The man behind The Martian: bestselling author Andy Weiron politics, commercial space, and the future of publishing.

• Author: Weissmueller, Zach
• Position: Interview

"I WANT us TO HAVE a self-sufficient population somewhere other than Earth because 25' years of being a computer programmer has taught me the value of backing things up," says Andy Weir. Weir's novel The Martian tells the story of astronaut Mark Watney as he struggles to survive alone on Mars after being mistakenly left for dead.

Weir was working as a computer programmer in Silicon Valley when he began serializing The Martian on his personal website for an audience consisting of what he describes as a few thousand "hardcore science dorks." Five years later, he had a book deal with Crown Publishing and a film option from 20th Century Fox.

The story, heavy on technology, became an unlikely bestseller and then an even more urlikely Hollywood blockbuster directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. It made $54 million on its opening weekend and had raked in a worldwide box office gross topping $435 million and still going strong as of press time.

Reason TV's Zach Weissmueller sat down with Weir shortly before the October release of the Martian movie to talk about his transformation from programmer to bestselling author, the challenges of writing a scientifically accurate space novel, and the prospects for real-life space travel. For a video version of the interview, go to reason.com.

reason: The story behind the book is almost as interesting as the book. Could you take us through that journey?

Andy Weir: Oh, you know, it's the same as anybody else. Once you self-publish something it gets made into a movie by Ridley Scott [smiles].

I always wanted to be a writer, but I also liked the idea of eating regular meals, and so when the time came to choose a career, I went into computer programming. And that's fun; I like it. But in my late 20s I was working for AOL, and I got laid off when they merged with Netscape, and I ended up with a bunch of money. Mostly because I had AOL stock options that I'd never really paid attention to, but then I was forced to sell because I got laid off, and it turned out to be AOL's, like, peak price ever. Pure luck--I assure you I would not make a wise financial decision left to my own devices.

But I ended up with a bunch of money, so I took three years off and tried to write a book. It was called Theft of Pride. You've never heard of it because it wasn't that good. I wrote it and then I had the standard sad author experience that everyone has: I couldn't get any traction on it, couldn't get a literary agent, couldn't get any interest at all. And so after three years I went, "OK, well, it's time to go back into real work," and I went back to computer programming.

Around this time, I set up my own webpage for my creative efforts. I did a bunch of Web comics, short stories, stuff like that. And one thing I would post were serials, and The Martian was just one of three serials I was working on at the same time.

I would a post a chapter maybe every two months or so. I put a lot of work into making it scientifically accurate, because my regular readers were hardcore science dorks. I never had any notion that this story would be popular in the mainstream. I thought this was a story by a nerd for nerds. But I just kept posting chapters and eventually I finished and thought, "OK, I'm done. On to other projects."

But then I started to get emails from my readers. They were like, "Hey, I loved The Martian but I hate your site"--because my site sucks--and they were like, "It's no fun to read a book on a website. Can you just make an e-reader version?" So I did that and I posted it to the site. And then I got other emails from people saying, "Hey, I'm glad there's an e-reader version, but I'm not very...