Best-selling science fiction author Andy Weir, widely recognized for engineering gripping survival scenarios driven by hard science, mathematics, and sharp humor in novels like The Martian and Project Hail Mary, is expanding his creative footprint. Known for stories where solitary protagonists must outwit catastrophic odds using sheer ingenuity, Weir is now channeling that signature formula into a new frontier. However, instead of writing a traditional prose novel, he is taking on the role of executive producer for Exoplanet, a high-stakes, time-travel survival thriller arriving as an Audible Original on November 5.
The upcoming audio epic was written by acclaimed author Benjamin Percy, whose previous works include The Ninth Metal and Red Moon. Designed as an immersive, full-cast audio production, Exoplanet boasts a star-studded lead cast featuring Anthony Mackie, Ariana DeBose, and John Leguizamo. The narrative centers on the crew of a deep-space starship that becomes catastrophically torn apart by an unpredictable and destructive quantum anomaly.
Following the disaster, the crew members find themselves stranded on the exact same planet, but with a terrifying twist: they are separated by vast expanses of time. Displaced across different eras, the surviving crewmates must somehow figure out how to communicate and help each other navigate a hostile environment. Complicating their struggle for survival is a malevolent alien intelligence that is hunting them down, seeking to exploit human technology to manipulate the timeline and alter the future.
The unique temporal barrier central to Exoplanet offered a fresh creative challenge for Weir, who has built his literary career on making complex scientific and logistical hurdles feel immediate and terrifyingly real to readers.
"I’m obsessed with problems, the kind where one person and a lot of math are all that stand between survival and disaster," Weir explained in a statement detailing his involvement with the project. "Benjamin Percy’s writing in Exoplanet takes that and adds a twist that genuinely kept me up at night: what if the people trying to save each other were separated not by distance, but by centuries? You can’t see that story. You have to hear it. The crackle across a five-hundred-year gap, the desperation in a voice that doesn’t know if anyone’s still listening."
While time travel is an entirely new narrative sandbox for Weir, the themes of isolation, distance, and delayed communication are deeply familiar territory within his bibliography. In The Martian, stranded astronaut Mark Watney is cut off from humanity on the surface of Mars, forced to improvise with limited supplies while using an archaic Pathfinder probe to slowly re-establish a fragile connection with NASA engineers millions of miles away. Similarly, in Project Hail Mary, protagonist Ryland Grace records voice logs and data messages to send back to Earth alongside biological samples of the alien organism Taumoeba, fully aware that he will have to wait years—if not decades—to discover whether his desperate transmission ever reached its destination or changed the fate of his home planet.
Industry executives believe that translating these classic thematic elements into an auditory medium will offer a uniquely harrowing experience for fans of speculative fiction. Marshall Lewy, the head of content for Audible in North America, emphasized how well Weir’s storytelling sensibilities translate to the audio format under Percy’s scriptwriting.
"Andy Weir’s stories transform rigorous science into big-hearted thrill rides with heart-stopping action and intense human emotion," Lewy said in a statement. "That’s why Andy’s books have sold millions and inspired blockbuster films. With Andy as executive producer and Benjamin Percy crafting beautiful scripts specifically for the ear, Exoplanet is built for the audiences who loved Project Hail Mary and The Martian while also giving them something entirely new."
Both of Weir’s major solo novels have enjoyed massive mainstream success beyond the publishing world. The Martian was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated blockbuster film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, while Project Hail Mary has also been adapted into a high-profile feature film from Amazon MGM Studios, starring Ryan Gosling. By stepping into an executive producer role for an audio-first production, Weir is able to explore high-concept science fiction without the immediate constraints of traditional novel writing or feature film production timelines.
As anticipation builds for the November 5 release date, Exoplanet represents a compelling intersection of literary hard sci-fi, premium voice acting, and audio-engineered storytelling. For fans eagerly awaiting Weir’s next exploration of survival against impossible odds, the upcoming Audible Original promises to deliver the same intellectual puzzle-solving and emotional stakes that defined his earlier work, amplified by a chilling temporal mystery.
