Andy Weir's 'Project Hail Mary' Is 'The Martian,' Again

After the runaway success of his first book The Martian, a science-driven thriller about a stranded astronaut which spawned a blockbuster movie starring Matt Damon, Andy Weir tried to do what many science fiction authors before him have attempted. It was going to be called Zhek. This story originally appeared on WIRED UK. "I thought this was going to be my magnum opus," he says. "My epic science fiction saga that everyone is going to know me for. I got about 70,000 words in and I had to abandon it, because it was just not coming together--the characters weren't interesting, the plot was crawling along. It was going to be this massive tome that nobody wanted to read."