I just finished reading the book Artemis by Andy Weir last night.
I was a big fan of what they’re now calling his “debut” novel, The Martian, and said so here. Of course, that was made into a motion picture starring Matt Damon (really should have been Mark Wahlberg). For the record, I enjoyed both the book and movie. For the record, the book was much, much better and is worth reading even if you’re familiar with the movie.
I enjoyed The Martian enough that it was nearly certain that I’d buy Andy Weir’s next book, unless the description on Amazon read like that of a Barbara Cartland romance or it turned out that he had written a teen-angst book about lovesick vampires or something. In fact, the reviews on Amazon were what decided me to pre-order the book. The biggest complaints seemed to be that there was too much “science” (engineering) and “technical stuff”, which is actually a big plus for my tastes, especially in these days when there is so very, very little engineering or science fact in fiction of any kind… and at least half of what there is, is nonsense… to put it mildly.
So, I’m happy to report that this is a very good read, a well-written, fun, fast-paced book with very few technical errors that I caught. It does include a fair amount of chemistry, not that you need to know anything about it to follow along, but it is not a strength of mine so I’m taking the author’s word for how much of that works. I can recommend it as a fun read with a clear conscience.
But….
See, I’ve got this blog with a section on “MGTOW”, so whether I want to or not I have to think about that angle when contemplating writing about something like this. I have to ask myself, “Is it sexist?” Not sexist as in misogynist (against women), of course, because in that case it would pretty certainly never be published these days, but sexist as in misandric (against men), which is openly encouraged and almost mandated in any content allowed into the pop-culture arena.
So… sigh. Yeah, it is. It’s really pretty blatant.
The protagonist is a woman. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, and it didn’t dissuade me from reading it at all, but of course we’re in an age when almost all protagonists in all pop culture genres are women. The protagonist also kicks male ass, and saves the day. Just like all of them do. There is some lip service given to the fact that she’s not as large or physically powerful as males, but she still manages to prevail.
The protagonist thinks (and acts) pretty much exactly like a man, except for issues directly related to sex and gender. I’m sure there are women that do- we’re talking about three-and-a-half billion individuals, of course there must be. Still, it’s impossible to even discuss that many individuals without dealing in generalizations, and from an outsider’s point of view I’ve run across very few women in real life who seem to really think like men. Maybe none. Not that they’re incapable of it, my impression is that they just overwhelmingly just choose not to.
I don’t want to minimize the challenge Andy Weir undertook here, for a male author to successfully capture the way women think is extremely difficult, some would say impossible- as reflected in the very different fiction that men and women typically enjoy. On the other hand, women that think very much like men are pretty much the rule now as far as pop-media fictional protagonists go, and just creating one more seems a bit like a cop-out. Not that I could have done better, but I doubt that I’d have tried. Even Heinlein was not notably successful in his attempts at this.
The person in charge of Artemis, which is the name of the lunar colony, is a woman. The scientist who designed, built and runs the aluminum smelting operation around which a good portion of the book revolves is a woman. All of the men are in secondary, mostly supporting roles. Much is said about how very competent some of them are, but that is in contrast to their actual performance in the story, where they don’t seem to be quite able to solve any problems without the female protagonist having to take over and make all the hard decisions, fast.
The two deaths in the story (that I recall) were a man and woman, but the woman in question is very much a minor character, and both are pointedly killed because of the flaws and incompetence of the man. The murdered man’s multi-billion-dollar business empire is then taken over by his teenage daughter, because that’s what happens with multi-billion-dollar business empires, the thousands of sharks that run the place just step aside and let that sort of thing occur. The one person who is severely injured in the book is male, a hired killer who is beaten by the protagonist, who, of course, decides not to kill him despite the fact that he’s killed others and was still trying until completely defeated, at the same time that every second counted in saving the entire lunar city. So, pretty much the same pattern of disposable men and essential women that we’ve all become very familiar with. As the book closes, it seems that everything of importance in Artemis, legal or illegal, is being handled by women.
In other words, by current fiction, TV or Hollywood standards, everything is as it should be.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t as bad (or as obnoxious) as National Geographic’s TV mini-series Mars, which ironically seems to have been largely a hastily (and poorly) conceived attempt to capitalize on the popularity of The Martian, but it does share some of the same gender-issue elements.
Now, I get it, I really do… Andy Weir created a helluva book in The Martian, but he also, by his own account, encountered some remarkable luck. I’m not for a moment saying the luck isn’t deserved, it is… but a whole lot of great writing goes begging these days, especially when reading for entertainment has declined drastically. His first published novel became a major motion picture with a superstar playing the main character and a solid cast of celebrities playing a bunch of other roles, and I’m sure it was hugely lucrative for him to sell the rights.
But The Martian was different from everything else being foisted on us now in several ways. Yes, it was “hard” science fiction, that is, not fantasy with some prop hardware but actually involving some fact, and it came when hard science fiction seemed to have just about vanished… but also the protagonist was male, and it was centered on his struggle against circumstances without involving any romantic interests at all, or invoking the obligatory, ubiquitous plucky, brilliant and noble-spirited woman who also must kick male asses, or at least show them up. I think the lack of having our noses rubbed in that message yet again was probably one of the keys to the success of the book.
Andy Weir seemingly made the judgement call that lightning wasn’t going to strike twice. If he wanted to sell the movie rights to another book, it had better be a lot more in-line with the main message that’s being put forth in virtually all of pop culture now, that women are intrinsically superior to men.
Well, I can’t argue with his decision. It worked. Apparently there was a movie in the works even before Artemis was published as a book.
What a shock.
So, everybody celebrate another success. Might want to save a little of the champagne for a literal (and literary) libation to the greater powers though. It used to be said that those whom the gods destroy they first make proud, and there may be a slight crack just starting to show in the foundation…
I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction. I think that this novel will be a success- a deserved success, as it is very entertaining. I think that the movie may well be a success as well, but that’s up to Hollywood, and they can always screw up a sure thing. In fact, they specialize in not coming through somehow when following up on a successful formula, then blaming the formula.
I’m guessing, though, that Andy Weir’s next novel is going to have less of a guaranteed audience than this one, not more. I think the situation has a fair amount in common with what’s recently unfolded in the realm of comic books, when they tried to restructure all of their traditional successes along culturally-approved Social Justice Warrior (“SJW”) lines, a move that met with both very vocal approval and a huge decline in readership.
How do you take people who love, say, chocolate, and turn them into people who hate chocolate? It’s simple. You force it down their throats. Over and over again, every chance you get, constantly and relentlessly. It won’t take long to turn even the most devoted chocolate devotee into someone who has just… had enough. Very possibly forever. Anything can be done to excess, and somewhere between the point where it’s a novelty (I’m thinking the Ripley character in the original Alien) and the point where there simply is nothing else (we’re getting there) it becomes increasingly repellent, however favorable the attitude was toward it initially.
We’re nearing that end of the pendulum swing now with regard to the third-wave Feminist man-bashing that has become the main message in virtually all the content in every form of popular media. It’s become so ubiquitous that even those who think they agree with the premise on principal are slowly starting to become repulsed by the sheer unending onslaught of blatant one-sided propaganda.
While women (and many men who think they can speak for women, or at least wish to cater to them) will undoubtedly praise the fashionable gender bias of this novel, the fact is that “hard” science fiction has always held very little appeal for women as a genre, and I don’t think that’s likely to change soon. The readership for science fiction, especially science fiction that is heavy in “science” (again, engineering) has always been overwhelmingly male. To what degree this sort of difference is biological vs. societal I don’t know, and that is one of many gender issues that we may not be mature enough as a society to discuss dispassionately for generations to come, but it’s also largely irrelevant right now. Regardless of the gender of the protagonist or dominant characters, I don’t think there is going to be a large female readership eagerly anticipating the next hard science fiction novel for the first time in history.
On the other side of the gender-line, I think men who read the novel will largely be entertained and even enthusiastic, at least at first.. but over time, whether consciously or unconsciously, I suspect that the intrinsic anti-male message, even being as usual as it is now, will work in the back of men’s minds, making them at least a little more cautious about the next book. As with the comic books, it may be that the gender aspects of this novel will tend to diminish the enthusiasm of what has historically been the core audience of the genre, while catering to another audience audience entirely, one that simply doesn’t exist outside of the minds of media company executives.
– Robert the Wombat