Andy Weir (2:58)

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Indira Lakshmanan (3:00)

Who haven't read your science Fiction bestseller. Let's fill listeners in on the basics of the plot. The power of the sun is being sucked away by microscopic life forms called Astrophage. If they're not stopped and fast, Earth's temperature will drop so low that it can't sustain life. So Ryland, Grace and the rest of the crew are sent 11 light years away in a spaceship called the Hail Mary to investigate astrophage and see if it can be stopped. All right, so I have to ask, where did you get the, let's face it, pretty depressing idea for the story?

Andy Weir (3:36)

Well, it started off with. I wanted to come up with an idea where humanity gets a hold of some sort of mass conversion based fuel, because if we could do that, we could easily colonize the solar system. There's all these amazing things we could do. Then I was like, okay, great. But if they find that fuel, then they use it up, then it's gone. How do you make more? And I said like, well, maybe. Maybe the fuel itself can make more. You shine light at it, it'll absorb the. And make more of the fuel or something. And then I thought, well, that kind of sounds like life, right? Something that absorbs energy and makes copies of itself. And it would have to be, like, alien, but I'm comfortable with that if it's just a microbe. But why would it need to store so much energy inside of a little cell? Why would it need to do that? And where would it get that much energy? And those two kind of answered themselves. I'm like, well, it could get that energy by living on the surface of stars. And then maybe it needs that energy to spore out to infect other stars, because it's basically like mold. Oh, and side note, in the back of my mind, we'd have to make really sure not to let any of this stuff get onto our sun, because that would be catastrophically bad. And then I'm like, oh, wait, no, go back. If that stuff's in our sun, that's the story.

Indira Lakshmanan (4:43)

Wow. Okay.

Andy Weir (4:44)

That's the weird way I backed into it.

Indira Lakshmanan (4:45)

I asked what I thought was a simple question, but got a really complicated answer. I have to say, I feel like I just got a view into your creative process.

Andy Weir (4:57)

Yes. I always feel like I have to apologize to anyone who sees the inner workings of my mind.

Indira Lakshmanan (5:03)

It is complicated in there. Well, let's focus on Rylan Grace. He's an unlikely hero for a deep space adventure. He's a middle school science teacher. He's not even an astronaut. We discover in the course of the story that he didn't even want to go on this mission. So what inspired this character?

Andy Weir (5:23)

Well, I wanted to write a character that people could empathize with. And I don't know about you, but I have a tough time empathizing with the really brave characters because I don't think I'm that brave. I think we all to some degree feel this way as we go through life, like unprepared, unqualified, and reluctant. Yet important things are relying on me, so I. I have to come through. And also, I wanted to make a character for once that wasn't just based on my own personality. My first two books, the characters are based on aspects of my own personality. Grace I made up from whole cloth. And I said, okay, what are his central conflicts? What. How is he going to grow? How is he going to change?

Indira Lakshmanan (6:01)

Well, you say you made him up, but Ryland Grace actually reminded me of one of your previous heroes, Mark Watney from the Martian. Listeners may remember the 2015 movie adaptation of your book that starred Matt Damon. Watney was stranded on Mars when his team was forced to abandon their mission. And what we discover in both stories is that Watney and Grace are kind of regular guys with a dry sense of humor. They manage to survive against overwhelming odds. They both MacGyver the heck out of every problem they face in space. Tell us why this kind of hero appeals to you.

Andy Weir (6:36)

There's something that really appeals to me and I hope to the audience of person versus nature stories. It's interesting when you're watching, like, you know, a movie or a story that has an antagonist in it, you know deep down that that antagonist is going to fail. Probably going to fail. The only question is how much damage they do on the way down. Right. And so I find myself in the middle of the movie, weirdly rooting for the antagonist because I know he's going to lose, right? So I want him to get a few good licks in before he goes. Nobody roots for nature to kill the human. There's no divided loyalty. So you immediately go like, okay, this guy needs to survive. Let's see how he does it.

Indira Lakshmanan (7:15)

We're speaking with author Andy Weir, whose best selling book project Hail Mary is the basis for the new film starring Ryan Gosling. All right, I hate to drop spoilers, but if listeners have watched the trailer, they already know that Grace's ship has been sent to a planetary system that's unaffected by astrophage. And he discovers an alien on another ship who's on the same mission. And the Two decide to work together, Talk a bit about how this part of the story came to you. What were you trying to explore with having two creatures, let's call them, that collaborate across species?

Andy Weir (7:53)

Well, I wanted this to be a first contact story right from the get go. I mean, I was thinking about the, you know, mass conversion fuel, but that was also sort of a mechanism by which I can cause a first contact. Then as you say, you know, Tau Ceti is for some reason immune to astronomy. It makes sense that we would send a ship there. And I'm like, oh, it makes sense that if there are any other intelligent species around, they would probably come to the same conclusion. So, yeah, I wanted it to be about a couple of alien buddies saving their worlds.

Indira Lakshmanan (8:23)

Well, it is a buddy film.

Andy Weir (8:24)

It is.

Indira Lakshmanan (8:25)

There's a scene from the film where the alien, who Ryan Gosling's character names Rocky, first comes inside the Hail Mary spacecraft. He's encased in a protective bubble because Rocky and Grace can't breathe from the same atmosphere. And Rocky is eager, eager to see and discover everything. He goes barreling through the ship as Grace chases behind him. It's quite humorous. Let's listen.

Andy Weir (8:48)

Hi, Grace. You're in a ball. So Rocky no die in Grace atmosphere. I come up.

Indira Lakshmanan (8:54)

Oh, you're coming up foreign for me, Detective.

Andy Weir (8:57)

Grace and Rocky, Big science.

Indira Lakshmanan (8:58)

How to Kill Astrophage together.

Andy Weir (9:00)

I keep going this way. This room, boring. Science. Save Earth, save Eric.

Indira Lakshmanan (9:05)

Good slam.

Andy Weir (9:06)

Put this down here.

Indira Lakshmanan (9:07)

Question.

Andy Weir (9:09)

Amazing.

Indira Lakshmanan (9:11)

Okay, so it reminds me of countless buddy movies over the decades. At times they find each other annoying, but they need to work together. And ultimately their friendship becomes so strong it really transcends life and death. Tell us more about this relationship.

Andy Weir (9:29)

Yeah, that's the core of the story, is their friendship and their relationship. They're kind of like, you know, almost in a way, war buddies. You know, they're like two soldiers who had to share a foxhole during an assault. You know, they'll be friends for the rest of their lives because they've been through something so catastrophic together. They've trauma bonded, I guess, and they also just developed a great friendship with each other. Working together, it's like, okay, there's you and there's me and then there's nothing for many light years. So we're gonna work together now.

Indira Lakshmanan (10:01)

Now, obviously, as a novelist, you have an incredibly rich imagination. I mean, these were all your ideas. But what was it like to see the. You had in your own head of the Hail Mary spacecraft and of Rocky himself brought to life visually on the screen in imax, in high def. What did that feel like?

Andy Weir (10:22)

Well, it feels great. You know, it's always amazing to see a bunch of world class, talented people spending a year of their life making something that fell out of my brain come into a reality. I also have one kind of secret hidden advantage that most other authors don't have. Although some would say it's a disadvantage. I don't have a very visual imagination. So when I'm writing my story, I don't really see it playing out like a movie. There's just like concepts like Rocky is a blob. I'd worked out his morphology, but I couldn't have told you if his legs were thin or fat or if they were bumpy or smooth or anything like that.

Indira Lakshmanan (10:57)

And Hollywood brought it to life for you.

Andy Weir (10:59)

Yeah.

Indira Lakshmanan (10:59)

So it all worked well.

Andy Weir (11:00)

The nice thing is that when I see it on screen, I don't have the cognitive dissonance that a lot of writers have because they imagine one thing in their head and then on the screen is something else for me. I'm just like, oh, so that's what it looks like now. I know. Yay.

Indira Lakshmanan (11:16)

Well, Project Hail Mary and the Martian both seem to be about maintaining optimism in the face of dire circumstances where death basically seems inevitable. But in both cases, our heroes don't give up. I also noticed that in both of your stories, cooperation that in the end saves the day, transcends borders. Now, let's take ourselves back to life in 2026. We're not exactly living through a moment of cross border cooperation. And so I have to ask, does your story in a way seem too Pollyannaish in our current geopolitical climate?

Andy Weir (11:52)

I, as a person am probably too Pollyanna ish for any point of the history that I've experienced. I am just a very optimistic person. Those books are a reflection of how I see humanity. I really do think that we're an amazing species and I think that we accomplish great things and we work together a lot more than people give us credit for. If you look at the pandemic as an example, you have, you know, pharmaceutical companies that under normal circumstances would have private armies to guard their secrets, openly sharing everything they had on the disease so that they could collaboratively come up with vaccines as quickly as possible. I mean, it was really a phenomenal period of cooperation for humanity that we somehow look back on and give ourselves like a C minus grade on. But I think if you ask historians 200 years from now how well we did, they're going to give us pretty high marks.

Indira Lakshmanan (12:45)

Andy Weir is the author of Project Hail Mary, the best selling book on which the new film starring Ryan Gosling is based. Project Hail Mary. The movie opens in theaters this Friday. Andy Weir, thank you so much for joining us.

Andy Weir (12:58)

Thanks for having me.

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