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Slack.com slash DHQ. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them

and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Molinsky. Andy Weir has been an inspiration

to a lot of up-and-coming writers who've always hoped that if they're talented enough, if

the material is good enough, they'll be noticed and they will find their audience. Andy

spent years working as a computer programmer, and during that time he tried to get his

fiction published, but after many rejections he decided that writing might just be a hobby.

And then he started writing the Martian. He was publishing chapters to his blog, and

the buzz around the Martian became so huge he eventually got a book deal and the book

was made into an Oscar-nominated blockbuster movie starring Matt Damon as the astronaut

Mark Watney, who got stranded on Mars.

Andy Weir's third book, Project Hail Mary, just came out. It has a similar premise about

an astronaut who's stranded in space, but the story goes in a very different direction.

And by the way, this episode will contain a few spoilers about what happens in Project

Hail Mary. When the story begins, the main character,

Violin Grace, has woken up on a spaceship with total amnesia. He doesn't know how he got

there, and the rest of the crew is dead. Slowly, his memory comes back in a series of flashbacks,

and he remembers that the Earth's atmosphere is being threatened by these sort of alien

...