“A cycler orbit. Do you know that?” Andy Weir, the author of a best-selling work of science fiction, asks this question in such a way as to sound confident that I've never heard of a cycler orbit and hopeful in the remote possibility that I'm not a dullard. His face eases when I confess my ignorance. “It’s an orbit around the sun,” Weir explains, “such that an object comes close to Earth and to Mars at regular intervals.”
We met up on a bright, warm afternoon at a coffee shop in Mountain View, Calif.—aka GoogleTown USA—where we both live. Weir is the author of The Martian, a book about a man trapped on Mars that has become famous for its gripping narrative and the deep technical acumen displayed in the writing. Weir researched the heck out of what it would take to survive on the Red Planet given today’s technology and some optimistic bets on future technology. Literary agents and big-name publishers ignored Weir’s novel; sci-fi buffs were all over it when he self-published The Martian in 2011. Four years later, and there's a forthcoming movie based on his book starring Matt Damon.