Andy Weir

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[00:00:19] Welcome to season 6 of the big sci-fi podcast the biggest sci-fi podcast in the galaxy

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[00:00:33] Make sure you're strapped in tight because we're going to have a lot of fun talking all things sci-fi

[00:00:39] Stay tuned to this channel for the next audio transmission

[00:00:45] Everybody I'm so excited to talk to today's guest as you can tell

[00:00:49] We have certainly mentioned his books on more than one occasion and even had a whole episode where we compared a movie

[00:00:56] Based on one of his books with an older film Robin Robin, Robin, Robinson

[00:01:01] Caruso and that was gonna be one of my questions. I'll save it

[00:01:05] Well, yeah

[00:01:05] So before we get into all that we do have to shout out to our host network Trek Geeks

[00:01:10] Because we are honored to be part of that network along with other great podcasts and please make sure everyone you know

[00:01:16] You like follow us on your platform of choice. Okay on to our guest Andy Weir

[00:01:23] Author of the Martian project Hail Mary Artemis and lots of other stuff

[00:01:28] Andy welcome to the big sci-fi podcast. Hi, thanks for having me

[00:01:33] We're very happy you're here today

[00:01:37] That was a

[00:01:39] Oh gosh, let's talk about all sci-fi

[00:01:43] Yes, just big sci-fi

[00:01:46] Podcast has a specific focus. I want only we can talk about what is it the land of the Giants?

[00:01:51] That was a 1960 TV show. That's some big sci-fi. Yep. The attack of the 50-foot man

[00:02:01] War of the gargantua's I remember that one

[00:02:05] That had a song in it. I will not sing attack of a 50-foot woman

[00:02:10] Plus another one. Yeah was that was the follow-up to the 50-foot man or

[00:02:16] You know, they had to have a date so right

[00:02:19] Yeah, and then and then yow ming of the the basketball player and then we'll just we'll just talk about yammy. Okay

[00:02:27] Yeah, dude seven foot tall. He's not exactly sci-fi though. He's big

[00:02:32] He doesn't look he doesn't look of this world. I'll tell you that

[00:02:36] Fair enough he's a tall man. Yes

[00:02:40] All right, we've gone crazy. That's okay. Well, well, so, you know thinking about all these big sci-fi things

[00:02:48] You know what of this inspired you to start writing science fiction?

[00:02:54] Like everyone I got into science and science fiction for the leaves

[00:02:59] You know just the non-stop sex that you get by being a dork in high school

[00:03:03] That is why I got into science fiction

[00:03:06] Yes, no, I guess I was kind of doing to be a nerd from day one. My dad was a

[00:03:13] Particle physicist and my mom was an electrical engineer. So where do you go from there? Right?

[00:03:18] I mean, so I've always had an interest in this stuff. I grew up reading my dad's science fiction collection

[00:03:25] He was a boomer. So he has like all those, you know, Robert Heinlein Isaac Asimov Arthur C

[00:03:32] Clark books stuff like that

[00:03:34] But that's what I grew up reading and kind of one generation off on what my canonical friends fiction was

[00:03:40] He never threw away a book in his life

[00:03:41] So I'm sitting here in the 1980s and I'm reading these old

[00:03:44] Kind of they have a little bit of a smell to them

[00:03:47] These dusty paperbacks with an ad for cigarettes at them in the middle

[00:03:52] Right because I mean the target market for these are 16 year old boys. So you got to get them smoking, right?

[00:03:57] And

[00:03:59] Yeah, so that's what I grew up reading and so that's kind of what science fiction was for me

[00:04:02] And of course, I don't know I guess science fiction

[00:04:05] I was always gonna be a sci-fi nerd because I'm been a science nerd

[00:04:09] but a real science nerd my whole life so

[00:04:13] So when did that transition into actually writing though because being a fan and writing are two different

[00:04:20] Related but yeah different. I guess I've always been a daydreamer. I always came up with stories

[00:04:25] I mean I was writing when I was 12. I wouldn't try to publish that but

[00:04:30] You know, I was writing short stories and stuff like that just in my notebook instead of paying attention in class

[00:04:37] So I was always a wannabe writer

[00:04:40] Then when the time came to go to college and choose a major I went with computer programming because I'd like regular meals

[00:04:47] and then

[00:04:48] But I always wrote and eventually bungled into the writing career

[00:04:54] Just awesome

[00:04:56] Yeah, I read I read about or saw your interviews

[00:05:01] the progression you did on this put on the Martian going from

[00:05:07] Publishing individual sections of it and then that going together on

[00:05:12] Amazon for the 99 cents or something like that that you were made available and then going from there. So

[00:05:18] You've you you made all the efforts to to become an established writer

[00:05:23] Yeah, I mean I I did well earlier in my life when I was in my 20s. I actually took a three-year

[00:05:30] sabbatical which is sort of a nice way of saying I got laid off and I just didn't get another job for years

[00:05:36] And tried to take a stab at being a full-time author novelist, you know writing a science fiction book

[00:05:41] I wrote a book and you've never seen it because it never got published. It wasn't that good

[00:05:46] But you know, I really I spent three years chasing that dream, you know

[00:05:49] But I had the standard tale of woe of you know, couldn't get an agent couldn't get any publishers interested

[00:05:55] And I went back to computer programming

[00:05:57] I bungled into the Martian because it was much later in time and

[00:06:02] The internet was a thing and I posted chapters to my website as I wrote them

[00:06:07] I had like a following of fans that would read each chapter and comment and stuff like that

[00:06:12] And so that helped you know that feedback helped keep me going to finish finish the book

[00:06:18] And then that all snowballed. I mean, I've told that story a million times

[00:06:22] You guys have probably seen it in interviews, but it all just kind of like snowballed out of control mixing

[00:06:28] I know it's like a best-selling novel a movie with Matt Damon

[00:06:32] It's a weird experience and it all seems very surreal because I'm like if this really happening

[00:06:37] Then I'm like in Toronto at the red carpet premiere. I'm like, is this really happening?

[00:06:41] It's just like, you know, you're hanging out with

[00:06:44] Hanging out with all these a-list stars and stuff like that for a couple of weeks doing the press tour and then you're back in back at home

[00:06:51] Everything it's like and it's over

[00:06:55] What the hell was that

[00:06:58] How much of any did you have any involvement in producing the film like did you get to review the script did you

[00:07:04] Were you on set at all when they were filming?

[00:07:06] No, um, well not really so I had no authority no say anything like once they buy the film rights for you

[00:07:13] They can do whatever they want. They don't have to consult me at all

[00:07:16] They could have just completely not spoken to me again. They chose to involve me

[00:07:21] Sort of as a like a technical consultant kind of thing. So that was pretty cool

[00:07:25] So I was fielding questions from rickie scott and from drew goddard the writer of the screenplay and and so on

[00:07:33] uh

[00:07:35] Uh, and then what? Um, yeah, they would send me uh,

[00:07:40] Revs of the script and said okay. What do you think and I give them my notes

[00:07:44] They could either listen or not listen

[00:07:45] They didn't you know have to care what I had to say, but they they decided to

[00:07:50] That was kind of nice nice. Yeah, so I remember when I read the book it was about

[00:07:55] I was aware the movie was coming out

[00:07:57] It was like maybe six to eight months before the movie came out

[00:08:00] And all I could think about as i'm reading the book is

[00:08:04] Oh my god

[00:08:05] What detail or details are they not going to include in the movie because it's obvious that there's no way

[00:08:11] They're going to fit this in a film. I mean did you struggle when you saw like, oh they left out such and such

[00:08:17] They couldn't possibly exposition all of the stuff that was in there

[00:08:21] I mean they it would not be possible or if they did it would be incredibly boring, right?

[00:08:27] So I like the approach they took which was they were scientifically accurate they just didn't always explain everything going on

[00:08:34] So they're like he does this thing anyone who's a scientist in that field can tell you. Oh, yeah, that's that's right

[00:08:39] That's real but he doesn't bother to explain the whole stack of information below it. He just does it

[00:08:45] Is there something they left out that you wish they had managed to get in?

[00:08:49] The only thing I wish they uh had put in there was the aquaman joke

[00:08:54] um

[00:08:56] Yeah, there's even had it all set up. They had it all set up. So there's a scene where

[00:09:01] Uh vacat in the book vincent in the film looks up at mars and this guy you can see at a little red dot

[00:09:07] He's like man. He's all alone. He's stranded up there. He doesn't even know we know he's alive

[00:09:12] He thinks he's been abandoned

[00:09:14] What does that do to a man psychologically? What's going through his mind right now?

[00:09:17] And I immediately cut to like log entry soul 68 or whatever and he's like how come aquaman can control whales their mammals?

[00:09:25] Makes no sense

[00:09:28] Right

[00:09:29] Right

[00:09:30] They set all that up

[00:09:31] They set that up and then they have them say something like i'm definitely gonna die up here if I have to listen to anymore disco

[00:09:37] There's some depth to the line they went and I was just like, uh, you had it you didn't you had room for it everything

[00:09:43] But they didn't use the line

[00:09:45] What about the um, what about the crash because in the book

[00:09:50] He rolls over the rover. Yeah

[00:09:52] They had that was a tough decision for them. They this this little buddy right here remember him

[00:09:59] There is yeah

[00:10:02] Little rover I I have I have the actual one from the film steve is the actual one look right there

[00:10:07] You can see you can see mark right in there

[00:10:11] And this is solar power just like the real mccoy very nice. Very nice. Very cool. Thank you

[00:10:18] That they left that they they left that out decision by by uh, by drew and ridley and um

[00:10:25] And the producers in general is that was the biggest like event that happens in the book that didn't make it into the movie

[00:10:32] And they're like things had to be cut for time

[00:10:34] It would have been like a six hour movie if you put every every heartbeat in there

[00:10:38] So they're like we're gonna get rid of this. We're gonna focus on that

[00:10:41] We're gonna get rid of this and they decided the whole sequence

[00:10:44] Of basically

[00:10:46] Getting in the book just getting from aries 3 to aries 4 was quite an ordeal

[00:10:51] It took many chapters. It took him a long time. He encountered a lot of problems along the way

[00:10:56] But they the dust storm then he rolls the rover and he has to go and so

[00:11:01] And in the movie they said like, okay, we're just going to montage that trip and nothing's really going to go wrong

[00:11:07] Yeah, because I did the reverse of adina. I saw the film first

[00:11:11] And then read the book and went oh, yeah, they left that out

[00:11:14] Yeah, they left out a lot but they had to and if it had been up to me

[00:11:18] I think I would have picked that same thing

[00:11:21] I because it's like it's not at it's not critical to the plot

[00:11:26] It goes to really hammer home how hard everything is on mars

[00:11:29] But at that point in the movie the viewer understands this

[00:11:33] The states feel real. They don't need to you know drive it home any further

[00:11:36] Yeah

[00:11:37] You left the torture scene for me in it where um as he's driving along

[00:11:43] You start playing waterloo by apa

[00:11:46] And i've told this story before but I took a trip in 74 up to the

[00:11:51] world's fair in spokane, washington and my best friend who was with me purposely put

[00:11:57] Waterloo on every cassette he had of the trip because he knew it was going to torture me

[00:12:03] And so when that came up in the film I went my my god i'm having ptsd about that

[00:12:14] Is that any different from africa

[00:12:22] I'm the opposite. I have whatever affliction

[00:12:25] Yeah, I can just listen to that song on repeat like

[00:12:29] I just absolutely love that song. Well, I don't even know the lyrics. I just I just total

[00:12:35] Because weezer did a remake which yeah, that one's actually I think that's pretty good too

[00:12:39] Yeah, I like it my five and a half year old loves it. We are listening to that two or three times

[00:12:45] Every time we're in the car. That's his like his choice song right now

[00:12:51] Have you seen moonfall andy I haven't I mean

[00:12:55] Oh, well, that's why it takes a special meaning

[00:13:02] For the africa thing tyke comes in from so yeah, sorry about that

[00:13:06] Like for me, it's like I don't need my science fiction to be scientifically accurate, right?

[00:13:11] Like I love my favorite. My favorite science fiction property is doctor who which is just about the softest sci-fi

[00:13:18] You can have yeah, it's just about fantasy. I love star wars. I love star trek. Those are you know space opera

[00:13:25] Whatever. So I don't need my sci-fi to be

[00:13:28] Scientifically accurate. Okay, I do need the rules of the universe to be internally consistent

[00:13:35] So that's exactly what I say all the time

[00:13:38] Yeah, that's all I need but moonfall and i'm judging a book by its cover here because I never watched it

[00:13:44] It just looked so stupid

[00:13:46] like it was

[00:13:48] The concept everything about it. I heard i'm just like

[00:13:52] I don't want to watch this

[00:13:55] The funny thing was is that neil degrasse neil degrasse was on steven culbert's show

[00:14:00] And when he talked to me, he said well, what's your least favorite science fiction film? He goes

[00:14:04] Well, it was armageddon for a long time

[00:14:07] But then I watched moonfall and he went like this. He went oh my god

[00:14:13] There's another one

[00:14:15] Yeah

[00:14:16] Actually, I think the most I would say though that if we're going to go into these superlatives I would say the worst

[00:14:23] I don't know if you'd even call it science fiction. It's clifi was the um,

[00:14:28] The day after tomorrow, right? Oh, yeah

[00:14:32] Okay

[00:14:32] So if you call that science fiction, I would say that's the worst science fiction because I think

[00:14:37] It actually did harm

[00:14:39] To

[00:14:40] The cause it was trying to help like really it was trying

[00:14:44] Yeah, it's the reefer madness of environmentalism food films. It is so stupid and so

[00:14:51] implausible scientifically that it may you come out of that movie

[00:14:57] taking

[00:14:58] environmentalism less seriously

[00:15:00] That was sort of where I was we recently watched and talked about silent running

[00:15:06] And I I struggled through that film

[00:15:09] Um, even though I I very much care about environmental things and what some people call a practical environmentalist silent running also

[00:15:17] It's a little odd. Yeah, okay

[00:15:20] That film for me, but I digress

[00:15:22] Okay

[00:15:23] I'm uh, i'm not going to delve into the into politics. I don't I don't talk about politics

[00:15:29] I'm not going to get into the politics of environmentalism

[00:15:31] But if you care about environmentalism if that's the thing that's important to you the day after tomorrow

[00:15:38] just

[00:15:40] Like works against its own cost. Yeah, so so bringing up the question of accuracy in science fiction

[00:15:47] So we at the very beginning of this diana mentioned robinson caruso on mars

[00:15:53] Uh, yes, have you ever seen it? Absolutely

[00:15:57] Did it?

[00:15:59] Influence me did you go like?

[00:16:01] I I saw that movie

[00:16:03] I need to correct all the errors because as we discussed because we did a we did a comparison of the two films

[00:16:10] I don't think there's anything scientifically inaccurate in that movie

[00:16:14] Um, you can be on mars. You just take your little red oxygen pills and you'll be fine

[00:16:19] Don't forget your monkey

[00:16:21] No, no mona's she's the queen

[00:16:24] I mean I watched that movie when it first came out when I was a kid

[00:16:27] So it's always been a favorite of mine

[00:16:30] So we we did a episode we talked about the two different films and as adina said

[00:16:38] Back in 1962 when it was worked on we didn't really have the working knowledge of mars, right that we have now

[00:16:46] Even since the martian my book came out. We've learned so much about mars that several plot elements have been invalidated

[00:16:54] Um like oh interesting

[00:16:57] Yeah, when I wrote the martian at the time that I wrote the martian

[00:17:01] The general understanding and belief among the scientific community was that mars was just bone dry

[00:17:07] That there was very little water on mars. They might if there was any water it would be up at the poles

[00:17:14] You know as ice and the poles might actually just be frozen carbon dioxide. So there might not be much water at all

[00:17:20] After I so the martian the the print book came out in 2013

[00:17:25] And um, then curiosity landed afterward. I don't remember exactly when maybe curiosity curiosity landed

[00:17:32] After I had finished the book long since

[00:17:35] Curiosity landed scooped up the martian soil and said hey, there's a jet load of water in here

[00:17:40] It's like

[00:17:41] A lot and it turns out that for every cubic meter of martian soil

[00:17:47] It's supposed to be called regolith. I call it soil fight me

[00:17:51] Um for every cubic meter of martian soil, there's about 35 liters of water ice in it

[00:17:59] If you filled a refrigerator with martian soil and extracted all the water you would have 70 liters

[00:18:04] Which is like 35 two liter bottles of water. Wow

[00:18:07] so

[00:18:08] It's like mark didn't have to do any of that crap

[00:18:12] Where he reduced hydrazine and blew himself up to make hydrogen and mix it

[00:18:16] Mm-hmm

[00:18:17] He could have just melted he could just brought dirt inside and melted it and extract the water that way extract the water

[00:18:24] And then make a primitive steel to distill it and get the percoriates out you'd be done

[00:18:28] but um, but yeah, uh, we didn't know that at the time so my kind of like

[00:18:34] ham-fisted excuse now as I say like well

[00:18:38] Curiosity is at the base of mount sharp which is on the other side of mars

[00:18:42] from

[00:18:43] Asadalia planitia and just like here on earth. We have the amazon rainforest and the sahara desert

[00:18:49] Mars could have different climate zones as well. So I claim asadalia planitia is a desert

[00:18:55] And no one can put me wrong until you send a probe. So bite me

[00:18:58] We're not going to bite you

[00:19:00] Do you ever have like the urge to rewrite to update any details with with new information?

[00:19:07] No, it's uh, it is what it is. It's a product of its time

[00:19:11] As time goes by i'm sure other aspects of it will be proven false other assumptions that we've been making about mars have turned out

[00:19:17] To be wrong and that's okay

[00:19:20] Some of my favorite science fiction stories have things in them that are based on

[00:19:25] You know our understanding of science at the time that have now been disproven and I still love them

[00:19:29] Yeah, like there's a there's a hind-line novel where there's this ship that can travel at near light speed

[00:19:34] And they go around exploring planets looking for possible habitable planets and stuff

[00:19:39] And anyway at one point they get too close to a black hole. They're thrusting their excited all this science is like accurate, too

[00:19:45] Uh, not a black hole but just a star whatever big gravity well and they had to thrust

[00:19:51] The whole ship was pulling like 12 g's and they're like, oh god, you know

[00:19:56] What about the photographic plates?

[00:19:58] Because they've been documenting everything by taking photos and those plates are of course glass because that's how that works

[00:20:04] And they're like if we pull too much jeez the plates are gonna crack and break in the hole and all of our work will be ruined

[00:20:12] You know, so that was very stressful for them

[00:20:14] And i'm just like that's just now you read that it's charming

[00:20:18] It's just like you don't go like oh my god. They didn't have they don't have like, you know

[00:20:23] digital cameras in this era of interstellar travel, but no it just

[00:20:28] That wasn't a thing they thought of back then

[00:20:31] So we just you said you like tangents, um, we love tangents, thank you I know I know

[00:20:38] um

[00:20:39] so

[00:20:42] Well, oh my my friends and I had sorry my friends and I in the 1980s we were um, you know

[00:20:49] obviously

[00:20:50] Uh being science dorks matt members of the math club

[00:20:54] chess club debate club stuff like that

[00:20:56] We did spend a lot of time just drowning in women

[00:20:59] But also

[00:21:02] We played a lot of dnd

[00:21:04] Just to get more ladies, right?

[00:21:07] Yeah

[00:21:09] Um, yeah, we played a lot of dnd and we made up our own role playing game

[00:21:14] That was a science fiction based role playing game

[00:21:17] And so we would play that all the time

[00:21:19] And it over the years developed this whole setting genre and stuff like that

[00:21:24] What was funny is like just for the hell of it. We played it again. We got together

[00:21:28] You know, we're all in our 50s now. We we played it again and we decided like

[00:21:32] Okay, the setting is what it is. Those are the rules

[00:21:36] Like so the fact that this futuristic universe like they never invented like, you know

[00:21:42] tablet pcs

[00:21:44] Or you know or anything like that?

[00:21:47] Nobody has like a cell phone. You have a wrist communicator, you know stuff like that

[00:21:52] And i'm like and that is the way the universe is not updating it. So it's this

[00:21:57] You know, you have to get to a galacta net terminal

[00:22:01] To look up any information on like the internet didn't exist when we invented this so he said there are these

[00:22:07] galacta net terminals that you would go to

[00:22:11] and

[00:22:12] Yeah, so well it's

[00:22:14] It's true when you go back and you watch some of the you know, specifically star trek next generation

[00:22:19] And you see like the like the thick pads that they have which are

[00:22:23] You know similar to our tablets, but they're almost sometimes single use

[00:22:27] As they like go through them and you know, we have these devices now that are

[00:22:31] Multi-use. Um, it is but yes, we can still of course all watch it's

[00:22:36] classic trek classic trek is my favorite of the trek series is this and um, I mean that's just

[00:22:44] Hilariously outdated, you know, it's like

[00:22:47] Um, you know, they they call their little data storage things tapes they you know

[00:22:54] And they were just bright colored pieces of wood it looked like, you know, I mean, yeah. Yeah

[00:23:00] Cartridges basically

[00:23:06] It's still mind-blowing to me and it's cool when I share

[00:23:09] with my kids who

[00:23:11] Love everything to do with space. We recently visited kennedy space center in florida

[00:23:17] Just fascinated by it

[00:23:19] Um to tell them that my cell phone has more computing power

[00:23:24] Than the apollo. Yeah, it's just um, but absolutely mind-blowing

[00:23:29] Our microwave has more computing power. Oh my goodness

[00:23:33] It's probably got a 6802 chip in it. It's got an arm compatible chip to do unbelievable

[00:23:39] The apollo program would have killed to have just one of those chips

[00:23:44] Oh my god

[00:23:45] Yeah, I mean I remember seeing that like the the the lem had like

[00:23:51] 8k worth of memory or something like that. Everything was line of sight data transfer and you know

[00:23:57] Yeah

[00:23:57] Well, also they invented the the engineers on that invented a lot of so I was a computer programmer for 25 years

[00:24:05] They invented a lot of really neat shit

[00:24:09] That we still use today in software engineering the one thing they did was they invented multi-threaded programming

[00:24:16] For the purpose of that where the computer is doing multiple different things at once and sharing processor cycles

[00:24:21] And even the idea of priorities so it said like these tasks are more important than those tasks

[00:24:26] So if you're getting overloaded stop doing these and start doing those

[00:24:31] And when paul 11 was landing they had told them when you're landing you can't turn on the

[00:24:39] The um, there's a program that would like

[00:24:42] Get images of the start try to figure out the orientation of the ship based on stars, right?

[00:24:47] And they said you can't be running that when you're landing because the computer is busy dealing with the ground radar and figuring all that stuff out

[00:24:55] And but at the time nobody understood that about computers nobody understood the idea of a of processing power as being a limited resource

[00:25:03] People were used to like mechanical systems or it's like whatever you turn the crank and then goes and so buzz aldrin ignored that

[00:25:09] And he was like i'm gonna turn on the orienting software while we're landing

[00:25:13] And so they were coming in for a landing and the computer got overloaded

[00:25:17] Too much too much stuff to do so

[00:25:20] The computer because the engineers were that awesome and they invented like multi-threaded programming and priority management

[00:25:28] The computer said this is too much stuff to do i'm going to focus on the ground radar and i'm going to ignore

[00:25:33] I'm just gonna not do this task that they just told me to do i'm not going to do the stellar orientation

[00:25:40] And so it threw up an error saying like hey, um, I can't do that

[00:25:45] And so while they're landing they just get this numerical error code

[00:25:48] That they had to kind of very quickly call back to houston say what the hell is this and houston said like

[00:25:54] You know they they ended up calling into the like engineering department thing

[00:25:57] What the hell was that and the engineers are like, I don't have time to explain but you can continue the landing

[00:26:07] Yep error 1202 was a 1202 and then 1203 and 12. Okay. Yeah, I remember that

[00:26:14] So i'm going to segue into the fact that then you wrote another novel that was based on the moon

[00:26:20] Yes, also known as andy weir's other book

[00:26:24] Well, there's other books. I mean we're gonna talk about project hill mary too

[00:26:27] But artemis which is now artemis is the name of you know nassus return to the moon and onto mars program

[00:26:33] So I hear the I hear the word artemis daily in my in my life these days. I'm sure yes

[00:26:39] Tell us about that book

[00:26:41] Well that book I mean, uh

[00:26:43] So that one I started off by with the simple question. I was like what is humanity's first city?

[00:26:49] That it's not on earth going to be going

[00:26:51] Like and I want it to be a proper city not just like a base

[00:26:54] You know like a first city and i'm like, okay

[00:26:57] And so I went back and said like well, where where would you build a city?

[00:27:01] You could so we've got three obvious choices either in orbit or on the moon or on mars

[00:27:07] Like those are the obvious choices for the first

[00:27:10] extraterrestrial human city

[00:27:12] And i'm like, okay in orbit means you've got to send every single gram of mass for that city up from earth

[00:27:19] Uh, if you do it on the moon or mars you get to use the local resources

[00:27:23] And then like smelt minerals that are already there

[00:27:26] So you can take advantage of that and then mars is a hell of a lot harder to get to than the moon

[00:27:31] So the moon seems to be the obvious answer. The next question is why would anyone build a city on the moon?

[00:27:37] Like

[00:27:38] And that's always been unsatisfying to me in science fiction people are like, oh, you know

[00:27:43] Yeah, the excuses for why like lunar cities are built like one of them is like, oh, uh, earth got overpopulated

[00:27:49] I'm like really did you colonize the ocean floor?

[00:27:52] Did you colonize the sahara? Did you colonize antarctica? Because all those things are a lot easier to colonize than the moon

[00:27:59] Next up it's like oh the environment got destroyed and people couldn't live on earth anymore

[00:28:04] I'm like, okay, whatever you're going to build on the moon building on earth

[00:28:07] It's going to be airtight, right? The environment it's not an issue

[00:28:12] If you think the environment on earth is bad, just try the moon. I mean

[00:28:17] You might cough a little bit, but at least you don't die instantly, right?

[00:28:21] so and then there's also the idea of like oh this was uh,

[00:28:25] An elite ruling class is oppressing people. So these people went to the moon

[00:28:30] Like to go not be oppressed i'm like if you have the resources to build a city on the moon

[00:28:35] You are not the oppressed, right?

[00:28:39] So I decided the only reason cities ever get built is for economic reasons

[00:28:44] Every city in the world exists for some economic reason. It was either a convenient

[00:28:48] It was either near a place where you can use logging or some money or it's a good port or

[00:28:54] Or near some really good arable cropland or something

[00:28:57] So I said like

[00:28:59] There is nothing on the moon that you that earth doesn't have right?

[00:29:04] Some people like to say like oh maybe helium three, you know

[00:29:07] The high high isotopes of helium that can power future fusion reactors. I'm like, okay

[00:29:12] If that were the case, you just have a fully automated system for collecting it. You don't need a city full of people

[00:29:18] You know

[00:29:19] So i'm like why do you have a city full of people and I just say tourism

[00:29:23] Yes tourism is inherently yes people like you don't you don't automate tourism, right?

[00:29:29] And so I said like, okay

[00:29:31] Tourists would want to go to the moon fine that can only happen if it's cheap enough for middle-class people to go to the moon

[00:29:36] Okay, so that's the conceit of the story and then from there if you could go to the moon, where would you go?

[00:29:41] Well, I'd want to look at the apollo 11 mining site

[00:29:43] So that's the obvious place to put a city and it kind of built it out from there

[00:29:47] And then I said like, okay

[00:29:48] How do I build my city?

[00:29:50] All right, start with the reactor and start smelting the ore that's just lying around on the surface

[00:29:54] It'll give you aluminum and oxygen

[00:29:56] It gives you aluminum to build your city and oxygen to fill it. It's awesome

[00:30:00] And then just kept building out from there

[00:30:03] Um, so I had the city fully designed and then i'm like, all right. Awesome

[00:30:06] I should probably try to come up with a story

[00:30:10] And fill it with fill it with ne'er do well ne'er do well

[00:30:14] Right. Yeah

[00:30:15] Well, then I started to go into the psychology of what a frontier city is like and I figured

[00:30:19] Artemis is basically a resort town. So I based it

[00:30:23] Its economy and its general kind of society around resort towns like in the caribbean and in holand and stuff like that

[00:30:31] And so you've got the

[00:30:32] Extremely high-end hotels and then the extreme poverty. I wasn't trying to make any sort of point about anything

[00:30:37] It's just the emergent behavior

[00:30:40] And then the like kind of very very low amount of law and law enforcement

[00:30:44] And their punishments are usually just like hey, he'll send you back to earth. I mean they don't have you

[00:30:50] Yeah, goodbye

[00:30:51] Yeah, they don't have a prison system or anything like that

[00:30:54] And I had a lot of fun with that and I wanted to I mean it sold well

[00:30:58] It got to I think number six on the new york times bestseller list

[00:31:01] The audiobook is one of the best-selling books audible ever had but

[00:31:05] It just wasn't as popular as the martian which is a pretty high bar to try to beat right

[00:31:12] And so my you know publisher wasn't that interesting I wanted to write sequels

[00:31:15] I wanted to have Artemis be a setting that I had all sorts of stories take place in

[00:31:21] Okay, and I wanted to ask. Yeah, yeah your books are all standalone

[00:31:26] Yeah

[00:31:27] and I was going to make Artemis like a

[00:31:29] A

[00:31:31] I was going to make like every book would be a different main character

[00:31:35] Like so the next book was gonna be Rudy the cop. Oh, yeah, the main character is solving a murder

[00:31:39] It's going to be a murder mystery

[00:31:41] So I often call Artemis just uh, chinatown on the moon the movie chinatown

[00:31:46] Chinatown is all about the nasty stuff that happens in the underbelly for a city grow

[00:31:53] um, so

[00:31:54] Since i've got sort of a noir thing going on

[00:31:56] I was going to go for a murder mystery like I was going to call it murder on the moon

[00:32:00] And Rudy was going to be solving a murder

[00:32:04] Which there was a murder on them in the story and so yes, you still have that in there and well

[00:32:09] There was a murder. No, no, no i'm talking about after I wrote it. Oh after we're done

[00:32:13] Yeah, I was pitching this new idea to the publisher and the public was like

[00:32:17] What else again?

[00:32:20] And you got project tail mary out of that

[00:32:22] I mean project tail mary instead no one got okay

[00:32:25] I will say this to you andy. I usually take

[00:32:29] Months to read a book. I'm a very slow reader. I pick it up. I put it down

[00:32:33] You gotta sound out the bigger words. Oh, yeah. Hello. Goodbye, you know

[00:32:39] You're not pastor you're simply

[00:32:46] What's big again, yeah, I know

[00:32:49] It's in big letters, no, but I read artemis in 10 days

[00:32:55] Because I couldn't put it down. I love jazz. I think she's one of the coolest

[00:33:01] characters

[00:33:02] And adina over here wrote has four books about this lovely girl

[00:33:08] and I always thought that boy if jazz if if ruby

[00:33:13] Ruby was a bad girl if ruby was a bad girl. She'd be jazz

[00:33:18] And and just all the characters and the way you laid it out and thank you so much

[00:33:24] It was in the minority

[00:33:26] Most people didn't like jazz very much

[00:33:30] Yeah, well I got a lot of feedback from people and it's hard to sort out the the bullshit from the reality

[00:33:35] You have to read between the lines when you're reading reader feedback to really learn

[00:33:39] I care about it. I want to hear it. I want to get better. I want to know what i'm doing wrong and get better

[00:33:45] A lot of people just did not like jazz. So regardless of whatever reason they state

[00:33:50] The fact of the matter is they didn't like jazz. So that means I didn't do something right, right?

[00:33:56] It's my job to make people like I think

[00:33:59] The thing is that she was she was so much an instrument of her own problems

[00:34:05] Like she was she was the reason she was having all these problems and it's difficult to root for someone who was that

[00:34:12] Um frustratingly self-destructive

[00:34:15] But that's the beauty of her character because she has to unravel it and at the end

[00:34:21] Which i'm not going to say because but at the end

[00:34:24] When she when she survives, it's like yay. I didn't want anything to happen to her

[00:34:29] Because she's such a likable character to me

[00:34:33] Likeable and then all her narrative all the people that were her father her friends everything

[00:34:38] It was it was a collection of people that I enjoyed reading about so

[00:34:43] Thank you one thing i've learned. Oh, sorry. I was gonna say the thing that I liked about jazz

[00:34:47] So when I first started reading artemis, i'll be honest. I was very

[00:34:52] Um hesitant or nervous because often I encountered male authors writing a main character

[00:34:59] And i'll tell you though. I didn't get the cringy feeling I get you know with okay

[00:35:03] So that you know

[00:35:04] Well, and the thing is the thing that a lot of male authors do that like I want to you know punch them sometimes

[00:35:11] Is when they make like all the female character does is care about how they look and i'm going to go out in my skinny

[00:35:18] Thing and all I care about is sex and things like that. It's like yeah

[00:35:22] No, you have absolutely no idea what like what we are like or what we think well

[00:35:28] And I don't claim to uh, no either what I did was um

[00:35:33] Uh, what is it? Uh, so I wrote it right and I then I gave it to every woman in my circle of trust

[00:35:41] like people every woman I knew that I could trust not to just like leave the

[00:35:45] We could leave the manuscript on one. So it's like my mom my girlfriend my um

[00:35:52] My editor was a man but his boss the publisher was a woman

[00:35:55] And she was willing to take time out and give it a woman pass for me

[00:35:59] The copy editor is a woman and so we said normally you're told just to copy editing, but I want

[00:36:05] I want uh creative feedback on the plausibility of this woman

[00:36:09] And then I also got um some Muslims involved stuff like that

[00:36:13] I wanted to try to be authentic and they gave me feedback and I made changes

[00:36:16] I still got a lot of shit from women though. Um, yeah

[00:36:18] Well, it was really no it didn't the fact that it didn't outright maybe may

[00:36:22] Like basically want me to because i'll stop if I encounter that I will stop reading

[00:36:26] I can't read that

[00:36:28] Yeah, so no that this was definitely yes much much better than that because yeah, I'm one of those absolutely

[00:36:35] Sensitive to that. So I thought you did a good job

[00:36:38] Oh, thank you this very famous reddit post or male writers writing female characters

[00:36:43] Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds cascading over her naked chest

[00:36:49] She stretched her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun

[00:36:52] She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric

[00:36:57] She breasted boobily to the stairs and tittyed downstairs

[00:37:00] Yep

[00:37:01] Yep

[00:37:01] No people there are people who still write like that and try to be right like that

[00:37:06] And they think they're being serious and they think they're they're accurately capturing something and I have frustrated

[00:37:13] So one thing I got a lot of feedback on was um, I did get a lot of feedback from women

[00:37:17] Say jazz wasn't a realistic female character. However, I think

[00:37:22] uh

[00:37:23] I think she was a somewhat realistic woman. She was just a woman that they didn't like like yeah

[00:37:30] Yes, yes, it's like I would not like her, you know, I wouldn't want to hang out with her

[00:37:34] I don't root for her. You lost me as a character

[00:37:37] So here's my dark little secret is jazz's flaws are all my flaws. She's based on me

[00:37:43] She's based on how I was when I was her age

[00:37:46] She's 26 when I was 26. I was I was like that I was immature

[00:37:51] For my age, um

[00:37:54] Like uh self-destructive always trying to take a shortcut rather than just doing the work

[00:37:59] um

[00:37:59] Mostly the instrument of my own problems daddy issues as well. And so um

[00:38:05] like all these things are just aspects of me that I put into the character and it turns out

[00:38:10] Uh, if you take all my flaws and make a character out of them, it's not a very

[00:38:15] Okay, this is gonna kind of segue into the third book that you wrote

[00:38:20] Before that say go ahead. I do have one thing I want to say

[00:38:22] The only thing the only time I get mad about feedback is when people say like oh, he's a male writer

[00:38:26] So he wrote his female character as a slut and i'm like

[00:38:29] That pisses me off because i'm like she's not a slut first off

[00:38:33] Why are you such a my fictional character second off?

[00:38:36] She doesn't have sex in the book at all

[00:38:40] No, she never tries out

[00:38:42] No, she never tries out the reusable condom. That's right

[00:38:46] She

[00:38:47] She doesn't the only thing she does in the entire book is she kisses a boy that she kind of likes

[00:38:54] Yeah, that's okay. That's true. Yes. Yes. Yeah

[00:38:57] Well, that is i'm sorry. That's not a slut

[00:39:00] And her entire all you learn about her sexual history

[00:39:05] In in the book is that she's 26 years old and she had a boyfriend once

[00:39:10] It turned out to be gay

[00:39:13] Um

[00:39:16] Okay, that's it so the one the one tooth that one to say come on no no

[00:39:23] She was I thought she was a perfectly like said it

[00:39:26] It was not a bad care like again

[00:39:28] There was that difference between is this terrible writing versus do I just not like you know that kind of thing?

[00:39:33] No, and I thought you did a good job is this is an actual. Thank you

[00:39:36] This is an actual person an actual female person. So yeah

[00:39:40] So the segue i'm going to make to the third book is

[00:39:43] In the martian and in artemis

[00:39:47] I'll use the term salty language. Yes used quite prevenantly and I must say

[00:39:53] The opening of the martian the very first sentence in that book

[00:39:59] Is the greatest opening sentence of all time?

[00:40:03] I mean you got you've got you know, it was the you know, best of times the worst of time

[00:40:10] But to make to maintain the integrity of our show I will use the opening line as if

[00:40:18] Sheldon cooper said it he said

[00:40:21] He said

[00:40:23] I'm pretty much coitus

[00:40:26] And when I read that when I read that opening line, I went

[00:40:30] What the heck I got to know about this so that when it went into

[00:40:35] Artemis and it's even more

[00:40:38] Salty language, I believe is an art

[00:40:42] Yeah, I don't remember Artemis being

[00:40:45] There is swearing. It's a frontier town people swear in life. But yeah

[00:40:49] Yeah, yeah

[00:40:51] But but that's okay because that established who their characters were and that they were honest and open

[00:40:57] But when we get to project hail mary

[00:41:02] You I don't know I can't recall a single salty word in it

[00:41:07] Not not from grace some of the other characters swear grace swears exactly once in this in the whole is it

[00:41:14] That's right. Yeah, I could can think about it, but that's okay because that's his character

[00:41:19] Yeah, and I like that. I was like

[00:41:21] I had fun with him just never swearing and I thought that was a neat because I

[00:41:26] I defined that he was like a junior high school teacher and I thought maybe he has so

[00:41:31] Completely like i'm a parent. I have a two-year-old boy

[00:41:34] He's about to turn three and already like I have pretty much trained myself out swearing

[00:41:40] Even when he's not around I say stupid things that are just like oh, excuse me. I gotta go potty, you know

[00:41:47] Am I

[00:41:49] Male popularity. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah

[00:41:52] So I just had those big poopy those

[00:41:56] Those kids repeat everything. Yeah, absolutely

[00:41:59] everything

[00:42:00] Oh, do you want to segue into talking about project hail mary? Yes

[00:42:05] If people don't know kids in

[00:42:07] 2026 ryan gosling is gonna play rayan in this wonderful movie

[00:42:13] Is that right? Right ryan gosling?

[00:42:15] Yeah, yeah, it's confusing actually because they have the same initial so it's ryan gosling as ryan graced

[00:42:21] Yeah, why can't they cast him? Yes, that's it part of the casting decision

[00:42:25] That's it. It's just like we need to find somebody whose initials are rg

[00:42:30] So are you like what is your level of involvement? You know in the pretty you know, is it the same as martian?

[00:42:36] More less. No, i'm much more involved this time. I'm actually a producer this time. Oh, wow

[00:42:42] So the reason is money, um, so basically, um

[00:42:47] when uh

[00:42:48] This time everybody wanted the rights to project. Hail mary the martian had proved

[00:42:53] Had made a ton of money

[00:42:55] Um project hail mary was selling really well everybody knew okay. We can definitely turn a profit on this

[00:43:00] so all the studios were

[00:43:01] Coming to my agency we want this and i'm like

[00:43:04] I told my agent. All right, let's flex a little bit tell them. I want front-end groups

[00:43:08] I want a percentage of box office like not the back end points that always work out to be zero because of hollywood accounting. I want

[00:43:16] I want what the big boys get you know

[00:43:18] and

[00:43:19] and most of the

[00:43:21] Companies said most of the studios said like well

[00:43:24] We don't do that for writers because writers are of course filthy disgusting creatures that deserve to be in the mud

[00:43:30] um, whereas they only give front-end grows to like

[00:43:34] producers the director

[00:43:36] Big name stars that sort of thing. That's it right and how to be a producer

[00:43:41] Right. Well, that's all the companies said like we don't do that for writers

[00:43:45] But then mgm really wanted it and said we don't do that for writers, but we do it for producers

[00:43:49] So let's make you a producer

[00:43:52] And so i'm a producer mainly just to get that front-end gross, but it means I do have authority

[00:43:58] I just stay out of the way

[00:44:01] And let the real producers do their job but it's weird every now and then they need my approval for something

[00:44:06] Like I needed my approval to cast. Um, brian gosling. I was like

[00:44:11] Yes

[00:44:12] sure

[00:44:15] Does he does he sing a dancing as well? It's like in la la land, you know

[00:44:19] There is a little bit of singing believe it. Oh my goodness. He'll be a reversion of ken. We'll just do it as uh,

[00:44:26] A little yeah, it's not not that but a little bit of singing a little bit of dancing

[00:44:30] Okay

[00:44:32] So how are they doing? How are like from a technology standpoint? How are they doing?

[00:44:38] The spider yeah, how are they doing? Um, so what they we put out a casting call on the planet erid

[00:44:45] We're hoping

[00:44:47] to uh

[00:44:48] Get authentic a real iridium to play the role because people don't like it when you're an alien face, you know

[00:44:54] You want a real iridium?

[00:44:56] no, um

[00:44:57] So

[00:44:58] everybody involved in the production

[00:45:01] Is especially the directors everybody understands getting rocky right is the most important thing. Oh, yeah

[00:45:07] It is the most important thing. He's everybody's favorite character

[00:45:10] The dynamic between rocky and ryan is the whole heart of the story, right?

[00:45:15] So they're putting a lot of work into that. So what they're gonna do. I mean he's

[00:45:20] They're not changing him. He looks he's going to look like he's described in the book

[00:45:24] In fact a fan sent me this I gotta show you this is so cool. This is a oh, wow

[00:45:29] Yeah

[00:45:31] He made a little rocky model and he sent it to me. Isn't that amazing? It's like so detailed

[00:45:36] That is so cool. I wish everyone could see I wish you know, folks could see this but we're seeing a model of rocky

[00:45:42] Yeah, that's great. That's a podcast. I guess not that helpful

[00:45:45] This piece of paper i'm holding up is very simple and easily reproduced cure for cancer

[00:45:54] Thank you for sharing that with us I will I will get get that to the hospital soon

[00:45:59] um, because you

[00:46:01] Yeah, so i'm still sorry. It's still answering this question

[00:46:05] um, yeah, so

[00:46:06] Uh, the short answer is it's going to be exactly what you'd expect a combination of practical effects and cgi

[00:46:12] They want to use practical effects wherever possible

[00:46:15] Um cgi for things like, you know when he's like calling around above the wall and stuff like that. You can't

[00:46:21] Do that, uh, but yeah, they're taking it real real seriously

[00:46:25] Are you allowed to say who's gonna voice rocky?

[00:46:28] I uh

[00:46:29] Would not be allowed to say and also I don't know

[00:46:32] Okay, that's fair. No, that's fair. We haven't we haven't we haven't cast that yet

[00:46:36] The only the only casting we've done is well

[00:46:40] We have cast a couple of minor characters and I can't talk about that. But that's fine. Um

[00:46:45] Just some minor ones and of course ryan gosling

[00:46:48] Okay, it's so it's got to be so difficult or you know i'm imagining on a strat right now

[00:46:53] We're working on getting strat and then we're gonna have to work. We're gonna figure out voice of rocky

[00:46:58] Cool

[00:46:59] So when you're writing the book, you know, and again, it's really hard

[00:47:03] to get

[00:47:05] non

[00:47:06] humanoid aliens

[00:47:08] Right or done in a way that like I could actually imagine these folks existing

[00:47:14] One of the fun with it, sorry, yeah one of the things that really impressed me about

[00:47:19] um rocky and his species was their lack of knowledge

[00:47:25] about radiation

[00:47:27] Yeah, they made an interstellar ship

[00:47:29] But they made in a hurry. They didn't do a lot of space travel and their planet is incredibly well shielded against radiation

[00:47:36] Like their home world

[00:47:37] Um, so their home world has uh, 29 atmospheres of ammonia

[00:47:41] It's an incredibly thick atmosphere and it's got an incredibly strong magnetic field

[00:47:46] Um, so just no radiation gets to the surface like at all

[00:47:51] So they have

[00:47:53] Like just come up with that

[00:47:54] Well, I came up backwards. I went backwards

[00:47:57] I started off by saying like i'm going to invent a species of fictional alien race

[00:48:02] That lives on a real exoplanet

[00:48:05] So erid is a real planet in the real universe that is at in orbit around the star 40 eridani

[00:48:13] It's 40 eridani. Um

[00:48:15] B I think or so if 40 eridani a b

[00:48:19] Which is the weird nomenclature they use it's very close to its star

[00:48:23] It's closer to cut i'm sorry. It's closer to 40 eridani than mercury is to the sun

[00:48:29] Um, it orbits every 46 days. It's that close and i'm like

[00:48:33] Uh other things that are known about the planet are that it's about eight times the mass of earth

[00:48:39] Um, we know its orbital period around the star and so on so i'm like, okay

[00:48:43] I'm going to take everything that's known about it and keep true to that

[00:48:46] And then anything that isn't defined or isn't known I get to make up

[00:48:50] So i'm like I want there to be life on this planet, but this planet would be hot as hell

[00:48:54] Like it's right next to a star. So this causes a number of problems

[00:48:59] First off really really hot

[00:49:01] second off

[00:49:02] Um, this uh, the sun tends to sandblast an atmosphere off a planet like so it'll blast like that's why mercury has no atmosphere

[00:49:11] My mars has very little atmosphere

[00:49:13] Um earth only gets to keep our atmosphere because we have a magnetic field protecting us from the earth's like solar wind

[00:49:20] So i'm like, okay

[00:49:22] so this planet is going to have a

[00:49:25] Really powerful magnetic field the way you get a powerful magnetic field is by having a molten iron

[00:49:31] A molten ferromagnetic core so I said fine

[00:49:33] It's molten iron just like earth and the planet is spinning really fast the rotation of a planet

[00:49:39] The faster it rotates the more powerful its magnetic field will be

[00:49:42] So you need a liquid metal core and it rotating so I decided okay now i've now learned something about this planet

[00:49:49] It rotates really fast. The length of a day is like six hours

[00:49:53] Okay to get that powerful magnetic field next up. It's going to be really really hot like so hot

[00:49:59] How do I have liquid water well you can have liquid water when it's really hot if you have a lot of pressure

[00:50:05] So I said it's 29. It's 29 atmospheres of pressure on the surface

[00:50:09] Which means water at like 210 degrees celsius with like 400 and something fahrenheit is still a liquid

[00:50:16] So i'm like, that's the environment that has this life. It's liquid water but way outside the goldilocks. So right

[00:50:22] Okay

[00:50:23] Then i'm like, okay what evolves on that planet? I'm like that is a thick ass atmosphere

[00:50:27] I don't know how much light's going to get through that like venus gets very little light than the surface. It's got a big atmosphere

[00:50:33] And so I said well who says light has to get to the bottom

[00:50:37] It could be a biosphere. That's kind of like an ocean

[00:50:40] There's life living up in the air like little single cellular life that like is almost like air algae

[00:50:47] That absorbs sunlight and then does that and things beneath that eat that and things beneath that eat that just like the oceans

[00:50:53] All the way down to the surface of the planet where no light gets to but there's still an active biosphere because the energy ends up

[00:51:00] coming down as life

[00:51:03] And so i'm like no light goes no light makes it to the surface. No need to evolve vision. It's not useful

[00:51:09] and so

[00:51:11] They instead evolved like really really good echolocation like echolocation that they can

[00:51:17] get a full

[00:51:19] Sense of their 3d environment from echolocation

[00:51:22] and fine tuning, you know all the way down to like

[00:51:26] Just like how you can kind of tell the difference between different textures by looking they can hear the difference

[00:51:32] So this wall is softer than that one and this one's furry and whatever. Not sure what kind of room that is, but

[00:51:38] anyway

[00:51:39] Uh, yeah, I like that. That's not that's that's interesting. I like that

[00:51:43] So in when astrophabe when astrophabe and people always ask me this this is one thing kind of annoys me

[00:51:49] People will be like well, how could they even know their star is dimming? They don't have sight

[00:51:53] How can they even know about you know?

[00:51:55] Stars that exist at all because they don't have sight i'm like

[00:51:59] Do you have any idea how much stuff we as humans know about that?

[00:52:01] We cannot see with our biological senses like when was the last time you saw a neutrino?

[00:52:07] Right for can you can you taste cosmic radiation?

[00:52:11] Can you you know, can you smell it and I always just say like well

[00:52:16] Then I would I always turn around and say like well then how did humanity find out about the petrova line?

[00:52:21] It's infrared light. That's a frequency we can't see

[00:52:25] Because we have technology technology for us

[00:52:27] No, it's just a lot of people really get stuck on this concept of like

[00:52:31] If they can't see they wouldn't possibly have been curious about what's outside their planet, right?

[00:52:37] Right anyway radiation sickness comes from that environment means they have absolutely no defenses against radiation at all

[00:52:43] They had no need to evolve

[00:52:45] And it makes you think about what don't we know about still right?

[00:52:49] I just one last question is that we did it we did the tv

[00:52:54] We did the movie enemy mind and the discussion was how do two?

[00:52:59] Creatures from two different societies and planets communicate you did a wonderful job of explaining

[00:53:06] how

[00:53:07] He's able to communicate with rocky and how they establish a language and that

[00:53:12] Was really important in the story and you did a beautiful job of it. Thank you. Thank you so much

[00:53:18] Yeah

[00:53:19] Well, yeah andy thank you so much for joining us today

[00:53:21] And I want to say we refer back to the martian and project hill mary all the time as we are comparing

[00:53:27] You know comparing how other shows films books?

[00:53:31] How well they do it's kind of like you set a standard set of benchmark for everyone else

[00:53:36] Up to so I appreciate that so thank you

[00:53:39] Thanks so much and thank you listeners for tuning into the big sci-fi podcast

[00:53:44] Remember that you can always interact and chat with us on our facebook group or find us on instagram or twitter

[00:53:49] Or drop us a note at the big sci-fi podcast at gmail.com

[00:53:53] And so folks, it's a great big sci-fi universe out there and the voyage never ends

[00:53:58] Please always remember to extend kindness respect and understanding to all beings across the galaxy whether they can see or not

[00:54:05] Live long and prosper and join us once more for the next cosmic journey on the big sci-fi podcast