How To Survive On Mars

There's more than enough science and technology for the technically literate, and although he's never worked at NASA, Weir has gotten compliments for the accuracy of his portrait of an enormous bureaucracy's infighting as it struggles to save a man tens of millions of miles away. In the story, Watney's lonely struggle captures the attention of billions on Earth, even spawning a daily half-hour cable news program: "CNN's Mark Watney Report." The book builds up the kind of narrative tension captured in the Oscar best-picture contender "Gravity," which Weir liked, even though it may have stretched the science. ("It doesn't have to be perfectly physically accurate to be entertaining. Nobody calls out the physics problems in 'Star Wars.'") Yet accuracy is one of the things that gets cited in praise for Weir's book. Astronaut Chris Hadfield, former commander of the International Space Station, has said the book "has the very rare combination of a good, original story, interestingly real characters, and fascinating technical accuracy," according to Crown, the book's publisher. Now 41, Weir is the son of a particle physicist -- his father double-checked much of the science in "The Martian" -- and an engineer. He got hooked on Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and other classic science fiction writers by plucking their paperbacks from his father's shelf. Predictably, Weir is fascinated by manned spaceflight and intrigued by the idea of a manned mission to Mars. But he's no fan of Mars One, the nonprofit that has gotten 200,000 people to express interest in being selected for a one-way trip to Mars, to take place in 2025. Weir thinks the budget envisioned for the project is far too small and, "it would be basically a death sentence for the people who are going." He thinks a government-funded mission to Mars is far more likely but not for a long time. The after-effects sufferedby astronauts on the International Space Station show the dangers of long-term space flight, he says. "There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle that we need to invent" to make for safe travel to Mars. Near term, he looks forward to a Chinese manned mission to the moon. As for NASA, Weir says he's "disappointed by the state of our manned spaceflight program," especially the lack of a vehicle to replace the space shuttle. Would Weir want to fly on a space mission? "I am not a brave man ...I do not have the right stuff. Astronauts are really a cut above." As a computer programmer, the closest Weir got to fame was as a member of the team that worked on the hit game "WarCraft2." At his current job in Mountain View, California, Weir's bosses know the score, he says. "I'm working on a pitch for my next novel right now, and if I get an advance, I'm going to quit and be a full time writer, which is the culmination of my dream coming true. I think I have to go sit in a coffee shop when I do that. And wear a neckerchief."