Andy Weir was born in Davis, California, in 1972. His father worked as a physicist, and his mother was an electrical engineer. Weir grew up reading science fiction and programming for Sandia National Laboratories. He went to the University of California, San Diego, where he studied computer science. He never finished his degree but instead entered the workforce as a programmer for companies such as AOL and Blizzard, a video game developer.

Weir began writing in his twenties, self-publishing his stories and comics on his website from 2001 to 2008. His first notable work was a short story called “The Egg.” Weir then had significant success with his first novel, The Martian. He published the book on his website in 2011, but Amazon soon picked it up in Kindle format. The print version, published in 2014, debuted at number 12 on the New York Times Best Seller List. The novel’s success culminated in a 2015 movie adaptation starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain.

Since the enormous success of The Martian, Weir has pursued various projects across multiple mediums, including graphic novels and television shows. Artemis is Weir’s second standalone novel. It was published in 2017 and optioned for a movie the same year.