Andy Weir

Andy Weir (born June 16, 1972, in Davis, California) is an American science fiction author and former software engineer. He grew up in San Diego in a household shaped by science and technology—his father was a particle physicist. He studied computer science at UC San Diego before dropping out, and spent years as a programmer at major technology companies including AOL and Blizzard Entertainment. Weir began writing science fiction online as a hobby, self-publishing his meticulously researched novel The Martian in serial format on his website starting in 2009. After a free PDF version went viral and the novel was published on Amazon Kindle in 2011, traditional publisher Crown Publishing picked it up in 2014. The Martian became a massive bestseller and was adapted into a hit film directed by Ridley Scott (2015) starring Matt Damon. The novel won the Goodreads Choice Award for Science Fiction in 2014. Weir's follow-up novels—Artemis (2017), which won the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and Project Hail Mary (2021), which won both the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the Goodreads Choice Award for Science Fiction—further established him as one of the most popular hard SF authors of his generation. His fiction is distinguished by rigorous scientific accuracy, witty problem-solving protagonists, and fast-paced plotting. Project Hail Mary was widely regarded as one of the best science fiction novels of the 2020s.