Andy Weir’s next science-fiction project is an immersive audio thriller built around time travel, survival and communication across centuries. Exoplanet launches exclusively on Audible on 5 November.
Weir is best known for combining humour, rigorous science and high-stakes survival in The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Both novels have also been adapted into blockbuster films, and his latest project continues several of those recurring ideas in a new format.
A starship crew scattered through time
Exoplanet is an Audible Original written by Benjamin Percy, the author of The Ninth Metal and Red Moon. Weir serves as executive producer on the production.
The full-cast recording features Anthony Mackie, Ariana DeBose and John Leguizamo as members of a starship crew destroyed by a quantum anomaly. The survivors reach the same planet, but each is stranded in a different period.
They must find ways to assist one another across time while an alien intelligence pursues them. That entity is trying to exploit human technology to alter the future, giving the story a threat that extends beyond simple survival.
Why audio suits the story
Time travel is new territory for Weir’s novels, but communication under impossible conditions is familiar ground. In The Martian, Mark Watney uses the Pathfinder probe to contact NASA. In Project Hail Mary, Wyland Grace sends messages towards Earth with Taumoeba samples, then faces a years-long wait to discover whether his mission worked.
Weir said the new story centres on the idea of people separated by centuries rather than distance. He described the production as a tale that depends on voices, with listeners hearing fragile contact stretch across a five-hundred-year gap.
Audible’s North America head of content, Marshall Lewy, said Weir’s work turns demanding science into accessible stories filled with action and emotion. He also positioned Exoplanet as a project for audiences who enjoyed The Martian and Project Hail Mary, while stressing that its audio-first format offers something different.
Release details for Australian listeners
Exoplanet will be available exclusively through Audible from 5 November. Its full-cast presentation makes sound and performance central to the experience, rather than treating audio as a secondary version of a printed novel.
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