Andy Weir Says He’d Replace the Dust Storm That Opens The Martian

Andy Weir would give Mars a different way to strand Mark Watney. In an interview with Jeremy Mathai published by SlashFilm on November 3, the author of The Martian said he would probably replace the opening windstorm because its destructive force stretches the physics. His idea for a new opening involves lightning, an electrical overload and an explosion that forces the crew to evacuate.

Weir described a hypothetical rewrite. He brought it up while discussing his debut novel during interviews for Exoplanet, the Audible series he executive-produced.

Why the dust storm in The Martian takes liberties with Mars

The opening storm does a lot of work in a short stretch. An antenna strikes Watney, his crewmates believe he’s dead, and they leave before the storm can cost them their ride home. By the time Watney regains consciousness, the decision that leaves him alone is already over.

Mars really does get dust storms, including ones that can encircle the planet. The snag is how much force the wind can deliver. Mars’s atmosphere is about 1 percent as dense as Earth’s, so even a fast wind pushes far less forcefully. NASA says even the largest Martian dust storms would be unlikely to tip over or tear apart major equipment. The dust itself can still pose problems, including reducing the sunlight available to solar panels. NASA’s explanation of Martian dust storms

Weir has been open about the trade-off for years. In a 2015 Interview magazine conversation, he described the storm as a deliberate dramatic choice. He wanted the planet to land the first blow in a survival story. The new wrinkle in his November interview is how he would stage that blow today.

Could lightning take the storm’s place?

Weir sketched a chain reaction. A discharge hits something, an overload follows, and an explosion gives the crew a reason to leave in a hurry. The idea has a foothold in real Mars research. In 2025, scientists reported electrical discharges in Martian dust events using recordings from NASA’s Perseverance rover. The measurements documented sparks and their associated shock waves. Weir’s equipment-damaging strike is a fictional extrapolation from that electrical activity.

The lightning version would set up a different kind of emergency. In the book, the crew has to decide how long it can stay before the wind takes away its means of escape. In Weir’s sketch, the urgency would come from watching one failure set off another. That would give the opening the same problem-solving rhythm as the rest of the novel, only this time the crew would have minutes to work through the problem that leaves Watney with months of work ahead.

The original still has a strong dramatic advantage. The storm makes it easy to grasp why the crew loses sight of Watney and why going back for him is such a dangerous choice. Any rewrite would have to preserve that awful decision. Watney’s survival matters because you can understand why his crewmates believed they had already lost him.

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• The Martian — Read the original opening and follow Watney as he turns a Mars habitat into a survival kit. Find The Martian on Amazon
• Project Hail Mary — If you enjoyed watching Watney work a problem step by step, try Weir’s story of a science teacher piecing together why he’s alone aboard a spacecraft. Find Project Hail Mary on Amazon

Related reading — Our review of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary

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