Project Hail Mary Author Reveals His Writing Process (Andy Weir Interview)

Andy Weir's on the show today who's famous for books like Project Hail Mary and The Martian. Both of which turned into movies. Project Hail Mary with Ryan Gosling as the star. The Martian with Matt Damon. In this conversation, it's as much about science fiction as it is about writing. Yeah, I asked him about his process. How does he come up with new ideas, but also I had to ask about science fiction. What makes for a good plot? How does he think through the science itself and bending reality in all sorts of fun and playful ways? And what you're going to notice about Andy is that he's extremely enthusiastic about what he does. He just loves this craft. And then also, I never thought about this, but he doesn't really think of science fiction as a genre. He thinks of it like a setting. Like for example, you won't just have science fiction.

You'll have science fiction with the love story, science fiction with the thriller, science fiction with the drama. [music] And I will say this conversation does have some spoilers. So if you haven't read the books, you might want to do that before you listen to the conversation. But then, hey, if you love writing, you don't care about spoilers, get to it right now. This conversation is for you. I want to hear about how you

think about the premise of a science fiction book. Let's start with Project Hail Mary, but I want to see if there's any patterns that we can draw between your different books. Well, usually it starts off as like I'm just daydreaming daydreaming about interesting science. Um, and so I'll think about like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if this or wouldn't it be cool if that? for project tail Mary the kind of kernel of it started with I'd like us to have a mass conversionbased fuel like something where you can turn matter into light and use that as propulsion it would be incredibly efficient uh fuel-wise so I thought like okay I could have a mad scientist invent it and then it's like this great breakthrough I'm like strains credibility a little bit like okay maybe they found like an alien spaceship and that's the fuel and I'm like well then they'd use up the fuel and that that would Yet, I want this to be an

infrastructural thing that we know how to massproduce and manufacture. Okay. So, what if it's like a fuel, but the fuel itself has a mechanism for making more fuel? Like, you shine light at it and it'll turn that light into mass and then you do something and it'll turn the mass back into light and it works back and forth. And I'm like, again, that's that's sort of a that's sort of a handwavy tech. And also, people would probably be far more interested in the alien ship that they found rather than the fuel. I mean, it's cool to show what you can do with it, but the alien ship that it came from is probably more interesting to the reader. And then I was like, well, it's something that if you give it energy, it makes more of itself. That sounds like life. So, what if it's like a life form that somehow uses mass conversion? If it's an alien life form, how do we get it? Why does it involve that? And those two things kind

of answered themselves in that it's like, well, I I decided it's a microbe. It's like a mold that grows on stars and then it spores out just like mold does and it needs to get to other stars. The only way to do that is by, you know, having some sort of propulsion and so it'll ultimately evolve this mass conversion. And then in the back of my mind, I was like, well, we'd have to make sure none of that crap got onto our sun cuz that would be really bad.

Okay, that's the story. Okay, that's the story. We're going to go back. They don't find the spores. They only discover it once the sun's already infected and stuff like that. And then I then I was like, "Okay, then then things start to um to snowball from there." I'm like, "Okay, well now they have this existential problem, you know, to Earth." And I'm like, "Okay, well, I want them to use the astrophase." I'm like, "Okay, well, I'm going to say there's this one star that's not affected, so they want to go there and find out. Well, fortunately, they have astrophase." And so, break this down for me. What about that premise makes it work? Like, what are the different parameters?

Well, definitely in terms of like uh storytelling, there's stakes >> and that's the death of humans. >> Well, a lot of humans. Yeah. Like a a an extinction level event on Earth that will cause billions to die. Humanity would survive, but you know, it's not great. So, the stakes are very high because humanity is at stake. Um it's like this desperate mission like it's not like a well organized thing. they have a limited amount of like mass that they can send all the way out there. So that makes it desperate stakes and a very small number of people are tasked with saving the world. So that sounds like a pretty exciting story. Um and I get to do all my sciency stuff and I'd always wanted to do um a first contact story and so all these things came together. What Hail Mary was actually kind of a pastiche of a bunch of story ideas I had that I glued together and then sanded off the seams. So for

instance, like I always wanted to do a first contact story. I like this idea of a mass conversionbased fuel. I had an unrelated story that I abandoned earlier about a woman who was given like godlike authority over all the governments and everything like that to solve an existential crisis. And so that's where Strat came from. >> And how do you think about stakes? Stakes strikes strikes me as the propulsion of the story, the thing that keeps it going.

>> Yeah. Well, in this particular case, this is the first time I've written a story where the stakes are all of humanity. Right. >> Right. Before I I tend to like personal stakes like in um The Martian, it was one guy's life. That was it. But, you know, it kept you interested. And um in Artemis, uh the stakes are just Jazz Bashara's like well-being. She wants to like improve her life and if she gets caught, she'll get deported back to Earth and like her life will be ruined.

But she was she wouldn't even die. So, it's even lower stakes. Um, but this one I was like that all of humanity. So, >> and is that easier or harder? >> I I mean it in this case it was easier because that's kind of the emergent problem that arises. But I guess I would say I get a little tired of science fiction feeling like it has to have global stakes, >> right? >> Love stories, action movies, dramas that they don't none of them need. people don't feel the need to have like planetary stakes in those stories, but for some reason in science fiction it's often times like the literally the fate of the world hangs in the balance. I don't know why those two are linked. I like to try to keep the stakes lower.

>> So when you come up with a premise, how do you then go from premise to draft? >> Well, um I generally in my mind I think of like what are the major turning points of the story? So this this like four or five events that happen in the story that make for an interesting plot arc and then I just start writing. I kind of make stuff up as I go along. I mean I know I need to get from here to there, you know, to this next plot point, but I'm not sure exactly what's going to get us there.

>> So what's an example of that? In Project Hail Mary, you knew that you were going to go from here to here and then what were some of the fun diversions? >> Well, I like, you know, at the beginning I decided that he's going to wake up. He's going to have amnesia. He's going have no idea what's going on. And the first thing he needs to do is figure out that he's on a spacecraft. In the movie, the Hail Mary is this huge ship with lots of windows and stuff, but in the book, he's in this sealed. There's no reason to have windows on on the ship.

It's they've got cameras and stuff. No reason to add these weak points. Yeah. So, the first thing he has to do is realize that he's on a spacecraft. Then once he does, then he needs to realize that he's in the Taetti uh system, not Earth. Then he's like, "Okay." Okay, so that's that's a big reveal. And then the, you know, the next big reveal are these flashbacks related to Astrophase and teasing that out for the reader. Then the [music] next big reveal is Rocky, the arrival of like another ship. They do their cool first contact stuff and at the end of that, they're able to communicate. So I needed to come up with how they do that,

>> right? And how do you think about early in the book building up the human character? It starts off, okay, what's 2 plus two? And then there's all these moments when he's trying to figure out, okay, how do I know that? I'm I'm a school teacher. And so there's certain things that he knows. There's other places where he has amnesia. And then all of a sudden, you're really beginning to develop a relationship with him. How does that unfold?

>> It's a pretty cheesy trope, and a lot of writers have done it. Is like giving your character amnesia right at the beginning means that the audience um experiences the um information coming in as the character does. >> Sure. >> So there's no information that the character has that the reader doesn't. as opposed to if he was just had all of his memories and was a dedicated astronaut working on this stuff. I have to exposition all the backstory that led to that. Amnesia is a cheesy trope I advise people not to do, but I did it.

And flashbacks annoy the hell out of me in fiction, but you know, the book is all just flashbacks. And so, uh, for flashbacks, uh, I had I felt like I I I kind of reluctantly did it. I felt like I had to do it though because if you told the story linearly then like there'd be all these characters including Strat and everybody else in the first act and then you wouldn't see them again and then you wouldn't even get to Rocky until like beyond halfway through the book and it's just like yeah it just like I I really needed to tell those two stories at the same time and so that's what I did and it worked out. But I guess the thing about flashbacks that bugs me is oftent times in stories flashbacks are used to kind of make you do your homework. It's like here's a character who's something really interesting going on yada yada yada three weeks earlier and he's just some guy you know and he's like his wife is

nagging him to get a better job or something, you know, whatever. >> It's like a flashback that is for expositional purposes like that. It's kind of like you're out playing with your friends and her your mom makes you come in and clean your room. So, what's the difference between a flashback that works and one that doesn't work? >> Well, I what I hoped to do with my flashbacks was make sure that the plot was always advancing and things were changing and it wasn't just a mechanism to tell you about the character's backstory or his relationship with his daughter or something like that that has nothing to do with the primary action sequence. So, I try to tailor my flashbacks to be he has a flash of memory that is relevant to what he's doing right at that moment, which kind of makes sense from a fictionalized version of amnesia. He's like, I'm working on this. Oh, wait. I remember, you know, and then you get that

flashback. So, it's pushing the story forward and also unfolding mysteries that are happening in the book. like you're the reader is getting a a sequence of questions being raised and then answered and new questions being raised in the flashback sequences themselves. >> I like what you said about the flashbacks are causing an underlying change in the story. That seems important. >> Yeah. And it's not although although they all happen in the past from the reader and the main character's point of view, this is new information. All you know for sure is that the events of the flashbacks will ultimately lead to this guy being on the spaceship. But what you don't even know that Earth is a stake and bit by bit you find out all this information and see how they get more and more desperate and start to do all these things and that um that's kind of what I was shooting for. Explain this to

me. Earlier on you were talking about credibility. Credibility in a sci-fi story. Are there things that you need to do early in a story to build trust with your audience? >> I guess. Yeah. building trust with your audience is they they need to be they have you need to not ruin their immersion their suspension of disbelief and for me one way that I get a lot of trust from my audience is by being scientifically accurate like after a chapter or two the audience just trusts that all my scientific stuff is going to be accurate which is really awesome because that I've seen a lot of people who read my books and they give reviews and they say like I didn't really understand the science I kind of you So, I kind of skimmed those paragraphs, but I'm sure it's right and that's great. If somebody like believes me enough and their suspension of disbelief is untarnished and then they can just skip over the physics and assume I'm telling

them the truth, that that's great. >> I think that a place that you really do this is early in Project Hail Mary, like 80 pages in or something, you give the example of how light works with microwaves. >> And I read that I was like, "Okay, that's interesting for the story itself, but also I didn't quite realize that's how microwaves work." >> Yep. Um, so it's like tethered to reality even though it's science fiction. So why don't you read this and then we can talk about it.

>> Sure. Light is a funny thing. Its wavelength defines what it can and can't interact with. Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally non-existent to that photon. That's why there's a mesh over the window of a microwave. The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through, but visible light with much shorter wavelength can go through freely. So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off. [laughter] Yeah. Um, that's that's true. And uh, yeah, I've I've heard people have talked about that specific line a lot with me.

They're like, I never knew that about microwaves. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. >> What matters to you with exposition? >> Um, so I kind of have this lovehate relationship with the show don't tell doctrine. Um, you know, every everybody always tells writers, oh, show don't tell. Don't just tell, you know, the audience something demonstrated or show it. But I have so much like deep scientific stuff in my stories. How am I going to show that? Um, so I end up with a lot of direct exposition, like just straight up uh the main character or someone else is just telling the audience, hey, the reader, here's how this works. Here's why. And that's what this guy is doing. So, I think that like the old, you know, show don't tell adage needs to have like a little asterk on it where it's like, okay, but if you can save yourself 10 pages by having one paragraph of direct exposition, just do that. And um I get I get away with that

by usually having a first person conversational narrative. And uh it's kind of like the main character is talking to you and and you can just easily just kind of phase into that character straight up explaining science. Like why is this first-p person narration suddenly just explaining how microwaves work? Why? Who it makes? But the only way for that to catch you off guard is if you step back and think, wait a minute, who is a first-p person narrator talking to?

You know, so you you're accepting that this is some scenario where someone is telling you this story. Well, if you can accept that, then you can also accept that the person telling you the story takes a moment to explain something. You can get away with that a lot easier in first person than you can in third. And then um the final thing is um exposition can be a little boring, right? If you're just reading information, it starts to be like a Wikipedia article. And so the the way to get past that is I found that humor like um humor just gets you past it. Uh readers will forgive any amount of exposition if you make them laugh about once a paragraph. They'll be like, "Oh yeah, tell me more about, you know, tell me more about heat transfer coefficients. That's that stuff's funny as hell, you know.

>> So you must do a bunch of rewriting to make it funny." Uh, I mean, I'm a naturally smartass person, so usually those comments come naturally, but sometimes I'll be like, "Ah, this is going a little bit long without a without a a zinger or something like that." And so, I'll find a way to work one in. >> I could totally see that. Just hanging out with you, there's a combination of enthusiasm and just playfulness that is definitely in the narration.

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And as you're thinking about character building, how does that play out? >> Uh, well, I consider uh character depth and complexity to be like one of my weakest uh aspects. I I've I want to get better at it. I'm a very plot- driven author. My stories generally have a pretty well- definfined like sequential sequence of events that all make sense. Each one leads into the next one. Um, and so that that I I feel like I do reasonably well. But the characters having a lot of depth and complexity, it's like it's like sometimes I kind of wish the characters could just be machinery that is also part of the story. But you know, having real human emotions and and a connection that the reader can make with the character and understand what this person is going through, empathize with them, self-insert, all that stuff. That's that's um more challenging for me, I think, than it is for other authors. And

I'm always working on it. I'm always trying to get better at it. But I think even the most generous reviewers would say like, you know, he's he's he's got work to do on that front. >> With with Grace, as you're building out Grace's character and you're thinking through the dialogue and how dialogue reveals character, what were you focusing on there? >> Well, Grace was the first time I ever made a character out of whole cloth. Um, The Martian, Mark Wattney, is just my personality. Just straight up me on Mars. Uh, with all my good aspects magnified, like I'm kind of smart. He's really smart. You know, I'm kind of funny. He's really funny. And then all of my flaw is removed.

>> Superman Andy. >> Yeah. The idealized version of me is is Mark Wattney. You know, like Mark Wattney probably isn't afraid to fly, right? He's an astronaut, right? And he doesn't get, you know, if I was stuck on Mars, I'd probably just sink into a deep depression and die, right? You know, but so that was Mark. Jazz from uh Artemis is more like the the less idealized realistic version of me from when I was her age because when you think Saudi woman who grew up on the moon, you think, "Oh, this guy, right?" Clearly.

Exactly. Clearly. But her personality is the the core aspects of her personality have nothing to do with gender or ethnicity or anything else and are the same as the problems that I had when I was her age. Immature for my age. um always trying to take a shortcut rather than just doing the work like lazy uh kind of unethical disappointment to my father like all these things but yeah that and so that's why I'm like okay now I'm going to base a character on more the real me because I was shooting for more complexity depth flaws stuff like that think I overshot I made her a little too flawed and I made it difficult for people to root for her I got a lot of feedback in that sense that people are like I had a tough time rooting for Jazz because she was just kind of the architect of all of her own problems.

>> And it's hard to root for someone who's just their own worst enemy like that in a book. >> I mean, better writers can can make that work, but I was, you know, experimenting. I just went too far. >> So, for Grace, when I was coming up with his character, I said, "All right, I want to make a character from from Whole Cloth. I want to make him not me. He's not based on me." So, I I said like, "What's what's a core trait of his that I can give him?" Um, and I decided he's afraid. you know, he's he's so non-confrontational as it to be like almost pathological. He's like very very afraid of conflict. He's afraid of of being challenged. You know, he was in academia. He made a paper, it got challenged, and so he left, >> right?

>> And he went to teaching middle school, which is where a bunch of kids like he he made made sure he was kind of the cool teacher. So the kids think he's awesome. nobody really challenges him or pushes back on anything he does, you know, that's kind of his personality. And he also found that he really loves being a teacher. And so then I said like, okay, well that has other knock-on effects, right? Like the the fun thing about how he never swears and he always has these ridiculous like substitute swear words like fudge and and gosh and what the heck, you know?

>> Yeah. I remember when um when we when the movie got greenlighted, Ryan um emailed me. He's like, "Hey, >> Ryan Gosling." >> Ryan Gosling. In Hollywood, you sound like such a douche, but it's just normal in Hollywood. Everybody calls each other by their first names. >> It's not like your buddy Ryan, my pal. >> Ryan Gosling emailed you. >> Ry Ry. And [laughter] no, but anyway, he sent me an email saying like, "All right, it got greenlighted. Let's make this fudging movie." And I'm like, "All right, you're already you're already in character. Good work. Good work."

>> Um, but yeah, and so I put that together just have a fun character quirk. Also, by having him never a swear, it means in the early parts he's just never swearing and using these silly substitute words, and he's like, "Why am I doing that?" And it's this weird trait until you figure out that he's a teacher and then it makes sense. Um, yeah. And so, uh, when you're talking about creating characters, um, that was his core trait is that he's afraid of things and non-confrontational. So, this scenario that he's in is the exact opposite of everything he's ever wanted. like he's never wanted to be critical. He's never wanted to be the lynch pin upon which important things hinge. He wants to be and he's and he's also like just generally doesn't want to die, right?

He's not this brave, bold person who wants to go out and die for humanity. He said no. Spoiler. Um and they forced him to go. And is that something that you're trying to do when you set up a character is to basically say they're like this, their fears are that now let me put them in a situation where there where all of a sudden they need to confront those things >> uh somewhat with him. I wanted him to undergo change. I wanted him to be a different person at the end of the story than he was at the beginning. Right? And so I set him up as this fearful person initially. And my original plan was just okay. And then at the end he gets forced onto it. And that was just going to be a trope inversion. Like people are going to assume as we see that he was afraid.

He was afraid. And then you see he's on the ship and then he finally makes the noble decision to join the crew after the other two die and stuff like that. That's what everybody's assuming is going to happen. But I flipped it on its head. He got forced to go and stuff like that. His actual character change only happens when he has to decide between Rocky and himself. And in the book, it's even more extreme than in the movie. He is under the impression that he's sacrificing his life to save Rocky because he figured by doing that, he he has no hope of surviving because he wouldn't be able to he wouldn't be able to have food long enough. And it wasn't just Rocky, it was Rocky's entire species because if Rocky died, his species would die with him. And so he figured, I have the option of sending the beetles back to Earth, saving all of humanity. And then if I go save Rocky, I sacrifice myself and I save not not just

my new best friend, but also billions of living beings on his planet. And so he made that sacrifice. And then Rocky figured out a way to keep him alive.

How'd you go about making an alien character? >> So, uh, making Rocky was fun because I started by saying like, I don't want any restrictions on this. I don't want him to have to be comfortable in our environment. I don't want anything like that. In fact, I'd rather he wasn't. I started off with what was believed to be at the time a real exoplanet in orbit around 40 Aerodani. Um there they believed that there was a planet in orbit that that I made into being aid.

Uh it has since been proven that that was just a kind of a mathematical error and there's no planet there. But let's get past that. So his planet, I used the real information we had at the time of that exoplanet and it was like really close to its star and it had about eight Earth masses and I'm like, okay, if I assume that it has about the same density as Earth, then it's going to have about 2 G's on the surface is what it works out to be. So these aliens are probably stronger than us because they live on a surface with two times our gravity. Okay, then it's really close to the star. How do you and I'd already also already decided that all life in the in you know his life our life all that came from a panspermia event. So that means life only evolved once at Taetti and it spread out and seated aid and earth and a bunch of other things.

So actually Rocky and Ryland are distantly related like billions of years ago related but yeah and so I'm like uh contrary to Grace's paper the whole Aridian biosphere does rely on water. So I'm like, I need liquid water on that planet, but it's like really close to the star. It's closer than Mercury is to our star. So how do you have liquid water on a >> what was orbit like 48 days? >> It sound like 46 days, something like that. It's incredibly close to the star.

And I thought, okay, so how do you have how do you have liquid water on a planet that close to the star? I'm like, well, for starters, water is liquid at higher temperatures if you have a higher uh pressure. So I said like let's say the surface temperature on that planet is like 200 degrees C. Um it's like 400 degrees Fahrenheit or thereabouts. I'm like you could do that if you have like 29 atmospheres of pressure. Water is liquid at 200 Celsius.

>> H >> and so I'm like okay so they have a really thick atmosphere. I'm like how do you keep a really thick atmosphere if you're right next to the star? Stars basically sand blast atmospheres off of planets. That's what happened to Mars, but it didn't happen to Earth because we have a strong magnetic field to like direct that solar wind around us. So, I thought, okay, let's give Arid like a hella strong magnetic field. Also, I realized with an atmosphere that thick, I said, like sunlight probably wouldn't even reach the surface. So, I'm like, okay, their biosphere is going to have to be kind of like an ocean. Like, there's stuff like with the atmosphere is acting like an ocean. And there's stuff in the upper atmosphere that is getting hit with light and things below that that eat it. Things below that that eat it all the way down to the apex predators on the ground. So then I'm like, okay, design a creature that lives

in that environment. Well, there's no light. There's a huge atmospheric pressure. And then I just went to town having fun with speculative biology. And I came up with the aridians. And then as you begin to think about Rocky, do you have the name in your head? >> Uh that was uh I didn't I I didn't have his name. Um >> because in the story the the name unfolds. >> Yes. >> And then also do you have a clear sense of personality that Rocky's going to be likable?

>> Mhm. >> The kind of golden retriever dog energy. >> I wanted him to be likable. I sure did. He's like a friendly alien. And he ended up with this kind of personality that was like really lovable largely because of his limited English vocabulary. But if you actually pay attention to the things he says to Grace in the book even, he's actually kind of grumpy. He's actually kind of grumpy and and it kind of like insults Grace a lot. The two of them have this kind of like relationship where they're they're buddies, they're best friends, they die for each other, but also they're like, "Okay, dude, you're pissing me off." You know, there's one exchange I wish had made it into the movie where like Grace is up and he's like he's doing something on the hole and he has to wait for some epoxy to harden, some epoxy resin to harden. And Rocky says like, "Why, you know, why are you not back yet?" He's

like, "I have to wait for the epoxy to harden uh before I can do the next step." He's like, "It's very important we get this done soon." And Brian's like, "Okay, okay, I'll wait faster." You know, and I just thought that was like that's that's like emblematic of what their relationship is. Like they're like a bickering old couple sometimes. So that was actually more the dynamic I was shooting for. But he's also just really lovable because of his linguistic quirks like saying something three times if it's if he wants it with enough with a lot of emphasis and things like that.

The thing that's going through my mind is you're asking what if what if and you're kind of playing playing you're finding all these new neighborhoods of exploration and then you end up there. You're like okay does this work? Yeah. >> I like this place. How do I make it work? >> And then you're constantly trying to do that or something. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I it's not things don't show up in my head as a feta copy. I'm like okay what if this and I'm like well it's kind of unsatisfying because it's way too linear and I'm like okay what if this but that and so they can't just solve it the easy way. Oh okay well now you have to do some crazy stuff and you know so I do care I I speculate on curve balls and stuff like that. And what's what's kind of interesting is like like for instance in The Martian, I could set things up. I say like, "Oh, things are getting too easy for him. I want something to go wrong here." And I'm

like, "I'm going to have this thing break down, but I'm it's not going to come out of nowhere from the reader's point of view. I'm like, you know, 80,000 words into the book, but I want this thing to break. So, I'm going to start I'm going to go back into the earlier parts of the book and seed that." It's like, "Oh, this thing was like acting up a bit." And you know, so you get to go back in time as the writer and and and set up the hints that this is going to happen.

>> Can you talk to me about the spreadsheets that you use, how you track all this? >> Well, I have for any given uh book of mine, I have like a bunch of Excel spreadsheets. Uh Project Hail Mary probably had the most. I have like spreadsheets for calculating a mass conversion, fuel, spacecraft. It's called a relativistic rocket equations. I mean, I didn't have to derive them. Other people worked them out, but I had to convert them into Excel spreadsheet form and so that I could put in, oh, this is the fuel to mass ratio and everything like that and how long does it take and all the stuff about astrophase. I was looking at, well, how much energy can they absorb if they're on the surface of the sun, how long does it take them to get fully enriched and and then for iridians, I mean, I had spreadsheets all about their biology, how much food energy they have to take in to operate their bodies. What is the

self-conception of what you're trying to do? Is it I'm really interested in these fantastical worlds and I want to go explore them for myself. Is it I think science fiction is important for the world. Hey, I just want to like give people interesting stories. Like what is the self-conception of your work? I like I I just want to make something that's entertaining. I just want people to have fun when they're reading my stuff. And as you know, I have no ulterior motive.

And I don't even have any sort of moral or underlying I I don't even do symbolism e e even symbolism that's like not political. I I don't even do symbolism of any kind. There's nothing like deep or >> astrophase is not an allegory for climate change. >> Yeah. Nor is it an allegory for Ryland's inner emotional turmoil or anything like that. It's like so it's absolutely possible to write a book with all sorts of symbolism and metaphor and stuff like that that has no political connotations at all. They could all be about the internal feelings of the character or like basically metaphors for things that are going to happen later in the book.

And there's all these sorts of things that clever writers can do. And I I don't do any of that. I'm just like straight up here's a sequence of events. It's almost like I'm I'm journaling real events, you know? It's like I'm writing an account of events that occurred, you know, not not trying to spruce it up or snazz it up, but um so mainly I want to write things that are that are entertaining. But also a big a big thing for me is I I I kind of realized this after the fact, three books into it. I apparently I like to take very welltrodden science fiction territory and do it my way. Like the idea of somebody stranded on a planet is not new. In fact, I think the first fiction novel ever written was probably Robinson Cruso, right? I mean like that. And that was the plot. [laughter] You know, it's the exact same thing. So that's not a new plot. and people in trouble in space is not a new plot, but I did it my way

with the scientific accuracy and everything like that. And then the idea of like, you know, a first contact story is like not new at all. That's everywhere. But I did it my way. I'm like, well, the alien can't just stand around in an Earth's atmosphere. You need to have like some sort of barrier between the two. And no, you don't have a common language. You have no way to communicate at all. And I'm like, this alien is very alien. It doesn't have a face. It doesn't look anything like a human. So, you've got to get past all that.

>> And you talk about entertainment there. Did you have that same desire? Is that what you're going for with The Martian early on, or is it like now I'm a successful writer, I can really just focus on entertainment? No, I mean, The Martian, I was also just hoping to entertain. That's it. I mean, I think that's most what most writers want is they want people to read their book and enjoy that, right? There's some people out there who write for the cathartic release of getting these ideas out of their mind and onto the paper and and I don't care if anyone ever reads it. I'm not one of those. I want people to read my stuff and then tell me it's awesome.

You know, I need that sweet external validation. [laughter]

Let's go back to The Martian because I think that story of how you wrote it, how you published it, how you revised it, how it went from the internet to a book is uh is something else. >> Yeah. Well, um, at the time I was I was I always wanted to be a writer, but I also liked regular meals. So, I was a software engineer. And um even earlier in my career, in my life rather, I'd ended up with a bunch of money because I got laid off at just the right time from AOL to force me to cash in my stock options so that I ended up with like a bunch of money. And so I could I had like three years of runway. And so I said like I'm just going to um I'm just going to take like a sbatical and write.

And I wrote a book and like nobody was interested in it. It wasn't it wasn't The Martian. It was the standard tale of woe that every writer has of like no publisher was interested, no literary agent was interested. So I went back into the um back into engineering, which was fine because I really liked that. I really liked programming computers. It it was a fun job. Even after The Martian was successful and in theaters, I was still working at my uh engineering job because I liked it. [laughter] Anyway, um so I started working on The Martian um just because I I came up with the idea of like I was, oh, how could it, you know, you know, the mission to Mars and something goes wrong and then we have a guy who's stranded there. Like that that sounds interesting. What what clever stuff, you know, do this, do that, solve this, solve that. So, I got to writing it. Um largely because I had moved out to the to Boston to do like to

take a job there and um I didn't know anyone there. So, I had like no social life. I had nothing to do outside of work. >> So you just wrote. >> I just wrote. Yeah. I didn't have anything to do at all. Like I get home and I nothing to do until then until work started the next day. And so I just I started thinking about The Martian and and started writing it. At the time I I just said like I'll just post it to like basically a blog post and I'll make it a serialized story kind of like the old days like you know Sherlock Holmes was serialized storytelling in the Strand magazine. It's like, well, yeah, if you wanted to read Sherlock Holmes back in the day, you'd be reading, you know, a a little bit of it at a time and then eagerly waiting the next Strand Magazine when you could read the next chapter.

>> How about that? Yeah. So, I'd post a new chapter about every six to eight weeks. And I told everybody, hey, you know, you're basically watching me write a book, so these chapters aren't canon. like if I find out something's wrong, I'm I'm going to go back and fix it, you know, and I might make substantial changes to chapters. If I do, I'll let you know with a little announcement that, hey, uh, chapter 3 changed in a big way, you know, FYI. And then I had like I had built up around 3,000 regular readers from my short fiction and other things like that, which sounds like a lot, but that took me 10 years.

>> Wow. >> So, it's about one a day on average. [laughter] But um then they would they were reading it and they enjoyed it. They were sending me feedback and that helped booy me, you know, and then also they'd tell me any science errors because my my hardcore fans were nerds and so they double check my math and so it ended up getting really accurate. Anyway, uh eventually I finished the book um and I finished the last chapter and I said, "Okay guys, there it is. Um I'm glad you all enjoyed that. I'm going to start working on a new story now." and and here it is in its entire form and enjoy.

And people said like, "Well, I love your book, but I hate your website." Um, which is fair. Like, I made it just in Notepad with direct HTML tags and stuff. It was just like a Soviet tractor factory of a website of just white background with blue hyperlinks and that was it. And they said, "Can I um get your book in like an e-reader format?" I'm like, "Sure." So, I figured out how to do that. It's easy enough. You just save it as that format in Word and then there you go, e-reader format. And then I get more emails of people saying like, "Hey, I love your love your story. I hate your site. Um, I I see that you have it available in e-reader format, but I'm I don't know how to download a thing from the internet and put it on my Kindle." And so, can you just get it into the normal system so that I can get it onto my Kindle just the normal way?

I'm like, "Okay." And I figured out how to self-publish it. I used uh Kindle Direct Publishing KDP through Amazon, which is nice. You just post it there. They check in 24 hours to make sure it's not goat porn. And then or don't judge. And you know, or if it is goat porn, they want to categorize as goat porn. But um anyway, they check it and they put it up available. And I'm like, but you're not allowed to give it away. You have to charge at least a dollar.

Because uh Amazon sells Kindles as a loss leader. They lose money on every Kindle they sell >> and then they make money on the >> make money off of you buying books. Sure. >> So the last thing they want is a gigantic library of free books. Yep. >> Then people just buy Kindles and get the free books and then Amazon be like, "Ah, we lost money. We don't like that." >> So you have to charge at least some money. And so I charge the minimum, which at the time was 99 cents. So I'm like, "Okay, everybody, you can read it on my website. You can download the e-reader version from my website or you can pay Amazon a buck to put it on your Kindle for you. And people paid the buck. So, it became one of the top selling um top selling sci-fi ebooks.

>> And were you promoting it or anything? >> No. >> Wow. >> Well, what happened was I had a very evangelical fan base. So, also I think what happened was all throughout this process I was a I was a successful software engineer. I was like architect level. I was I was doing good in my career. I had money. I was fine. And people would periodically say like, "Hey, I want to donate. You know, I want to donate money because you're writing stories that I enjoy and I'm getting them for free. I want to donate money."

I'm like, "I don't I don't want money. I I probably make more than you. I don't feel right about that." You know, I mean, I wouldn't say that, but you know, so if you want to donate money, donate it to cancer research in my name or something, please. you know, it's like but I I don't I didn't provide any mechanism by which people could donate or anything like that. So, I guess when I started when I put that book up, people said like, "Ah, now here's an opportunity for me to give them money.

I'm going to buy the book even though I've already read it >> $1 >> for a dollar." But everybody did that and they all did it kind of at once. So Amazon's automated system went well this is selling well which popped it into the list of like like top sellers which got other people's attention which so it snowballed from there. Yeah. It was not it it was almost astrourfing but not intentional. You know what I mean? >> And then you got the book deal after that.

>> Yeah. So, first, well, then it was just there and it was selling really well and it was selling hundreds of copies a day and um then it got the attention of a literary agent named David Fugate and he said like, "Hey, do you have an agent cuz I think I could probably get you a print deal for this book." And I said like, "No, like you want to be my agent?" He's like, "Sure." And then like pretty quickly, uh, he had like Random House, you know, on the line and interested in making a print edition.

And at the same time, Fox came and said, "We're interested in securing the film option on it." So, but that sounds exciting, but film studios do that all the time. Anything that's remotely successful, any form of fiction, they will >> they get the rights and >> they'll they'll secure the option. The option is a much cheaper version. It basically says like, "Hey, we'll buy the rights for you for like $200,000. We're not going to give that to you right now.

What we're going to do is say, "Here's a here's a contract that we can execute at any time by giving you $200,000 to secure the rights. Here's a different contract that says you're not allowed to sell the rights to anyone else for 18 months except us. And if you agree to this little contract, we'll give you like 25,000 bucks and even if we don't buy it, this is that's still yours to keep." Okay? >> So, that's how an option works. Um, and so 25,000 bucks or something like that to a movie studio is like whatever, you know, and so they go out, they just secure rights to everything. They secure options. There's actually a lot of writers who make a lot of money off of cycling options. If you imagine you're a writer with like like 30 books, you know, under your belt, you're you're you've been doing it your whole life.

You're at retirement age now, and you've got like 30 books, and the studios don't want to let them go. they have to reby the option from you every 18 months or the rights come back to you. So you're getting like 25,000 bucks per book per 18 months. And you know if you've got a huge catalog of books that they that they don't want to let go then you can just make passive income from that. And so the you know Fox came and they were interested in the film rights. And so I'm like talk to my agent. And then my agent said like well here's a film agent I can recommend. And so I then had you had a film agent. Everything the book deal and the movie deal came to came uh four days apart. That was all in one very eventful week.

>> Wow. >> Yeah. But again, the movie deal was at the time everyone's like don't get excited. Like studios always buy up the right say everything. Yeah. >> Yeah. And then Yeah. Then once the book came out it was like you know New York Times bestseller list. from The Martian, from Project Hail Mary, are there moments when the story that you've made feels particularly real? Is it when you're done with the first chapter, when you're done with the first draft, when the book, you finally hold it, the book is right there? Is there something about the transition from the book to the movie where all of a sudden you're seeing Matt Damon, Ryan Gosling, and these characters that you've made? Are there any moments that stand out to you like, "Wow, okay, this thing is real now." Well, I mean, for The Martian, everything was new to me, right? And it was all very exciting because I this was a dream of mine my

whole life was to break into publishing, you know, and now I had a publishing deal and they were going to make my book. And that to me was I wasn't even thinking about movies. I was just really excited about someday there's going to be a book with my name on it in a bookstore, you know. And so for me, when they first sent me like a proof of the physical book, it's like this is my book. Here's the cover. Here's my picture on the back. And here's all the words. And it's like I wrote this and that was really cool. And then of course with uh The Martian, they kept creeping more and movies are never just like green lighting. It's like they just creep more and more toward being more and more likely to be produced until eventually they happen. They they tip at some tipping point. And so for The Martian, they said like, "Well, it's looking good." You know, like, you know, Fox is kind of like thinking about

funding it. It's like, "Okay, good." It's like, well, we've got Rudy Scott set to direct and Matt Damon set to star and we've got Jessica Chastain now. And I'm like, well, this looks like a great cast. And they're like, yeah, if we can afford them. And and then it's like, you know, and then eventually he's like, okay, they're making sets. And I'm like, well, that's pretty good. Like, that's a pretty good thing. But all the contracts and everything activate when you have the first day of filming in the can, which means once you have done one day of filming, all of the stars, all the contracts activate. So, you're on the hook to pay them the entire amount. If you decide after one day of filming, nah, we don't want to make this movie.

Then the actor's like, "Fine, you still owe me >> the entire amount." Yeah. And so once we had the first day of filming in the can in The Martian, then I knew, okay, that they're making the movie because at that point, even if they did want to back out, it's cheaper to just make the movie and put it up there to cut your losses. So, um, >> real quick, can you make that sound again? The >> Yeah, I don't know. I don't remember what I >> That was an amazing time.

>> That >> the re the like reverb. >> I'm good at sound effects. I'm good at sound effects. I don't know. >> Good at writing. Good at sound effects. Do you have other specialty sound effects? >> I don't know. I can talk like a dollick. [laughter] >> You like Doctor Who. Bring it on. >> Exterminate. Exterminate. [laughter] I'm a science fiction dork is what I am.

>> Explain this. In other interviews that you've done, I've seen you talk about basically say, "Hey, I think traditional publishing is great." Which is funny because you're sort of the canonical story of the benefits of self-publishing. Well, I would disagree. I am uh uh Hugh Howie is the canonical definition of the benefits of uh self-publishing. Like, he went all the way on it. Um, but I I prefer uh traditional publishing because the publishers are this marketing and publicity machine that no one person could ever match. Now you have someone like Hugh Howey. He actually can match it. He he's a guy who can do everything.

So um power to him. But I don't want to do any of that stuff. I just want to write. So for me, I love having like, you know, skilled people with connections all over the the the literature industry doing all that stuff. >> And what do the publishers do? You talk about their marketing machinery. >> Yeah, they were. So publishers obviously they make physical print copies of the book. They also make sure it gets into all these bookstores all over the place.

They they say like, "Hey, you know, Barnes & Noble, carry it here." and they'll they'll go talk to like water stones and you know in the UK and or they'll talk to um like Target and Walmart and stuff like that. Try to get them on their displays and try to get them in their in their bookshelves and stuff like that. So they'll go around and aggressively um try to get the book in as many locations as possible for point of purchase. They also market it, which is just straight up advertising. They'll they'll they'll put ads and stuff inside publications that are likely to have chronic readers in them and and then they also have um publicity like so they'll reach out to like New York Times book review. It's like hey can we send you a an advanced copy of this and you can uh you can uh review it or or hey can we you know hey we'll we'll make Andy available for interviews and stuff for you know stuff like that. In fact,

this interview itself, >> I did not coordinate with you at all. >> You didn't coordinate with me at all. You coordinated with PR's uh publicity group and that's what they do. Like all that stuff is stuff that I certainly could not have done on my own. I mean, I could have like bungled around a bit, but yeah. So that is a, you know, it's a book is a product and having an an entire company market it and and publicize it and that company has like literally over a century of experience doing just that, it's good for your book.

>> So if I come to you and I said, Andy, I just No one's reading my stuff. No one's reading my stuff. I actually think it's decent, but no one's reading my stuff. Can you help me get my book in front of people? How would you coach me if we're sitting down over coffee? >> I get asked that a lot from various people. Um, I wouldn't make any attempt to like developmentally edit your book. I would just say like I'm going to take your word for it that it's that it's good. Like you you feel like it's good.

Everybody feels like their book is good. So, first thing I would do, I would advise you to do is send it to literary agents and see what they have to say. You know, you'll get rejected a lot, but maybe you can break in that way. And if you can't, then e- publish it. And um one thing that uh helped me a lot was I posted a lot of free literature to my site, just short stories that I'd written. I made web comics for a while.

I did all sorts of stuff. I built up an audience and so I had like a small following to start with. So, if you get a small following that can that can grow into a larger one, but there's I don't Yeah, I'm not I'm not I'm not like a marketing guru. I don't know how to advise people how to like get their book out there and get more people reading it. All I can do is say like holistically if you make a lot of content like short stories or whatever if if you like doing that. I like doing that. Um, then you can build up an audience over time.

>> Take me back to plot. What do you think that you really understand about plot that helps you to do it? So, well, >> well, I guess just a lifetime of consuming, you know, entertainment media like reading a lot of books, watching a lot of movies has given me unintentionally given me a good understanding of plot structure. And one thing I really enjoy, there's a few things I enjoy as a consumer reader or viewer that I try and I'm like, I love it when this happens and I'm like, so I want to make that happen for my readers, right? So, one thing I really like is when something happens in the story and everything else that happens is knock-on effects from that or the other things that happen. So here we have an event and then that causes this which causes this which causes this which causes this which causes this right and so that that's what the Martian is like one long cascade failure. This happened so to

survive he had to do this but to do in doing that he had to do this which causes this and so everything is a sequence of events that are caused by the prior events. That way it doesn't feel like a weird coincidence or oh, can you believe his luck or anything like that? Everything is logically sensible from one trip one one event to the next. I really like that as a as a reader or viewer. I really like it when it I don't need to just suspend my disbelief and accept that. Oh, and then right when everything was going fine, it gets struck by lightning. You know, it's just like I don't like that. The other thing I love, absolutely love is when the main characters in a story outsmart me. the reader like when I didn't see that coming and you're being surprised, right? And I didn't see that coming, but I could have like in retrospect that >> the seeds were always there.

>> Yeah. In retrospect, I had all the information to work that out, but I didn't. So, in a way, it's almost like a murder mystery thing, like where you're trying to figure out who did it before the detective does. But in this I think one of the greatest examples of this in in writing for me in for in terms of my enjoyment was in Breaking Bad. Um there's a scene where Gustavo Freeze has captured Heisenberg and taken him and they're going to kill him. They're going to shoot him and he knows this and I'm like how's he going to get out of this?

Like there's no way to get out of this. They're going to have to have some DSX mocka happen. Like right before they shoot him, you know the main drug dealer guy is going to have some problem. He's like, "Ah, you can't kill I need him to solve this problem. Something like that. It's not going to be something proactive that Walter White does to save himself. It's going to be something outside of it and it's going to feel unsatisfying. I was wrong. What happened was Walter White said, "If you let me live, I'll give you Jesse Pinkman. I I'll serve him up on a platter for you." He's like, "Okay, you call him and lure him somewhere."

And he's like, "Okay." And so they call Jesse. He's like, "Jesse, you got to kill their cook. They got me." And so Jesse goes over to their their drug manufacturer guy and shoots him in the head. Now Walter is the only guy they have that can make drugs for them. And so he just like saved his own life. He just succeeded. And I was like, he proactively came up with a plan and saved his life. And that plan makes sense. Everything makes sense. And I didn't think of it.

>> Yeah. I love it when I didn't think of it. That is one of the biggest things I've learned from doing the show is how many of the best writers have just read and read and read and read. And I think a lot of younger writers underestimate how well read and wellstied a lot of the great writers are. And I think they often overestimate how much of that is like I've broken down like this novel and that novel and stuff like that. It's just no. I've read like 10,000 books over the last 40 years >> and I have this deep intuitive understanding of how plot, character, whatever it is, how that works.

>> Yeah, I think I think that's a big part of it. Just consuming the media that you want to someday make is a kind of an obvious thing like you know what do they say? Never never trust a skinny baker. Right. [laughter] >> Right. I think that's right. Can you

take me through some of the great science fiction writers who you admire and talk to me about what in particular they did so well, what you took from them? >> Okay. Well, let's start from I guess the top in my opinion is Azimov. Isaac Azimov is my favorite author. You know, he's the one who wrote the robots, the you know, iRoot, all that. But the three laws of robotics are what he made. You know, no robot can harm a human or through inaction allow a human to come to harm. Second law is a robot must obey orders unless it conflicts with the first law. Third law is a robot must protect itself unless it conflicts with the second or first laws. That was it.

So he made these rules. He's like these are the rules. And then I robot is all a story about what happens when you mess with any of those rules a little bit. There's one of the stories is about a robot that was like really really expensive. So they gave it they made its second law of robotics. um sorry they made its third law as important as its second law. So it's desire to self-preservation was as important as obeying orders. And some guy it was on planet Mercury and the robot's nickname was Speedy. It could move very fast and these guys had told it, "Oh, go get a sample of these crystals out on the surface." And Speedy was designed to be able to handle mercury and stuff like that. and he went out and then Speedy identified that the crystals emitted this radiation that would destroy his posatronic brain. And so he went uh and he got caught in a loop. He just started running circles around the thing cuz he was given an

order to go get them, but his third law says don't go any closer, right? >> And so he was just stuck in this loop. And ultimately the guys are like, "Huh, okay." Um and they had these slow robots with them that they could ride. And they rode these slow robots to the entrance of a cave. It's bright sunlight out there. turns mercury to millia and so the guy goes oh the first law is still more important right so he won't allow a human to to come to harm so I'll just step out into the sunlight so that sort of stuff when all the rules have been handed to you as a reader the the rules of this fictional world and then you get to see how they play out and so at the Azimov he was one of the first guys who would do these like here's a set of rules that's all we're ch that's all we're doing and we're going to examine what happens if these are the rules. Also, he was like one of the first science fiction

authors, I think, who really was willing to mix genres. Like he was one of the first people I've always felt that science fiction isn't a genre, it's a setting. So saying science fiction isn't like saying action, it's more like saying Chicago. Because you can have a science fiction romance, you can have a science fiction action movie, you can have a science fiction drama, you can have, you know, any type of movie, any genre that you think of, you can make a science fiction version. And Azimoth made a science fiction noir detective series, Caves of Steel, and the grizzled detective Elijah Bailey has his robot partner that he doesn't like very much, and they solve murders. And so that shows that like science fiction is a setting nor detective is a genre, but the setting was science fiction. Anyway, that's Azimoth. Clark was really good at extremely hard sci-fi. He was good at like saying like, okay, we're going to

follow all the laws of physics. We're not we're not cheaping out on anything. And so, like one one of his that I really liked was Rama, which is where well, what it turns out to be this alien cylindrical probe comes into our solar system. This is in the future when we have like regular space travel between the planets and stuff like that. And Rama's screaming it like it's coming very fast in our system and it's on a trajectory to just do this hyperbolic thing off of our sun and then just keep going. Like they're like if we want to see what this is, we got to go now. And so it was just this group of basically I think um like like a ship full of like people who were just supposed to be delivering cargo from point A to point B. But they were the ones who were in a position to be able to catch up to it to go look at it. And so they went and go look at it and inside they find out it's like sort of a biosphere inside of all

these weird alien things. And it starts to get more and more active as it gets close to the sun. And then they find out and they eventually detach from it. find out that really Rama didn't care about us at all. They didn't even know it's not even reacting to the humans. It was just here to like pick up some energy on the way by the sun. That was it. But but his core thing was the really hard science. >> Yeah. A really hard science. And Rama was this big cylinder and it rotated. So there was a centrial gravity inside and it was really cool.

>> When you speak there's such a joy. There's such an enthusiasm. So when you think about science fiction, I want you to fill in the blank. It's like the joy of blank >> discovery. >> The joy of discovery. >> Yeah. I think it's really exciting when you Well, in real life, it's really exciting if you discover something new. And in science fiction, if your character, you can your reader vicariously gets that high. If the character discovers or figures out something that no one else in the world has figured out, you know. Do you feel

threatened by AI? Not really. Not right now. Um, it's possible that in the future, I in fact I think it's inevitable that in the future AIs will be able to write better stories than humans can. That's a sort of a bleak assessment, especially from a professional author. But, um, I think just just because it's not something I particularly want to see happen doesn't mean I'm going to pretend like it won't. It's like you can see a lot of people out there, cab drivers and truck drivers saying like, "Oh, you know, self-driving cars are never going to become a thing."

It's like, "No, I think they will. You just really don't want them to." I forget who had said it was Carnegie, I think, maybe, or somebody else who said it is very difficult to convince somebody of something when their livelihood relies on it not being true. Um, but I try not to be blind about it. I think it's only a matter of time before an AI can read the Library of Congress, you know, every book that's ever been copyrighted and every every review written of every book and then put together like a book to say like here's here's a book that I'm pretty sure would get good reviews and I think he'll enjoy it. And then the next step that I think is going to happen is tailored fiction. Um, eventually your computer is going to know you very well based on your search history. your order history, you know, whatever. It's going to know everything about you and it is going to have its own AI that runs

locally rather than at a data center somewhere and once the technology advances at that point and it will write a book for you for you that maybe nobody else would like but you will love it. So this is I and then later once computers become more powerful it can write a movie for you that you can watch and enjoy and you'll be sitting there watching like you know the 19th sequel to that movie that you ask the AI to make and you'll be like absolutely like entranced with it and anyone else who tries to watch those will be like you know okay well I think that there's gonna be a battle here between what do we value more? Do we value like with Project Hail Mary for example?

It matters to me that somebody else can read the book and we can have a conversation about the book and the different characters and we experience the same thing. Obviously, you did not write that for me. You did not write that for the person who I'm talking to. You wrote it for people because you thought it was a great story. So, there's something really nice and we have that in Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings with the shared experience that we can all talk about the same thing. And then on the other side, there's something really nice about the individuality of everything. The metaphors that are used, the exact level of difficulty in terms of how well things are explained, how elementary it is. And so the question is, what do we want more? Do we want more of the shared experience? Do we want more of the individuality?

>> My guess is both. Like you don't have to give up one to get the other. Um, but I do think it'll be AI doing both. like there'll be like someone who prompts AI, hey, make a book that a lot of people can read and then discuss and enjoy like and it will um I do think that human written like stories will event I don't know if it'll happen in my lifetime, maybe it will, but they'll eventually be like kind of an artisal thing. It's kind of like you can get your portrait painted right now. You can go to a professional, very skilled artist and they will paint you your portrait.

Probably they might use a photo for reference so that you don't have to just sit there. But they'll they'll paint with, you know, with like, you know, acrylic paint or oils even and they'll make a very good representation of you and you can hang it up in your house. But most people just hang a picture, right? And then also um we as with all things the industry changes but there's always there always ends up being more people you know so it's like I saw a thing talking about pilots right it used to be every aspect of a plane was controlled by the pilot now more and more of it is done by computers you can push a button and the plane lands right and so you might think well that's going to put pilots out of business but the end result was more pilots because you need pilots on the plane And that automation made it so that people could make more planes and more flights could be there because you don't

have to exhaust the pilots as much. And and and so the end result of this automation that replaced pilots was more pilots got jobs. It's it's a weird scenario. So I think what'll happen is as is usually the case when something gets automated the people who used to do that manually become the people who run the machines that do the automation. So people who used to work on an assembly line transitioned into controlling the machines that run the assembly line because there's always going to be some kind of expertise that's needed. So in the end it's like yeah you can tell the AI on AI on your computer to make a good story that people might enjoy but a professional author or somebody who understands how these AIs work. They've learned that skill set and they have their own pre-existing skill set of how storytelling works. They can guide the AI to make a much better one.

>> When I think of AI, I think of it on two vectors. I think in terms of speed and quality. I definitely feel like I can get certain places way faster. like definitely strong conviction. I'm still not sure when it helps me produce something better versus when I would just produce something better on my own. And all this to say in books, would you now brainstorm and sort of think through ideas with AI or you like no, I'm not going to use AI right now?

>> I don't know. It's an interesting question. Um, definitely not right now. Uh, AI is just not good enough at that sort of brainstorming and open thought. Um, I've I've messed around with AI just to find out how well it can write things. And I was like, write a story. Write a short story where these events happen. And it does, but it just I don't know, for lack of a better term, it has this AI accent. Totally. >> I had a friend of mine who he really loves superhero stories and he's he's not he's not a good writer and would not claim to be. That's not his job, but he likes superhero stories like written in fiction, like not just comic books, but you know. And so he came up with an idea like for a story and he had an AI write it. So he told the AI the beats and then the AI wrote it and he's like, "What do you think?" And I'm like, "This is crap." It's It was very unpleasant to read because the AI would go into great

detail on things that weren't as important. It kept kind of repeating information. It's still too rudimentary, but those problems will be overcome eventually. >> Reinforcement learning is a pretty powerful tool. >> Yeah. And then like I mean you can already I mean AIs can already make music pretty well and even emulate the styles of well-known musicians. And >> so what I want to do is I want to go

into inspirations and I want to start off with astronaut John Young. Why do you like him so much? >> He passed away not too long ago. He was always my favorite astronaut of all time. You know he was he was the commander of Apollo 16. Okay. He went he walked on the moon, right? And they have their um their biom monitors and everything that they monitor when they're um when they're all the time. And usually during the launch phase, their their heart rates go like up into the 140s, you know, because you're on a rocket that's launching off of the Earth and you're leaving and you're going to go to the moon. That's exciting. John Young's pulse never got above 70. So he's just like, I'm on a rocket.

Just up he goes. Wow. He was just a very Yeah. Why is he your hero? What does that say about you? >> I don't know. I guess he's just so stoic and unflapable and he had experience doing all of the of the early NASA stuff, the really exciting stuff from the 60s. I don't know. He was a part of everything from the very beginning all the way into like the space shuttle era and he walked on the moon. There's only like 12 people who have done that.

>> Let's end here. What are your favorite science fiction books? The writers, the books. What do you love about him? >> Well, if we're going of all time of all time, >> then we're going for the the holy trinity of Azimov Heinline and Clark for me. um just for reasons we discussed earlier in this interview is just like um Azimov because he properly identified science fiction as a setting rather than a genre and went all sorts of directions with it and he liked to do that one little tweak. Here's a tweak to the rules and then we'll see where it goes.

Heinline because he was just wildly speculative. He's like, "Okay, let's say we can, you know, travel from planet to planet. Let's not worry about the technology. You're not going faster than light. We're not breaking any rules here." But then what? Then what happens? Are there pirates? What what happens? How's that work? Let's talk about that. So come up with all that cool stuff. And then Clark because of his like very scientific approach and somewhat realistic approach to things like eh, yeah, maybe maybe aliens come here, but they just don't care. I mean, he also wrote 2001, right? And that's again, you don't even know really what the aliens are. They're just so foreign and nonunderstandable. It's like, okay, here's a monolith. What' it do? Oh, it shot a beam of energy at Jupiter. Okay, let's go to Jupiter. Yeah, there's a big monolith in orbit here. What is the point of these monoliths? I don't know.

Okay, well, [laughter] what does it do? The the monoliths don't seem to care about us. It's like, okay, there's like billions of monoliths showing up in Jupiter right now. What's happening? Jupiter's igniting into a star. That shouldn't happen. the monoliths. I don't know. You know, it's just how confused we'd be by sufficiently advanced technology. >> Yeah. And then one book to start with. >> Just one recommended book, I go Caves of Steel.

>> Okay. >> Usually I say Iroot, but if we want a book with a Iroot is an anthology, a collection of short stories all in the same setting, but different characters, different events. So, if you want a bookbook book, a narration that starts has a middle and an end, Caves of Steel. And if you like it a lot, there's like several more books in that series with the same characters. So, you can you can grab a big bag of Cheetos and get to work.

>> Yeah. Well, I got to say what stands out to me is just the enthusiasm that you have for this. And it's cool because you have the enthusiasm. It shows up in your process, but also it really shows up in your books, in the way the characters speak, and the way the books feel. And um it's great to meet you. Thank you. It's great to be here.