of the twenty-first century without planning for the incorporation of advanced 3D printers to replicate necessities and to make repairs – may explain the arbitrary nature of his plight; the tale is therefore an old-fashioned but enjoyably worked-out Thought Experiment in the arts of survival, distantly echoing the Martian Robinsonade of Rex Gordon's No Man Friday (1956; vt First on Mars 1957). The novel was very successfully filmed as The Martian (2015), directed by Ridley Scott, which won a Hugo as best long-form dramatic presentation. Weir received the John W Campbell Award as best new writer in 2016.

His second novel Artemis (2017), featuring sabotage, criminal violence and pursuit of a technological McGuffin in and around the titular five-domed Moon base, is similar in tone, with another likable first-person narrator (here female) and many technical Infodumps. Lacking The Martian's tight focus on a single urgent problem, Artemis had a mixed critical reception. Weir's third novel, Project Hail Mary (2021), filmed as Project Hail Mary (2026) directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, returns however to the homebody carceral heroics of his first, with a Technology-savvy but Amnesiac protagonist awakening to find himself on a Spaceship where he has been tasked with a mission to save planet Earth and much of the home galaxy from an energy-consuming "astrophage" that threatens to fatally reduce the heat of the Sun.

Weir received the Robert A Heinlein Award in 2026. [JC]

further awards or honours: Seiun Award.

see also: Agriculture.

Andy Weir

born Davis, California: 16 June 1972

works

The Martian (place not given: Andy Weir, 2012) [ebook: edited in collaboration with Bryan Thomas Schmidt from Weir's 2009 website version: na/]
- The Martian (New York: Crown Publishers, 2014) [rev of the above: hb/Eric White]
Artemis (New York: Crown Publishers, 2017) [hb/Kovalto1/Shutterstock]
Project Hail Mary (New York: Ballantine Books, 2021) [hb/]

collections and stories

The Egg (place not given: Galactanet, 2009) [story: ebook: na/]

links

previous versions of this entry

Internet Archive