Born in Milpitas, California, to a physicist and an electrical engineer, he was surrounded by science and related topics from an early age and later became further intrigued by the field when he started reading books by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, both prominent science/science fiction writers.
At age 15, he began working as a computer programmer at Sandia National Laboratories. Soon after graduating from High School, he enrolled in college to study computer science, though he would not graduate. Instead, he went straight to major technology companies like AOL, Palm, MobileIron, and Blizzard, working on the game Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.
Later in life, he began to write stories as a personal hobby. One of these stories was a humor webcomic titled “Casey and Andy,” in which there were fictionalized mad scientist versions of himself as well as some of his close friends, which he wrote and illustrated from 2001 to 2008, alongside working on another comic titled “Cheshire Crossing,” which crossed Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and Mary Poppins into one story, which he worked on from 2006 to 2008. He also made an attempt at writing a novel of his own, titled “Theft of Pride,” though this would prove to be a failure as he would never be able to publish the story.
Andy utilized this attention to help him gain traction and attention in the world of literature, allowing him to eventually launch his writing career. His first work to become popular among the public was a short story titled “The Egg.” It was a short story that eventually went on to be adapted and turned into a number of YouTube episodes, a play, and even into the “overarching” concept of Everybody, an album produced by Logic, an American rapper.
Though the popularity of “The Egg” was a major incentive for Weir to try and get into the Sci-Fi story world, whenever he wrote a story with the intention of it becoming popular, it ultimately ended up being a total flop after total flop. This resulted in him effectively giving up on the idea of writing as a professional career, instead choosing to turn it into a hobby that he would work on in his free time. It was around this time that Andy began to work on a novel in his free time, titled “The Martian.” He wanted to make the novel as scientifically realistic and grounded in reality as he could possibly make it, so he did his research. He went around and looked into various fields of science, technology, and physics. Some examples of these research topics include extensive research into the field of orbital mechanics, the environment, atmosphere, and general conditions on the surface of the planet Mars, the history of human space flight, alongside the field of botany.
The novel started off its life in the public eye as a free story to be seen on Andy’s personal website, and as it quickly grew in popularity, people began to request that he made it available on Amazon Kindle. Andy obliged, selling it for $0.99, and it would begin to ramp up even more quickly in popularity, becoming one of the books placed on Kindle’s bestseller list. Because of The Martian’s rising fame, Andy was approached by a literary agent who wished to publish the book through Crown Publishing Group, to which Andy agreed to. The printed version of the book soon after debuted at the Number 12 position on The New York Times bestseller list of 2014, with the Wall Street Journal also coming in and proclaiming that “The Martian” was one of the best Sci-Fi novels in recent history, with it later being adapted into a film.
Later, Andy would begin work on another novel titled “Zhek,” in which Andy described it as “a more traditional sci-fi novel with aliens, telepathy, faster-than-light travel, etc,” alongside a fan-fiction story titled “Lacero” which would end up featured in in the 2016 version of “Ready Player One,” which effectively made it canonical to the book’s in story universe.
Eventually, Andy Weir would put the novel “Zhek” on the back-burner, instead choosing to focus his attention on a novel titled “Artemis,” which featured a female protagonist, the surface of the moon as the setting, with the year being 2080-2090. The novel would be published in 2017, with the story following Jazz around, the main character which was seemingly restricted to her town on the moon. Later that year, 20th Century Fox and New Regency had bought and acquired the film rights to the book, with Phil Lord and Christopher MIller being slated to be directing to develop and direct a film that is based on the story of the book.
Finally, Andy Weir would publish his third novel, titled “Project Hail Mary”, in the year 2021. It centers around the main character Ryland Grace, an astronaut who wakes up from a coma, suffering from amnesia, in a strange spacecraft. It has been widely regarded as a great book, with it winning the 2022 Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year, alongside a nomination for the 2022 Hugo Awards for Best Novel and being positioned in the number 1 spot of the New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation of the story is being produced, with Christopher Miller and Phil Lord directing the film and Ryan Gosling starring as Grace.
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