As a chemist, Vogel knew how to make a bomb. In fact, much of his training was to avoid making them by… — Andy Weir

As you can see, this plan provides many opportunities for me to die in a fiery explosion.

Then I sat for a moment, dumbstruck that my plan had actually worked.

This allowed me to do what writers treasure more than anything else: catch the reader off-guard. There’s nothing better than knowing you’re going to outwit with the reader. And the type of people who read sci-fi are very difficult to outwit.