![]() ![]() You are unmarried and have sex with many men." Or the socially awkward engineer buddy who keeps saying things like, "You're my only friend with boobs!" Artemis' take on sex in general is juvenile and foregrounded Weir seems to know a lot more about low-gravity welding than about how 20-something women think about their bodies and partners, and Artemis' residents have a curiously prurient fixation on Jazz's love life, which mostly comes up in sneering jibes. Few of the characters have distinctive voices, and some who do are cringe-worthy, like the Hungarian neighbor who informs Jazz, "You were nice little girl. The characters are thinly sketched vehicles for action and information - from a grifter billionaire to an indomitable mining supervisor, they're all roughly similar bantering smartasses whose primary personality traits are "in Jazz's way" or "helping Jazz out."Īrtemis' environment should be more vibrant and complicated than The Martian's, yet the dynamic is exactly the same. Like The Martian, Artemis is blunt and simple, with characters dumping exposition on each other in graceless speeches or convenient pen-pal letters. ![]() Once again, Weir has set an action-adventure in space, where a resourceful protagonist improvises scientific solutions to escalating dangers. This novel has a special place on my shelf with the rest of Weir’s work. Artemis is brought to life with Weir’s signature love of space details combined with his talent for weaving in human emotions of the grandest kind. And for better and worse, the protagonist's snarky, hipshot, goofy voice is much the same as Mark Watney's in The Martian. Full of sass, guts, and grit, this space girl is Weir’s Super-hero on the dark side of the moon. The brisk pacing and reader-friendly explanations of chemistry and engineering conundrums are similar. There's no way to duplicate that process - especially since Weir is no longer an unknown author, giving away his work online because he can't get publishers' attention.īut his second novel, Artemis, does repeat The Martian's formula in other ways. Weir's meticulously researched adventure, about an astronaut struggling to survive alone on Mars after a disastrous mission, came to readers' attention in fits and starts over the course of years. By the time it became a bestseller, a film adaptation starring Matt Damon was already in progress. Crown Books bought the print rights years after the Kindle edition launched. His Kindle sales led Podium Publishing to create an audiobook version before a physical edition existed. Weir posted it as a free serial on his website, then self-published it as a 99-cent e-novel. How?Īndy Weir's debut novel, The Martian, was an unrepeatable success story, largely because its path to the bestseller lists was so unconventional. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Artemis Author Andy Weir ![]()
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