Creators on Reddit

Andy Weir

Author, The Martian and Project Hail Mary

How we know it's theirs

Their 2015 r/books AMA, posted from this account

We retrieved 14 posts and 818 comments from u/sephalon, dated 2010 to 2026, most often in r/books, r/IAmA and r/themartian.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/IAmA

On “I am Andy Weir, author of The Martian, and my new book Project Hail Mary, is out now. AMA!”

Of all of the ideas for writing you've ever had, is there one you can say, undoubtedly, is the single worst idea that you decided to backpedal on? If so, can you share it?

u/sephalon replied

I had an idea for a guy who appears to be really lucky, but in the end it turns out his cat is really lucky and good stuff happens to the guy because the cat likes him.

I decided not to develop that idea.

More moments

A redditor wrote in r/themartian

On “Psst... I'm Andy Weir. Secret AMA for the next few hours.”

Hi Andy, thank you for a fantastic book. I don't believe it was ever confirmed in the book that the Ares 3 crew arrived back to Earth safely. Although I assume they do, was there ever any doubt or was it intentionally left to the readers assumption? How did the events of Ares 3…

u/sephalon replied

The only thing I had set in stone was that he would survive. Pretty much everything else was just made up as I went along. Including the Rich Purnell Maneuver. Originally my plan was for him to just survive until…

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Excerpt

A redditor wrote in r/books

On “I am Andy Weir, author of The Martian, and my new book Artemis, out now. AMA!”

Is there an In-N-Out Burger in Artemis?

u/sephalon replied

Hmm. Well there could be, but it would be expensive. They could ship in flour and salt to make the bread for the buns. But they'd have to import the meat. So it would come frozen. (Definitely no Wendy's in…

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A Double-Double has a quarter pound (pre-cook mass) of meat. That's 113g of meat. Plus another 50g or so of other imported material for the bun, sauce, etc. Plus the cost of the business itself. So that's about 160 slugs. There are 6 slugs to the (2015) dollar. So that means it's about $26.60 in shipping costs. That, plus the $3.50 it costs in the real world means getting an in-n-out burger in Artemis would cost you about $30 in today's money.

A redditor wrote in r/IAmA

On “I am Andy Weir, author of The Martian, and my new book Project Hail Mary, is out now. AMA!”

I'm about 80% done with Hail Mary so no spoilers but how did you >!Come up with the physical description of Rocky?!< Also, I've asked this question on Twitter a few times but I guess you didn't see it - Time period of a pendulum is 2*pi*sqrt(l/g) right? At 346 oscillations in…

u/sephalon replied

Yes I got the pendulum wrong. I will of course go into exile as a result.

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