Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

Chapter 140: A New Science Fiction Work?

The next work will definitely not be about mystery.

The idea for "The Martian" came to Luo Jinnian's mind on a very ordinary night.

That day, he had just sent the first draft of the cooperation agreement with the overseas company to Lin Yiming, turned off his computer, leaned back in his chair, picked up his phone and browsed the news for a while. Then his fingertip stopped on a news headline: "A certain country's Mars exploration program has entered a new stage and is expected to achieve a manned landing in the next few years."

He stared at the headline for a few seconds, then an image flashed in his mind of a vast, orange-red wasteland, carved by wind and sand, with a person in a spacesuit standing on that wasteland against a backdrop of endless emptiness.

He thought of that person trapped on Mars, tens of millions of kilometers away from Earth, facing a situation that would drive anyone to despair, and then said to himself, "I have to find a way to survive."

When Luo Jinnian read "The Martian" in his previous life, he was moved by its almost savage optimism, its unwavering confidence that "everything will be alright," and something more concrete: when faced with an impossible situation, one chooses to break the problem down into actionable steps and then solve them one by one.

Planting potatoes, creating water, repairing communication equipment, and waiting for rescue.

Every step was difficult, every step carried the risk of failure, but he didn't stop. Andy Weir, with an almost engineer's mindset, wrote the book as a lengthy narrative about "problem-solving." The novel *The Martian* was later adapted into a film, grossing over $600 million worldwide and becoming one of the most successful science fiction survival novels of its time.

Luo Jinnian wanted to write it down. He hadn't created any science fiction works for a long time—the brand image he had built in the domestic market in the past two years was basically all based on suspense dramas and realistic themes. (Examples: *The Hidden Corner*, *The Long Season*)

Neither "The Silent Truth" nor comedies like "Low IQ Crime" involve science fiction. Readers perceive him as someone adept at digging cracks in the fabric of reality.

If he suddenly pulled out a story about surviving on Mars, the turn might seem abrupt. But then he thought, if he stays in the same place, he'll always just be someone who runs a little faster than others on the suspense track, instead of someone who can cross different tracks and stand firm in different directions.

He needed to show others that he could not only walk on the ground, but also take a step towards something higher and farther. And The Martian finally gave him the right work to take that step.

Over the weekend, he locked himself in his rented room and opened a blank document containing the plot of *The Martian*. He didn't start typing immediately; instead, he mentally went through the entire story from beginning to end: from being separated from his teammates during a Martian sandstorm, to being stranded alone at the Martian base, to discovering that the remaining supplies would only last a few dozen days, to deciding to grow potatoes in Martian soil to extend his survival time, to successfully establishing contact with Earth, and finally, the successful rescue. The entire storyline was complete, coherent, and logically supported by solid connections between each step. He checked it over, making sure he hadn't missed any major plot points, before he began typing.

He started writing slowly. Mark Watney wakes up in a Martian base after a sandstorm, finding himself alone on the Red Planet. He doesn't describe any inner monologues in that section, but simply outlines what equipment Watney checks, what data he verifies, and what he records in his logbook. These actions are concrete, actionable, and devoid of any sentimentality—a set of guidelines.

When Luo Jinnian wrote the line "He has enough food to last for three hundred days," he paused to look at the number for a moment, and then added, "If he strictly controls his intake every day." In that simple, almost clumsy precision, he felt a narrative pleasure different from that of suspenseful narratives.

Over the next few weeks, he used his spare time each day to gradually advance the work. He wrote about Watney mixing Martian soil and feces to create a planting substrate, about him making water from hydrazine and hydrogen, about him repeatedly adjusting the angle of the rover's solar panels to maximize charging efficiency, and about how he modified the communication equipment of a broken Pathfinder lander into a signal source for contacting Earth. He wrote those paragraphs slowly because he needed to ensure that every technical step was logically consistent.

In his previous life, Andy Weir conducted extensive research and calculations while writing this book, ensuring that all scientific settings were verifiable. He didn't need to re-verify those settings when copying it, but he needed to make them appear true in his written text.

Reality is not simply about citing data; it's about making readers forget that there's another author behind that data.

When writing the section where Watney first successfully contacted Earth, Luo Jinnian paused. The original work handled that scene in a minimalist way.

Watney used the Pathfinder's old antenna to send a coded message, which took a long time to confirm on Earth that it originated from Mars. When Luo Jinnian wrote that passage, he removed some embellishments about the alternation of "despair and hope," keeping only the line, "He sent the code, then waited, waited, waited. The signal returned. His life still had a chance to be extended." After writing that sentence, he didn't continue, saved the document, and shut down his computer.

A little over a month later, the first draft was completed. The full text was a little over 100,000 words. He wrote slowly, but without procrastination, as if completing a long-term project requiring sustained focus. He couldn't afford to be distracted or daydream; every step had to be precisely placed where it should be. That evening, after finishing the first draft, he read the document from beginning to end, made minor adjustments to certain paragraphs, and finally finalized a version before sending it to Jiabei. After sending the attachment, he went to stand by the window for a while.

In the distance outside the window, streetlights gradually illuminated the twilight, their light appearing clear and warm against the dimming background, like a row of fine stitches sewn into dark fabric. He stood there for a while, then closed the window, returned to his desk, and waited for the reply to cross time and distance to reach a place where he could see it.

The creation of "The Martian" is a story about the internet's triumph over traditional publishing. Its origins lie neither in the favor of traditional publishers nor in grand narratives, but in the hobby of a "science and engineering guy."

Author Andy Weir is a typical programmer. He's obsessed with relativity, orbital mechanics, and manned spaceflight, starting in 15...

He started working as a software engineer at a U.S. national laboratory at the age of 18.

In 2009, 37-year-old Will Smith wrote a novel based on his vision of a Mars mission. The story was partly inspired by Robinson Crusoe, but he was more fascinated by the realism of the technology and conceived a story about an astronaut who was accidentally stranded on Mars and how he used his knowledge to survive.

He posted this "hard science fiction" story chapter by chapter on his personal website for people to read for free.

This work is a "crowdfunding" creation and an internet miracle.

Initially, the readership was limited to a small group of "tech geeks." But he soon discovered that these core fans became his "crowdsourced science advisors." Among them were chemists, physicists, and engineers who would point out scientific errors in the novel and propose corrections. This group eventually grew to three thousand, to the point that NASA was later surprised by Will's knowledge of aerospace technology.

At the suggestion of readers, Will Smith put the novel on Amazon's self-publishing platform, priced at $0.99. The results were astonishing: more readers paid than when it was free, and the novel quickly climbed to the top of the science fiction charts. In 2013, Random House bought the rights for a high price; after the physical book was published in 2014, it topped the New York Times bestseller list; the film rights were also quickly bought by 20th Century Fox, and Ridley Scott eventually directed a film of the same name.

In his rise to fame, Will sparked a conflict with traditional publishing logic. An unknown programmer bypassed the publisher's "gatekeepers" through the internet, without going through an agent, which subverted the traditional path.

In an era dominated by dystopian themes and social issues, Will's work, driven purely by science, presents a counter-trend retro style that clashes with mainstream creative ideas.

Unlike many science fiction works that explore the darker side of technology, Will's story is an optimistic ode to "solving all problems with science and technology." This perspective itself constitutes a contradiction with mainstream narrative patterns.

Therefore, when Luo Jinnian typed out the first draft of "The Martian" in his rented room, he was not only retelling a story, but also retracing a proven path—a narrow road to miracle paved by the internet, fan communities, and extreme technological romanticism. And at that moment, on this road, he happened to meet the original author, Andy Weir.