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Project Hail Mary Is Another 'You Can Just Do Things' Story From Sci-Fi Novelist Andy Weir

A dazzling, ridiculously charming sci-fi adventure from the author of The Martian.

Peter Suderman | 3.19.2026 9:59 AM

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If there is a poet laureate of the "you can just do things" crowd, it's novelist Andy Weir. Weir broke into the mainstream with The Martian, a science fiction novel about a man stuck on Mars who sciences his way to survival and eventually a daring rescue, making his own luck through engineering and ingenuity. It's a technically sophisticated, hard science fiction space adventure story in the style of Robert Heinlein, but with far more potato math. Weir has said he never expected such a nerdy story to find a mainstream audience. But not only did that novel become a bestseller, it also spawned a superb big-budget movie adaptation directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. 

The Martian's surprise success was itself a triumph of the you can just do things mindset: It was originally serialized on Weir's website for a small group of readers, and then it rocketed up Amazon's charts when it was published for Kindle. Weir had always wanted to be a writer and even took several years off from work to write a novel before The Martian. That novel went nowhere, but he kept writing, and, like his book's protagonist, made his own luck. He didn't just do one thing. He kept doing things until something worked. 

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