Interview with Andy Weir

The legend of hard science sci-fi has a soft spot for rom coms.

This week’s episode of Interested In Things contains some very interesting things indeed—it’s an interview with sci-fi heavyweight, and one of my personal heroes, Andy Weir, author of The Martian, Artemis, and the soon to be movie-adapted Project Hail Mary. 

But Shoni, I hear you saying, why would Andy Weir talk to you? You have the reach/influence of a green tree frog living under a lilypad in a pond in the middle of the Daintree Rainforest. And you’d be right. I recently had a browse through my X/Twitter ‘followers’ only to discover that the majority are probably not real people. Not sure what tipped me off: 

She still has more followers than I do.

But when I started reading up about Andy, not only did I learn that he mixes a mean cocktail, he likes woodworking, and he does most of his writing after lunch, but also that he replies to all his emails. What a legend!

So I hedged my bets. I reached out with a list of questions, in the hope he’d engage. And he did—kind of. As expected, he declined to meet, but he did answer my questions, which I’d framed around what I figured was a common interest—technology. Here they are with his responses:

Mar 13, 2024, 2:43 AM

1. What's your favorite interview you've done? And/or who would you most like to interview and why (must be someone living)?

I was in a group interview with the entire cast of The Martian once. That was pretty cool. :)

2. Did you read about Claude 3 Opus translating decent Russian-Kabardian with limited input?

https://twitter.com/hahahahohohe/status/1765088860592394250

Grace might have had an easier time communicating with Rocky if he had Claude in his pocket, but the story might be less interesting. Will you change the plot of Project Hail Mary for the film version to include new technology? 

No I haven't read that. Though AI advances since the book came out have been astounding. So it would require a lot of changes to keep up. 

3. How do you think the rapid acceleration of technology influence your writing moving forward?

It's awesome. They keep coming up with new stuff for me to speculate about! :)

4. Do you play with AI a lot? What are your favorite applications? Do you think AGI/ASI is coming soon and are you feeling good about it?

Not much, no. I dorked around with the image generators like everyone else did. But I got bored. 

6. Do you read any Substacks? Any favorites?

No I don't. 

And the bonus (optional) question: Do you scroll social media, and if so, what platforms, and what does your feed look like? For me, it's mostly space and other science news on Google News and YouTube, and Facebook shows me motivational-type videos of things like whales swimming and gymnasts and hopeful/amusing memes—I've intentionally trained my algorithm for positivity and optimism. Recently, I got into Twitter/X, and that's all about AI and Tesla, it seems. 

No, I'm not into social media. I guess I'm too old. I have social media accounts but only professional accounts - meant to plug my books and stuff.

-ATW

I was pleased. Felt like I could flesh that out with some biographical info and turn it into a decent article. Amazing.

I decided to reply anyway, and to my surprise, he responded. So, I wrote back. And he replied again. Suddenly, I was in a comfortable place. Writing and receiving emails. What followed was a short back-and-forth in which we both revealed some more in-depth information to each other. 

Not sure of the best way to present it, but the only way to find out is to try different things and see what resonates. So, for this, my very first Substack interview, I’m just copying in our entire conversation, unedited, for your enjoyment.

Shoni (Mar 13, 2024, 6:29 AM):

Thanks enormously for that! Yes, I follow you on a couple of platforms. I read the AI-generated summary of Hail Mary and had a good giggle. 

'Too old' hahaha. Sure.

Still, it's super interesting that you dork out on new technology but without using social media or AI. What about AI-assisted research? Personally, I quite like Perplexity.ai because it shows the sources for its answers, unlike ChatGPT (though they're both running on the same engine). But now Claude reckons it (he?) is self-aware. That kind of stuff gets into a person's head. 

On another topic, have you thought much about geoengineering as a stop-gap solution to climate change? Good or bad? 

I'm assuming you're OK with me publishing your answers on my little-read publication (32 subscribers and counting...)? Guess I need to work on my interview skills, but I'm sure I'll be able to turn it into something nice. Your Martian group interview sounds awesome, was it this one? I didn't ask you about your woodwork and writing habits because that info is already out there, but if there's any other tidbits you could share with me (favorite movie, fave place on Earth, where the inspiration for 'The Egg' came from... that would add a little color to my piece). 

Truly grateful,

Shoni

Andy (Wed, Mar 13, 9:35 AM):

I'm not that interested in cli-fi stories. I think they're overdone and they always have the same central message of "humanity bad, corporations bad, nature good" and frankly I don't think any of those three statements are accurate. 

As for trying geoengineering in the real world, I don't think we have the technology to make it happen at any meaningful scale. 

I'm absolutely fine with you posting my answers wherever you like. 

-ATW

Shoni (Wed, Mar 13, 10:04 AM):

Well yes, to be honest I didn't get to the end of Ministry for the Future, but I may go back to it. When are you going to release another book, that's what I'm really hanging for!

There's a group called Make Sunsets who is launching balloons filled with SO2 into the stratosphere now, but it's small scale. Eventually, they'd like to fill balloons a km high though. Most experts would rather just keep thinking about it instead. You know, cos we have all this time to spare. Or there's the water-tight argument that if we cool the Earth a bit, everyone will just stop worrying about CO2 levels so we better keep cooking to keep the pressure on.

Oh, I just saw that the movie rights to Artemis have been picked up too, will that happen? I didn't love it as much as the others, I think maybe because I felt like you didn't do a female protagonist quite as well... There was no reason for her to hook up with her friend that had been building throughout, you know? He was just there. And even though hers was the main perspective, we had more of an idea of how all the men around her were seeing her than the other way round. No offense, it's still brilliant.

Andy (Mar 13, 2024, 10:26 AM):

You know what? I didn't even want her to hook up with him. My editor and publisher at Random House made me put that in.

-ATW

Shoni (Wed, Mar 13, 10:36 AM):

😂😂😂

That would have been better! Or you could have worked on the sexual tension all the way through. It didn't feel like she was attracted to him at all. 

Andy (Mar 13, 2024, 11:17 AM):

She wasn't! 

-ATW

Shoni (Mar 13, 2024, 11:40 AM):

Well, to be fair, that's not necessarily a deal breaker. I once hooked up with an ugly housemate after our other housemate had a psychotic episode. When the drama died down, we were left staring at each other. He made a move and I resisted briefly and then went, fuck it. So the post-drama "fall into the arms of the closest person within reach" can be a thing. 

Apparently deep down most women want a dominant male (I've been reading too much of a blog teaching men to be good at sex by Aella. Purely for research purposes of course - my stories have loads of sex. Sometimes I try to avoid it, but they always sneak in somehow. Might as well try to do a good job.)

But I don't think those kinds of dynamics interest you especially, right?

One other thing I've been pondering is why didn't Watney have his own music collection on Mars?

Andy (Mar 13, 2024, 1:28 PM):

I try to steer clear of romance plots if they aren't central to the plot. I usually get bored during the love plot segments of stories that aren't about that. Especially in movies. The love plots seem grafted in. On the other hand, if the love plot is central - like in a rom-com - I really enjoy it. I'm a total sucker for a good rom-com. "While You Were Sleeping" is one of my favorite movies of all time. :)

-aTW

Shoni (Mar 13, 2024, 2:36 PM):

Was it your choice to put the romance into The Martian? That certainly felt slightly grafted in, but it worked. Actually, now I think about it, maybe that's one of the things that made PHM stand out for me - no romance. Although the relationship between Grace and Rocky was sublime. Please don't tell me they're going to put a romance in the film? Or are you going to make me wait and find out? I almost never watch movies or TV anymore, but I may make an exception. Probably one of few movies my partner and I could both agree on anyway.

But I certainly think love plots can slide into any genre - it's so fundamental to human motivation and behavior, it can and does come up in any context. Just has to be done well and not take over whatever else is going on. I think of it a bit like violence. Both sex (life) and death need to be present to some degree to get a decent emotional response, but the style and story will define how much and how gratuitous it all gets.

Don't you find rom-coms a bit predictable?

Andy (Thu, Mar 14, 1:11 AM):

I put the love plot in the Martian mainly because it was cute. The rest of the crew didn't have much development or interesting stuff happening other than their functional effects on the plot. So I wanted a little bit of fun in there.

Of course romcoms are predictable. But so are action movies, right? You know the rugged hero is going to defeat the bad guys. He's not just going to die halfway through the movie.

-ATW

Shoni (Mar 14, 2024, 7:24 AM):

Yes, it was definitely better for that little bit of softness. And I really like how you put female characters in positions of leadership and /or give them strong personalities throughout all the books. Do you give that much thought or does it come naturally? When you said jazz wasn't attracted to her friend I got the feeling they have a certain independence to them as you're writing lol.

The good guy bad guy paradigm is not actually as ancient as we might think. It's probably even contributing to this whole polarisation thing that's happening because everyone's grown up with those sorts of tropes being drilled into us, don't you think? And sometimes when stories break out of that, they become quite memorable. Like My Best Friend's Wedding or Game of Thrones. 

Another example I love is Encanto. Have you seen that? It's Disney but there's no love interest, the hero doesn't go on a long journey anywhere, she stays home, she doesn't gain magical powers and doesn't even have to take her glasses off at the end to become beautiful. Inside Out also has great messaging about emotional maturity. I don't mind when my kids put those ones on for the fiftieth time haha. And of course your books are 3 dimensional that way too.

That’s it. He never replied. And that’s fine—it’s his prerogative to stop when he feels like it. Just shows how I need to work on my interview skills. No hard feelings.

The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary are available anywhere you get books. For more Weir, check out the short story, The Egg, graphic novel, Cheshire Crossing, and this fun comic.

Don’t forget to vote for your favorite AI laws, if you haven’t already. Results coming in two weeks!

What do you think of the Asynchronous Interview as a format? Worth pursuing? Changing? Tweaking? Let me know!