How Science Made Me a Writer

Analytical essay of "How science made me a writer"

"My first book was so horrible I have deleted all copies of it". That saying is something that most people would consider a beginning of an end, and most people would probably give up, after saying that. This was not the case for Andy Weir, though. As a programmer, science has always been a passion for Andy Weir, and since he was a little kid he has always been interrested in science fiction, and at age 15 he was hired as a computer programmer for a national laboratory. Through hard work and two books that went "crappy" according to Andy, he has been able to write the novel "The Martian" which have gotten a lot of succes, even though it was never expected from himself, as he started out by selling the example on amazon for only 99 cents. This shows that it maybe hasn't been the intention for the novel to be a big succes to start with, but more just for the fun of writing it. This can also be concluded by the fact that he didn't really have many of the technical accuracies in the novel correct to start with, but got them corrected by astronauts, geologists etc.

The language in this essay is written in a way that makes it seem like if Andy Weir is talking to us in real life. He uses his humor in his language as for example: "Pretty frickin’ nerdy, right?" and "— ahem. Sorry, got carried away". This makes the essay more funny and easy to read, much more easy than if it was just plain facts. This is probably because he wants us to see what kind of person he is, and therefore he has written the essay as if how he would talk.

As he wrote the book "The Martian" he wanted to make Mark Watney's (the main character of the book) life a living hell, and of course make him strand on mars. He wanted to make him very unlucky, but didn't just want him to suffer one disastrous coincidence after the next. He also wanted him to get out of his problems again, with the help of his intelligence. He wanted him to be succesful but at the same time fallible. He also wanted Mark Watney to be a hero.