Andy Weir Audiobooks

A software engineer who spent years being turned down by publishers, Andy Weir ended up serialising a novel on his own website for a handful of readers who liked the physics. They asked for a Kindle version. He priced it at the lowest figure Amazon allowed, watched it climb the charts, and by 2014 The Martian had a hardback deal with Crown and a Ridley Scott film in preparation.

What made that first book work is what he has kept doing since: engineering as narrative. His plots run on arithmetic that genuinely checks out, on characters who solve problems rather than brood over them, and on a wisecracking voice that carries a listener through orbital mechanics without ever sounding like homework. He belongs to the optimistic wing of science fiction, where the universe is indifferent but competence and improvisation still win. Readers who normally avoid the genre tend to make an exception for him.

The Martian is the obvious way in: Mark Watney stranded on a hostile planet, improvising, keeping a log funnier than any survival story has a right to be, in a reading by Wil Wheaton that catches the sarcasm without overplaying it.

Project Hail Mary is the strongest argument anywhere for choosing audio over print. Ray Porter does things with sound that a printed page simply cannot manage, and the less you know going in, the better. Artemis, set in a city on the Moon and read by Rosario Dawson, is the lighter and more roguish outing, a heist rather than a rescue.

Start with Watney if you want the modern classic, with Ryland Grace if you want the ride of your listening year. Both are waiting below.