Exoplanet, a new audio sci-fi thriller starring Anthony Mackie, Ariana DeBose, and John Leguizamo, arrives next month and IGN can exclusively reveal the Audible Original’s cover art ahead of its November 5 release.
The project is executive produced by Project Hail Mary author Andy Weir and written by The Ninth Metal novelist Benjamin Percy. I spoke exclusively with Weir and Percy about Exoplanet’s massive production and how the story presents a unique spin on outer space thrillers, which is teased on the cover.
“Well, you see right there the first hint of three different timelines,” Percy says. “There's the staggered foreground, middle distance, and far distance [with] astronauts spiraling into this vortex. I hope that it sucks the reader in right away and gives them a hint of what's to come. I'm not going to say exactly what causes the splintering of time. That's a mystery that awaits you, but I think that there's this almost whirlpool current that's dragging you into that image. You see this image, you know exactly what you're in for.”
Exoplanet tells the story of what happens to a team of astronauts when their ship “is torn apart by a quantum anomaly, and each surviving crew member crash-lands in a different era on the same deadly exoplanet — hunted, alone, and running out of time. Chief Engineer Jeff Shaw (Anthony Mackie), aided by his virtual assistant (Ray Porter), must battle an unforgiving present, driven by one thing: getting home to his daughter. First Officer Becca Bang (Ariana DeBose) fights to survive a hostile alien past. Science Officer Logan Bowers (John Leguizamo) wakes in a machine-ruled future that shouldn't exist.”
“It is much more like making a movie or a show than it is like writing a book,” Weir says. “When you're writing a book, you're a dictator. You are in control of absolutely everything. But in a collaborative project like this, it's everyone. Ben gave a rough draft for Episode 1 of Exoplanet, and four producers hopped in. It's a very different form of creation than writing a book. And I would say it's very, very similar, if not identical, to making a movie because it's the same dynamic. You have a lot of people involved and frankly, a lot of money involved.”
Percy says that collaborating with Weir and the team at Audible was a chance to push his normal storytelling process into something new and exciting.
“Nobody wants to read Andy Weir karaoke,” Percy says. “I like to Trojan horse different genres together. So this is an Andy Weir space disaster that has the Trojan horse of time travel inside of it. That allowed me to honor Andy Weir's legacy because what I was thinking when I wrote this was like, ‘If I were Andy Weir, what is a crazy-ass sci-fi story I could tell?’”
Percy says Exoplanet’s jam-packed cast contributed more than just their voices.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/exoplanet-andy-weir-audible-original-first-look
