Andy Weir is an American science fiction novelist, born in Davis, California, in 1972. He is best known for “The Martian”, which he first published himself in 2011, and for “Project Hail Mary” (2021). Both novels have been made into films.
Weir grew up in Livermore, California, where his father was a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and his mother an electrical engineer. At fifteen he began working as a computer programmer for Sandia National Laboratories. He studied computer science at the University of California, San Diego, without graduating, and went on to work as a programmer for software companies including AOL, Palm, MobileIron and Blizzard.
He began writing science fiction in his twenties and posted his work on his own website for years, including the webcomic “Casey and Andy” and the short story “The Egg” (2009). “The Martian”, about the astronaut Mark Watney, who is stranded alone on Mars and has to improvise to survive, first appeared there as a free serial. Readers asked for a Kindle edition, which Weir priced at 99 cents and which reached the Kindle bestseller list. Crown bought the rights, and the print edition entered the New York Times bestseller list at number twelve in 2014. Ridley Scott’s film, starring Matt Damon, was released in October 2015, and Weir received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2016.
“Artemis” (2017) is set in the late 2080s in the only city on the Moon, where the porter and smuggler Jazz Bashara is caught up in a conspiracy for control of the city. Reviews were mixed, though the novel won a Goodreads Choice Award and a Dragon Award. “Cheshire Crossing”, a graphic novel illustrated by Sarah Andersen, followed in 2019 and brings together Alice, Dorothy Gale and Wendy Darling.
“Project Hail Mary” follows Ryland Grace, a schoolteacher who wakes aboard an interstellar spacecraft with no memory of how he got there. It was a finalist for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel and won the Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year. The film version, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and starring Ryan Gosling, was released in March 2026. As of 2026 Weir is writing a standalone science fiction novel about artificial intelligence, with no title or date announced.
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Martian | 2011 |
| Artemis | 2017 |
| Project Hail Mary | 2021 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| The Egg | 2009 |
| Randomize | 2019 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| The Egg and Other Stories | 2017 |
| James Moriarty, Consulting Criminal | 2017 |
Publication Order of Graphic Novels
| Cheshire Crossing (With: Sarah Andersen) | 2019 |
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).