Think It, Believe It, Achieve It: Lessons from The Martian šŖ š½
#manifestation #bookrecs #andyweir #themartian #howtowinfriendsandinfluencepeople #qotd #inspirationalquotes
Note: If you havenāt read Andy Weirās The Martian, this post has a spoiler.
In my copy of The Martian, thereās an interview where author Andy Weir talks about his journey to becoming a published writer. His story reminded me of a quote from Dale Carnegieās How to Win Friends and Influence People about the power of focus and intention. Iām paraphrasing, but it goes something like this:
Bring purpose to everything you do. Keep a clear picture of what you want, and youāll naturally start moving toward it. As you stay focused, youāll spot opportunities that help make goals real. Thought is powerful ā we become what we consistently think about.
In other words: what you think about, you attract. Itās all about manifestation. Your dominant thoughts ā positive or negative ā act like magnets, pulling in matching experiences and people. When you clearly see your goals and truly believe in them, your energy aligns, and momentum starts building to make them real.
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What you think you about, you attract
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Illustration of a Sunday morning in September: coffee, book, magazineā
An Interview with Andy Weir, excerpted from The Martian.
ANDY WEIR was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. The Martian is his first novel.
Q. So it seems youāre a bit of a science geek. You list space travel, orbital dynamics, relativistic physics, astronomy, and the history of manned spaceflight among your interests. How did you incorporate these passions in The Martian?
A. Those interests allowed me to come up with the story in the first place. I love reading up on current space research. At some point I came up with the idea of an astronaut stranded on Mars. The more I worked on it, the more I realized I had accidentally spent my life researching for this story. Early on I decided that I would be as scientifically accurate as possible. To a nerd like me, working out all the math and physics for Markās problems and solutions was fun.
Q. Explain how the science in The Martian is true to life.
A. The basic structure of the Mars program in the book is very similar to a plan called Mars Direct (though I made changes here and there). Itās the most likely way that we will have our first Mars mission in real life. All the facts about Mars are accurate, as well as the physics of space travel the story presents. I even calculated the various orbital paths involved in the story, which required me to write my own software to track constant-thrust trajectories.
Q. What inspired you to write The Martian?
A. I was thinking about how best to do a manned Mars mission (because thatās the sort of dork I am). As the plan got more detailed, I started imagining what it would be like for the astronauts. Naturally, when designing a mission, you think up disaster scenarios and how likely the crew would be to survive. Thatās when I started to realize this had real story potential.
Q. Are you an advocate for a manned mission to Mars? Are you hopeful weāll actually make it out there sometime soon?
A. Of course Iām a huge fan of space travel, manned and unmanned. I would love to see people land on Mars in my lifetime. However, do I think it will actually happen? Iām not sure. Unlike the 1960s, weāre not in a race with anyone to get there, so itās not a priority. Also, computer and robotics technologies are leaps and bounds better than they were during the days of Apollo. So logically you have to ask why we would risk human lives rather than just make better robots. Still, it would be awesome, and maybe thatās reason enough.
Q. Do you have anything in common with your wisecracking hero Mark Watney?
A. Iām the same level of smart-ass that he is. It was a really easy book to write; I just had him say what I would say. However, heās smarter than I am and considerably more brave. I guess heās who I wish I were.
Q. In The Martian, Watney has access to his crewmatesā digital entertainment on Mars, including TV episodes of Threeās Company, a variet of Beatles songs, and digital books including The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Any reason why you chose to work those specific examples into the novel?
A. Itās a selection of things I loved when I was growing up.
Q. Youāre stranded on Mars and you can only take one book with you. What is it?
A. Itās always hard to pick on āfavorite book.ā Growing up, I loved early Robert Heinlein books most of all. So if I had to pick one, Iād go with Tunnel in the Sky. I do love a good survival story.
Q. How long do you think youād last if you were left in Mark Watneyās position?
A. Not long at all. I donāt know how to grow crops or how to jury-rig the solutions he came up with. Itās a lot easier to write about an ordeal than it is to experience it.
Q. You have the chance to meet any astronaut living or dead: Who is it and why?
A. John Young. He is the quintessential astronaut. Competent, fearless, highly intelligent, and seemingly immune to stress. When Apollo 16 launched, his heart rate never got higher than 70. Most astronauts spike to at least 120 during launches.
Q. Watney seems to be able to maneuver his way around some pretty major problems with a little duct tape an ingenuity! So heās a bit like MacGyver in that way. Did you watch the show as a kid? Any favorite episodes?
A. Indeed I did! I loved that show. My favorite episode was the one where engineering students had a barricade contest.
Q. Star Wars or Star Trek?
A. Doctor Who.
Q. Your idea of the perfect day . . .
A. Sleep in. Meet Buzz Aldrin for brunch. Head over to Jet Propulsion Lab and watch them control Curiosity Mars rover. Dinner with the writing staff of Doctor Who.
Q. You original, self-published version of The Martian became a phenomenon online. Were you expecting the overwhelmingly positive reception the book received?
A. I had no idea it was going to do so well. The story had been available for free on my website for months, and I assumed anyone who wanted to read it had already read it. A few readers had requested I post a Kindle version because itās easier to download that way. So I went ahead and did it, setting the price to the minimum Amazon would allow. As it sold more and more copies I just watched in awe.
Q. Film rights to The Martian were sold to writer-producer Simon Kinberg (Mr & Mrs. Smith, Sherlock Holmes, X-Men: First Class). What was your first reaction?
A. Of course Iām thrilled to have a movie in the works. The move deal and print publishing deal came within a week of each other, so I was a little shell-shocked. In fact, it was such a sudden launch into the big leagues that I literally had a difficult time believing it. I actually worried it could all be an elaborate scam. So I guess that was my first reaction: āIs this really happening!?ā
An Essay from Andy Weir: How Science Made Me a Writer
Iām a nerd.
Okay, a lot of people say that these days. But I really am. I was hired as a computer programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen. I have seen every existing episode of Doctor Who (classic and modern). I study orbital dynamics as a hobby. My idea of a good time is sitting down and drawing on that knowledge to imagine a space mission from beginning to end, getting right as many details as a I can.
Pretty frickinā nerdy, right?
On top of that, as you might expect, Iāve also been a science-fiction fan ever since I was old enough to read, which was when I started plowing through my dadās nearly infinite collection of Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, and all the other great authors of the genre.
One day, in between doing highly charismatic non-nerdy things, I started working up a manned Mars mission in my head. I even wrote my own software to calculate the orbital trajectory my imaginary crew would take to get from Earth to Mars. And not some boring Hohmann Transfer, either! I envisioned a constantly accelerating VASIMR-powered ship, whichāahem. Sorry, got carried away. Anyway, I had to account for failure scenarios on their surface mission. What if something went wrong? How could I design the mission so the crew would have contingency plans? What if they had multiple failures, one after another, that ruined those contingency plans?
While working that out, I started to realize their increasingly desperate solutions would make a pretty interesting story. Thatās when I came up with the idea for The Martian.
Oh, one more nerdy hobby I forgot to mention up top: Iāve also been a wannabe writer since I was a teenager. I wrote countless short stories and even penned two complete books before The Martian. My first book was so horrible I have deleted all copies of it. Thankfully, it was before the Internet so there are no lurking caches of it anywhere. I made up for that failure by writing a second book that was also crappy. This time I resolved to do better.
So I created an unlucky main character named Mark Watney and then spent 368 pages making his life a living hell. Heās stranded on Mars, his crew has evacuated and thinks heās dead, and he has no way to contact Earth.
Even though my plan was to torture Mark, I knew from the beginning that I didnāt want my hero to suffer one unlikely, disastrous coincidence after the next. I decided that each problem Mark faced had to be a plausible consequence of his situationāor, better yet, an unintended consequence of his solution to a previous problem. He could suffer an equipment failure in machinery stretched beyond its intended use, but he couldnāt be struck by lightening and then have a meteor crash on him.
I also really wanted Mark to be fallible. Yeah, okay, I made him smarter and more resourceful than you or I would be in that situation. But hey, itās only realistic to do that when your heroās an astronaut. Nevertheless, in a situation where even the smallest mistake can be catastrophic, and youāre forced to make life-or-death decisions every day, even the brightest person is going to slip sometimes and invite disaster.
Was I worried about whether my scenario would give me enough plot to sustain a novel?
Did I wonder if being that realistic would make a boring story?
Hell yes.
But as I wrote, I bungled my way into a revelation: Science creates plot! As I worked out the intricacies of each problem and solution, little details I wouldnāt have otherwise noticed became critical problems Mark had to solve. No need for meteor strikesāthe surprises, catastrophes, and narrow escapes were coming fast and furious on their own.
And the deeper into the book I got, the more excited I became, because I found that I was arriving at that place writers dream of: I was coming up with plot twists that genuinely surprised me, yet felt totally organic to the situation Iād dreamed up. This allowed me to do what writers treasure more than anything else: catch the reader off-guard. Thereās nothing better than knowing youāre going to outwit the reader. And the type of people who read sci-fi are very difficult to outwit.
I originally wrote The Martian as a free serial novel, posting one chapter at a time to my website. Thanks to my previous attempts at writing, I had a small but loyal following of readers who read each chapter as I finished it. Theis turned out to be an amazing process. I got tons of feedback as the story progressed, and I fine-tuned the novel as I went along.
Eventually, my website readers started bugging me to put the book up on Amazon so they could read it on their Kindles. So I formatted the book, slapped a public-domain photo of Mars on the cover, and tossed it up there. I priced it at 99 cents because Amazon wouldnāt let me make it free permanently.
After that, things got a little crazy. Next thing I knew, it was one of Amazonās top five sci-fi bestsellers, and tens of thousands of people had downloaded it. Then a literary agent and publishers came knocking, and movie studios started bidding on the film rights. And ultimately, in one of the more surreal moments of my life, I found myself looking at my name on the New York Times bestseller list.
In those months since I first started putting chapters online, Iāve received fan e-mails from astronauts, people in Mission Control, nuclear submarine technicians, chemists, physicists, geologists, and folks in pretty much every other scientific discipline. All of them had nice things to say about the bookās technical accuracy, though some of them also sent formal proofs detailing where Iād gone wrong. I corrected those problems (mostly) in the final edition that went to print.
Even more satisfying than those responses to the science, though, were all the readers who told me Iād succeeded in my other goal, the one that really made me tremble in fear as I was writing: People kept telling me how exciting and suspenseful and surprising the book was. My favorite fan mail is the kind that starts āNormally I donāt read science-fiction, but . . .ā
That response is pretty damn incredible, considering all I really did was write about how much I love scienceāalbeit while tormenting my main character with the constant threat of death.
Eh. Markās a smart guy. He can handle it.
A version of this essay was originally published on Salon.com.