Gavin Jefferson
asked
Andy Weir:
How long did you spend researching all of the science for The Martian? And how frustrating or disheartening was it if/when you realised you had details incorrect or absent?
Andy Weir
It took three years to write the book, a large part of that was research.
For the most part, when I got something wrong, it wasn't that hard to fix. I just had to go rework the math so I could put the right answers in where the wrong ones were. I never ran into a situation where I wrote a scene and then later discovered that it couldn't possibly happen.
There is one impossible scene, but I made it inaccurate as a deliberate concession to drama. See this question for more info: https://www.goodreads.com/questions/2...
For the most part, when I got something wrong, it wasn't that hard to fix. I just had to go rework the math so I could put the right answers in where the wrong ones were. I never ran into a situation where I wrote a scene and then later discovered that it couldn't possibly happen.
There is one impossible scene, but I made it inaccurate as a deliberate concession to drama. See this question for more info: https://www.goodreads.com/questions/2...
More Answered Questions
Harry Brake
asked
Andy Weir:
Some points during the text, I felt overwhelmed with the details of Science, Biology, and the chemical reactions needed for simple survival. Yet, it subsided and all turned out perfect, riding it out as a reader it "jelled." Did you ever feel that too much detail in those areas would lose some readers if they did not come back from that particular background?
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