Как выжить на... Земле?
Почему об этом никто не пишет, а?
How to survive on Mars
By Richard Galant, CNN
updated 3:59 PM EDT, Sat March 15, 2014
(CNN) -- Andy Weir had given up on writing as a career at the age of 26 after agents spurned his novel about a jewel heist involving aliens "on the Planet Sephalon."
After burning through severance checks from his layoff by AOL, he went back to work as a programmer in Silicon Valley.
Ten years later, in 2009, Weir decided to try writing again, but just as a hobby. Keeping his day job at a mobile phone software company, he started posting a new book on a personal website, chapter by chapter as he wrote it. This time, there were no aliens and no imaginary planet.
Instead he crafted a story, set a few decades in the future, about an astronaut who mistakenly gets left for dead on Mars when the other members of his crew are forced to make a quick escape from the effects of a devastating sandstorm.
This book found an audience. People starting following the story and it attracted scientists, including some who e-mailed Weir and offered suggestions to make the book's excursions into physics, chemistry and biology true to science.
Today Weir's "The Martian" is on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list and has been optioned by 20th Century Fox for a potential movie, raising the question: How does a space nerd with no track record as a writer craft a compelling work of science fiction?
Read more here:
How to survive on Mars
By Richard Galant, CNN
updated 3:59 PM EDT, Sat March 15, 2014
(CNN) -- Andy Weir had given up on writing as a career at the age of 26 after agents spurned his novel about a jewel heist involving aliens "on the Planet Sephalon."
After burning through severance checks from his layoff by AOL, he went back to work as a programmer in Silicon Valley.
Ten years later, in 2009, Weir decided to try writing again, but just as a hobby. Keeping his day job at a mobile phone software company, he started posting a new book on a personal website, chapter by chapter as he wrote it. This time, there were no aliens and no imaginary planet.
Instead he crafted a story, set a few decades in the future, about an astronaut who mistakenly gets left for dead on Mars when the other members of his crew are forced to make a quick escape from the effects of a devastating sandstorm.
This book found an audience. People starting following the story and it attracted scientists, including some who e-mailed Weir and offered suggestions to make the book's excursions into physics, chemistry and biology true to science.
Today Weir's "The Martian" is on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list and has been optioned by 20th Century Fox for a potential movie, raising the question: How does a space nerd with no track record as a writer craft a compelling work of science fiction?
Read more here: