#andy weir
Artemis
by Andy Weir
What’s better than being stranded on Mars and abandoned by your crew with only potatoes to live on?
Anything really.
Anything would be better than that.
But if we are talking in terms of Andy Weir’s brilliant first novel The Martian, what would be better that Andy Weir writing the witty and scientifically credible story of one character? That would be Andy Weir creating a witty and scientifically credible story about a whole city on the moon with an awesome no nonsense female protagonist smuggler. Which he did when he wrote Artemis.
Having loved Weir’s writing voice in The Martian, I scooped up Artemis immediately and summarily devoured it. The protagonist, Jazz, a citizen of Artemis, the moon colony, slaves away as a smuggler to save up enough slugs for a better life. Because moon real estate sounds pricier than New York and San Francisco combined. An integral player in the city’s sordid underbelly, Jazz is roped into a scheme by a wealthy benefactor while desperately dodging the ever-watchful moon cop and a new slew of moon mafia. Which, let’s face it, is kinda challenging in a city that’s literally under a bubble. (Note to self: this could be included in the genre: books that effectively employ domes as a device.) Let’s just say that oxygen is at a premium in zero G.
With a seriously diverse cast of characters, an entirely new take on moon landing and a unique pen pal scenario, Artemis is bound to launch to the bestsellers’ list immediately. Pun intended.
Kudos to Weir for introducing a minority female protagonist who is dynamic, intelligent, flawed, and beautiful - and incidentally, like a lot of the awesome dynamic, intelligent, flawed and beautiful female characters in my own life.
Plus, reading Weir is like taking a cool science class as an adult, just in a totally different atmosphere.
*B3 received a galley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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Being semi-divorced from my bookworm world last year did not in any way diminish my love for literature; what it did reduce, obviously, is the chunk of time I used to allot for reading. That said, 2015 is not exactly as awash with several reads as the previous years. Luckily, I still managed to stumble upon a few titles that I will not trade for several hundred mediocre books.
Without further ado, here are my top “unputdownable” lit picks in 2015 in no particular order:
- The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
- The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
- The Giver* by Lois Lowry
- Made You Up* by Francesa Zappia
- A Fall of Moondust by Arthur Clarke
Check out my lists of top lit picks for the previous years:
- Books that rocked my 2014
- Books that rocked my 2013
- Books that rocked my 2012
- Books that rocked my 2011
*reviews to follow
Happy New Year, bookworms! I hope you find tomes and tomes of wonderful tales this year and, as always, don’t forget to share your love for them!
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Title:The Martian
Author: Andy Weir
Genre: Science fiction, contemporary
My Rating: ★★★★★ (5 of 5 stars)
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If there is a kind of story I am certain we are all so eager to devour, it is that of survival. We are always excited to hear tales of men striving to stay alive in an isolated island, of friends stuck in a forest of cannibals, of sailors trapped at sea where they are forced to become cannibals, of unlikely allies in a town of living dead, and even of kids chucked in an arena where they are barbarically made to murder one another. We marvel at the things the main characters do just to keep going, and we sometimes put ourselves in their shoes, wondering if we will go the same path that they did.
So when I heard of Andy Weir’s The Martian for the first time—described by many as an interstellar survival story fronted by an astronaut Robinson Crusoe —I know it was just too good to pass up. I have to read it; after all, the string of existence stories that I treasure for their ability to quench my thirst for adventures is screaming for a new addition.
The Martian follows astronaut Mark Watney who, after being mistakenly thought dead during a dust storm on Mars, is left when his crewmates are forced to evacuate the planet. He finds himself stranded on the Martian surface with (1) no way to signal Earth that he is alive, (2) food supplies that would run out years before a rescue mission reaches him should he be able to get a word out, (3) machinery that will probably get weathered by Mars’ unforgiving environment, and (4) possibilities to commit “human error” in his attempts to live. How long will he be able to sustain this fight when all odds are seemingly not in his favor?
Riveting, smart, and laugh-out-loud funny, The Martian is perhaps one of the best hard sci-fi tales that I have encountered in the past year. While it is teeming with technical details, Weir makes sure that readers who do not have much knowledge in space programs and modern science fiction in general would not be left behind. It charges along nicely at a gallop, making it an entertaining ride that would beg to be read in just one sitting.
Watney is perhaps the epitome of a narrator that is virtually impossible to dislike. Documenting his dogged journey to survive through a twenty-first-century style epistolary, he constantly pulls hope and strength from his resourcefulness and unlimited supply of gallows humor. Readers will find themselves laughing with and rooting for him, crunching their brows and ooh-ing at every problem solved, and face-palming whenever his efforts are met with inevitable setbacks. Through his rose-colored spectacles—or helmet faceplate, rather—he proves he has too steadfast a soul to be dampened by the Red Planet’s challenges.
If there is anything I came to almost not liking about this book, it is the change of point-of-view to show what NASA is doing on Earth to retrieve him (is that counted as a mini-spoiler?) and those handful of times on Mars when the readers are made to know something before Watney notices it. I understand that they are necessary. They are not bad per se, though there are times when the transitions are not seamless. But like bumps on a gratifying joy ride, it did not halter my enjoyment of the story.
Aside from Watney’s, another POV that I also loved is that focusing on his crewmates. The hard-knuckle science foundation of the whole novel gets its emotional punch on this side of outer space, where the Ares 3 crew proves they are a close-knit team through and through. They will do everything they can to get back to Mars and rescue Watney, even if it means having to cause a mutiny.
The moment I reached the last page, I immediately wanted to start it again. This is what I hoped every book I pick up will make me feel: a little bit exhausted from the life I lived with the protagonist while going on with his adventures, a little bit invigorated by the things I learned while reading, and all in all happy for having just read a very good book.
Five stars for the amazing experience.
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Just finished Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. I’m on a road trip so no tablet and hardly any internet but I HAD to draw my new favorite musical space crab. I cried bruh.
Minor spoilers below
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For the Boston Globe, accompanying a review of Andy Weir’s new novel, Project Hail Mary. Happy I got paid to draw an astronaut.
