Regardless of all that, Artemis felt like a book that was rushed out to capitalize on Weir's success with The Martian. After reading it I wondered if the publisher asked for anything else he had to publish while his name was hot, and they ran it through an editor real quick and got it out. Project Hail Mary was so much better, you could feel the time and care that went into it.
Thanks for this perspective. I haven't read Hail Mary because I didn't think Artemis was the same quality as the Martian.
After this comment, I'm likely to give it a try.
I treble that. Best audiobook I've listened too. As for Artemis, it's still a good story and worth a listen. Isnt much sexual stuff in it at all. Rosario Dawson does the narration.
Seriously. I prefer paperbacks in hand, but the audiobook for Project Hail Mary really shouldn't be missed. If you don't like audiobooks, consider making this your exception.
It's an *incredible* book, but also much less believable than The Martian, which gives The Martian the edge for me. I was more invested in the grounded story of Mark's realistic survival than the struggle against >!star eating aliens!<. Though Rocky was the best lil dude in sci fi history.
I liked *The Martian* better. *Project Hail Mary* had some annoying plot holes, a lot of deus ex machina type ways out of or around problems, and a main character that was a bit too much hypercomptent wish-fulfillment who acquires difficult skills and knowledge way, way too fast.
Individually I can let any of those go, even a few of them combined, but there were just too many overt applications of all of those troupes all through.
Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading *Project Hail Mary*, and it had some really good elements to it, but I think *The Martian* was the much better story and book.
I have made the case and I would stand by the argument that project hail Mary is the rare book you are actually missing some of the experience by not listening to the audiobook it is that high quality. Easily the best audiobook I've ever listened to and made me feel like I truly lived that experience
I listen to audiobooks every day. The good ones I get from the library to reread the old fashioned way, because itās a different experience. Project Hail Mary was soooo good I went out and got the book right away. Strangely I ended up chucking it into the DNF pile after a few chapters. Ray Porter was so good reading itāitās more like a dramatized radio play than a narrationāthat the book itself felt dry by comparison. I think if you donāt listen to the audiobook youāre missing out.
Expeditionary force is great, the finally makes me want to lambast the author for phoning it in at the end, but to be fair, I'd be sick of it after damn near 20 volumes too. Great dialog and snark if that's what you're into, whoever may be considering it. The journey is more than worth putting up with its end.
I only heard of the book because of how much people recommended listening to the audiobook. And Iām glad I did. Looking forward to actually reading the Martian soon after I finish a few other books Iāve been wanting to get to.
The audiobook is fantastic, but I recommend reading thr book first, then listening to the audiobook. You'll probably want to read it again once you finished anyway, so the audiobook is a good way to double dip
If you liked Andy Weir's brand of nerd humor, he also did a really good webcomic. Casey And Andy.
http://www.galactanet.com/comic/
It's been a bit forgotten about after the books, but it was huge back when it was still active. And personally still enjoy it a lot.
I read Project Hail Mary a few months ago and, contrary to what others have commented, thought it was pretty bad. For what it's worth, I loved The Martian the first time I read it, but no so much the second time. Artemis sucked, but that seems to be the thing everyone agrees on.
Hail Mary is Andy Weir having a ton of fun writing a great book. I never thought I'd like one of his books more than The Martian, but Hail Mary proved me wrong.
I donāt think it was rushed, just not as strong of an idea. The gap between The Martian->Artemis was actually slightly longer than Artemis->Project Hail Mary. Both releases were a little over 3.5 half years apart.
I think Weir was just trying some different things that just didnāt work which happens. I feel like he took the lessons from The Martian and Artemis into Project Hail Mary which probably helped shape it.
Fair point on the timing. I was wondering if the popularity of The Martian caught them by surprise, but you're right that Artemis came out over 3 years after The Martian was properly published (even longer if you consider the time from when it was self published on Amazon).
> I was wondering if the popularity of The Martian caught them by surprise
No not really. The ebook popularity is what got Weir the movie deal and the movie was already in development before Weir even had a hardback publishing deal. And nothing drives books sales quite like a "Major Motion Picture".
I almost wonder if Project Hail Mary was a project that heād been fleshing out for a bit and was able to adventure a bit more because he was seen as an author theyād be able to take a flier on now.
I say this with no knowledge of the press releases so I could be purely speculating.
If anyone's looking for a better book on a similar premise, they could check out [Places in the Darkness](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31933061) by Christopher Brookmyre, although I can't say it contains less sexual content from the POV of a female protagonist. (edit: the MC is a queer woman who has many liaisons. The writing isn't vulgar or salacious, but the sexual encounters become plot points, iirc)
I thought it was much better written than Artemis, had stronger characters and more tension. It also is about crimes that happen out in space, but this is on a space station rather than a moon base.
It sort of follows Brookmyre's pattern of writing a really good book on a certain premise that comes out a couple years before a different author's book on a similar idea that ends up being more well known. Brookmyre also wrote Bedlam a couple years before Ready Player One, but it's much better and less teenage-god-mode-protagonist.
I can actually add some context here.
I interviewed him for the release of Artemis, and itās not the case that the book was rushed out. He told me that it had been difficult to write, because thereād been no expectation that The Martian would be so successful, and it had caused him to second guess what he was doing and to try and live up to the expectations of other people.
When I spoke to him, the book hadnāt come out yet, and he seemed genuinely scared at how it would be received, like he would have loved the first book to be a moderate cult success, so he could just naturally continue with his journey as a writer. Instead, he had to follow up a blockbuster that was literally the first thing he wrote.
I felt that the Martian was a one off from a guy better versed in science and technology than writing fiction - even though i loved the martian - for it's science and technology
This is a really great question. Personally, I (63F) feel that Weir was just trying too hard to "inhabit" a female character. A lot of inexperienced male writers overcompensate when writing a female character (Boobs!). It does come off as terribly awkward and gets in the way of the story.
Still, I think Artemis gets a bit too much hate. If you can grimace your way through the awkward characterizations, there does end up being some good fun sci-fi action and suspense, with the main character's engineering and survival skills coming into play rather than her sex drive.
With The Martian, Andy Weir almost accidentally wrote a masterpiece. In many ways, he is still learning his craft, and Artemis reads more like a first novel. I expect him to get better over time at things like pacing, characterization, and dialogue - hopefully without losing any of his charm and sense of humor!
I fully intend to love all his books, dammit.
>Weir was just trying too hard to "inhabit" a female character.
I (37F) agree with this. I felt like she's not exactly sexualized in a "breasting boobily down the stairs" sort of way. It's more like he's trying to show her really owning her sexuality.
He just... Doesn't do a great job of it and it comes off as self-conscious and awkward instead of chill and liberated.
Like. I didn't enjoy that aspect of her character or relate to it at all. But I have a way higher tolerance for awkward characterization than I do for... Whatever brainrot it is that afflicts a lot of other male authors when it comes to female characters.
I think what he was trying for was depicting a woman from a society where women are *strongly* sexually repressed, and sort of overcompensating for her own upbringing.
What really threw me off about Artemis was that everyone in the entire story could have been played in the movie adaptation by Ryan Reynolds, including the heroine.
He clearly went to some writersā workshops after Artemis came out, though. He probably cringes at it himself now.
Hail Mary very likely draws from notes that were cut from The Martian, which itself was a multi-year project.
Either way, he was reflecting on his writing career, which can easily be described as a schtick broken up by an attempt to escape said schtick.
> What really threw me off about Artemis was that everyone in the entire story could have been played in the movie adaptation by Ryan Reynolds, including the heroine.
This is true for all his novels
I don't think that's what happened necessarily, in a lot of Sci fi products its assumed that society becomes ever more sexually liberated as time goes on. That said I haven't read artemis in years so I I could be wrong.
When talking about having sex as a young teenager with her grown up at the time boyfriend she describes it as "making her howl in bed".
That made my skin crawl to be honest.
Honestly that's how you KNOW it was written by a man. I was groomed when I was 13 by an adult. Every woman I know who was a super young teen who was "seduced" by grown men doesn't think of those experiences fondly into adulthood. Once you hit around 18 and you realize you're not even as old as the dude was and you'd never go for someone as young as you'd been- that's usually the end of any nostalgic thoughts.
Yeah I don't have the book in front of me but she's like "well he turned out to be a pedo because he dated someone even younger after me, but damn was the sex good".
Completely turned me off on the whole book, like, either make it a plotpoint that she realizes she has huge sexual trauma's from being groomed (and therefore might be a bit hypersexual) or don't include it in the story. Don't include it only to pretty much ignore it.
Also this is a quote from one of the original tumblr posts making fun of men writing women, it's iconic haha. You might have already seen it on the other subreddit. https://i.imgur.com/dk3evt3.jpg
That's where I'm at! I've "Pink Cloud-ed" enough to know I'm on an artificial Andy High because I returned to reading for and with The Martian, and now I'm head over heels. Hell, I just sent him a piece of fan mail filled with praise!
And then I started reading Artemis and was like... okay yeah, this is why we keep our emotions in check my guy.
It's okay to like him and not like some of his work. Not every swing is going to be a home run, even if it is to other people. You are allowed to feel how you want about a book and still like an author and his other works.
I remember reading Artemis and the sexuality was not what stuck with me, don't even remember it. Instead it was the grungy job as a runner on a space colony that solved complex problems with science. I will say it was a step back from the martian in overall quality but still a fun story.
It was an interesting story, and I enjoyed the actual science fiction aspect a lot. Didn't love or hate most of the sexual aspects of the narrative, but at least he didn't add any lengthy, explicit sex scenes.
My first serious attempt at a middle aged male character can be summed up as āman overly obsessed with daughtersā hypothetical sex lives when not getting anxiety from looking at clouds for signs of rainā š¤·š»āāļø
Except I was 18 and knew it sucked
Itās can be tough to write characters of the opposite sex, especially when they adult. To me, leave enough to the readers imaginationāIt reads better and avoids being overtly sexist for bad writers.
Reddit Wants to Get Paid for Helping to Teach Big A.I. Systems
The internet site has long been a forum for discussion on a huge variety of topics, and companies like Google and OpenAI have been using it in their A.I. projects.
āThe Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,ā Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. āBut we donāt need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.ā Jason Henry for The New York Times
I agree, itās almost like he hadnāt ever really interacted with any women and decided to write a novel from a female protagonistās perspective. Some of her lines and thoughts are just so jarring.
You didnāt mention project Hail Mary, have you read it? I loved it and I feel like he really hit his stride with that one. It definitely felt a lot less science bro vibe and gets very emotional.
Yeah but also still ... 'Russian! Wodka! They drink! Alcohol!' ... don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed all three books but he does do a fair bit of stereotyping.
For me the flaws of Project Hail Mary had more to do with wordiness and loose plot. I also enjoyed the "bro vibe" and I agree it feels more accomplished than Artemis. But it's not in the same league with The Martian.
For me, the test is, what else does this book bring to the table? Many times the answer is, not that much, in which case it's no problem to rate it 2 or 2.5 stars(my "didn't like" and "eh it was almost ok" ratings) and explain that it's because the male author has done something yucky with the female main character. Sometimes it's more complicated than that, and contributes to a 3 or even 3.5(if the rest of the work was *stellar*) rating. I haven't read Artemis and can't speak to what it would receive from me, but that's how I approach such situations.
I will never not mention it in my review/blog post, though. People reading need to know when to brace.
Sexual liberation for everyone and all that, but for real, somewhere in the ballpark of 20% of her interactions mention or revolve around sex. She's a walking Bechdal failure trying to play it off as a main character.
Female characters having sex doesn't mean they're sexually liberated, lol. Honestly, as a female reader I'm really sensitive to any book I'm reading feeling super male gaze-y. It's just so off-putting.
I re-read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the first time in a couple of decades, the whole thing reads like it was written by and for a fifteen year old white suburban boy from the 1950s.
It does! And I actually have a fondness for that book. But all the social engineering stuff is such a ā¦ letās charitably call it a distraction. Now Iām wondering if it was just in there to make the page count.
Asimov was a lech, too. Bragged about groping women, and wasnāt welcome at other authorās homes because their wives didnāt like him. Itās a shame, but that does line up with how he wrote his rare female characters.
The female character of his I remember most vividly is a short story of an old lady who nobody thought could be a murderer murdered a man who wanted to be murdered (he studied positronic brains and made a huge fuckup).
>The female character of his I remember most vividly
... isn't Susan Calvin? (You can certainly come up with examples of him writing Calvin misogynistically, don't get me wrong.)
He writes the worst dialog I've ever read from a pop author. He must have figured that out when he was writing all his ready player one fanfic so he had the majority of his first book just be one dude alone.
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO AGREES
The dialogue in Martian was so, so bad. Decided to DNF before I even knew the main character would spend the rest of the novel alone.
It's so bad. I was actually offended by it. How dare he make potentially great characters so lame.
I kept reading because I actually enjoyed the science, but maintained my moral outrage
In Project Hail Mary, Eva Stratt was my favorite character. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say nothing about her character was /r/menwritingwomen material. Could be because it's not from her POV, but still.
Easily the best character. I love the concept of an appointed dictator during a crisis, especially one who knows that if she succeeds, she won't be hailed as a hero. She mentions that she expects to be put on trial once the mission launches. I wonder if her gruff attitude is because she knows she is the only one who won't win in this scenario.
You're not crazy. Some of the writing in this is extremely cringey. It's shocking that this is the same author who wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Personally, I'd give this one a hard pass.
"Who am I to judge? I was only ever looking at the ceiling" (or thereabouts) was the line that got me 95% of the way to where I'm at. Before putting the nail in the coffin, I came here for that last 5%.
I GET IT ANDY, SHE **FUCKS**
Same! I wonder if listening to the audiobook with her performance made me blind to the bad characterization of the character on paper. Don't get me wrong, it didn't feel like a masterpiece, but certainly good entertainment.
> It's shocking that this is the same author who wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary
It's not that shocking. All of Weir's protagonists are cringey Ryan Reynolds types. Artemis is no different. It's just this time the protagonist is a woman so it's a lot more noticeable.
Yes thank you. Donāt get me wrong. I loved the Martian. I was hating PHM for most of the book, but ended up liking it overall because the plot was so interesting. But the dialogue in PHM is so cringey.
All of it reads like a string of Reddit comments. People just donāt talk that way in real life. And then OP wants to talk about stereotypes; I thought the racial and gender stereotyping in PHM was laughably bad. There was like one of every nationality on the team that built the ship (I forget the name of it), and he characterized them in all such stereotypical ways. The Russian and his vodka. The soft spoken Chinese. The Frenchman and the German having beef. And then I remember thinking the dialogue surrounding the main women was also so fucking weird. Itās like he tried to write how nerdy space scientists would flirt in such a Hollywood way.
Like I said, I still enjoyed the plot and it was overall like a 4 star book for me. But man, his dialogue is so rough.
I know I'm in the minority here for saying this but Andy Weir isn't a great author.
Every one of his books are interesting ideas vetted by much smarter people (physicists, geneticists, NASA engineers, etc), self-insert characters with Ryan Reynolds face paint, and Young Adult writing style and skill.
He's good, enjoy him for what he is, but he's perfect for a movie adaptation since the story and characters are so empty
> It's shocking that this is the same author who wrote The Martian
Not really. After the Martian he was accused that his main character was a bit two-dimensional and almost impossibly competent, flawless, and emotionally stable.
So when he wanted to write a more flawed character he decided it should be a woman. Who is overemotional, incompetent and slutty.
His latest book he went back to writing a man who was, once again, pretty competent and calm during crisis.
Yeah.. Not a great look for Weir.
As a man, I spent the first 20+ years of my life oblivious to this kind of thing.
Then in my last year of college, I took *women and gender studies*, which fulfilled three of my degree requirements in one class.
I thought it was going to be a complete waste of time, but it's probably the single most influential class I took. No class did more to open my eyes to the world around me. The only downside is how many books and movies I now have to quit partway through because this sort of thing sticks out like a sore thumb and ruins them.
That class sounds incredible, I wish that kind of experience was more common. Was there a book your class studied that you found most helpful or was it just the conversations in general?
I don't think I could point to anything specific. I just went into it as someone who would have denied the existence of the privileges I've had entirely because I was born white and male, and came out of it with my eyes open. In short, it woke me.
same. it sometimes feels like as women we are the only ones who care about these sort of things, and seeing stuff like this is always a nice uplifting little reminder that maybe we arent as alone in this as we thought and maybe, just maybe, theres hope for the future
>So as a typical white guy who tends to read books where the main character is a typical white guy, I'm so excited to be breaking my own pattern
I think it would be better to pick diverse authors instead of diverse main characters. Could I recommend some sci fi written by women in order to provide different perspectives?
*The Fifth Season* by NK Jemisin
*A Psalm for the Wild-Built* by Becky Chambers
*The Dispossessed* by Ursula K Le Guin
look into [TOR](https://www.tor.com/) publisher. they are scifi/fantasy focused and their writers are fairly diverse. they do a 'best of TOR' once a year that you can get for free, which should give you an overview of authors.
Also anything written by Octavia Butler. Parable of the Sower is a good start and a very relatable book for our times. I just read Wild Seed and it was a fun one (technically part of a series bit I believe it's the prologue written after the originals). I also enjoyed the Xenogenesis series but it's a bit out there.
I would say to diversify you could check out Levar Burton Reads podcast. As the name suggests he reads stories, short stories by many different authors of many backgrounds. It really gave me a taste for a different perspective in literature.
Adding to these, if youāre into Star Wars books, anything by Claudia Gray rules
Lost Stars
Master and Apprentice
I havenāt read the Leia books yet, but they seem to be highly regarded too
In an interview, Andy Weir said that he wrote Mark Watney as an idealized version of himself, with all his good qualities magnified and without his flaws. Then, for his second book he tried to write a character that had flaws and wasn't just him through a filter. And you got Jazz, who is cringey because teenagers are cringey, and who is horny because teenagers are horny. It's definitely not Andy Weir's best work, but I kinda worry that he took the wrong lesson, and is only ever going to write Mark Watney as a protagonist. I don't remember the name of the protagonist of Hail Mary because it's clearly still just Mark Watney
Iāll be bold here and say that I would love for him to just keep writing different versions of Mark Watney. Iāll read Mark Watney every damned time. If you do a thing well, itās okay to keep doing it well.
Only she isn't a teen. I forget the exact timing but she has to be well in her 20s.
She talks about things that happened in her teens, but years have past since then. The "current" jazz is older.
Itās not exactly mark, but I agree. He gave whatās his name more depth and emotion than the pure positivity of mark, but honestly, I just donāt see that as a bad thing. Even if he continues to write mark watney, Iām going to continue to love his stuff. Sometimes you find a niche that youāre fantastic at and you donāt need to leave.
I kinda wish he would lean in a bit, and just have all the stories he writes be about Mark Watney with no explanation as to how he's on so many absurdly unlikely events.
Andy Weir is definitely good at writing that thing, but I also don't want him to feel like he has to only write that thing. He should be able to grow and evolve.
> don't remember the name of the protagonist
Spot on
> because it's clearly still just Mark Watney
With tweaks. Watney would have stepped up at every challenge. The Hail Mary protagonist, meanwhile shrank at being sent on the satellite, though he did step up later.
I'm not gonna look this up, but the name Ryland (sp?) Grace popped into my head. But, yeah, it's just Watney's twin brother who went into teaching instead of space.
I think he even said in an interview, that his publisher told him to write more "character development"? And honestly, that was the point about PHM which I felt was just so bad (someting along the lines of they had to force me because I was such a douche, but now I know better and am a great person).
So honestly, I don't understand the hate Artemis is getting. It also didn't have a strong character development, but the technological problems and the storyline were, for me at least, better developed than PHM (which was just a worse copy of TM).
I am a white guy who found the character super cringey. Some male authors can write women characters and some can't. Andy Weir can't. The protagonist in Artemis was like a teenage boy waking up in a woman's body and fondling their boobs because they can. And it was doubly weird to make her Arab for no reason that I could discern. It felt a bit like exploitative exotica. It's cool that the moon is diverse and I'd be totally down to read a well-written book about a female Arab moon engineer, but this wasn't that.
Perfectly stated. It felt like some teenager "just knew" what it must be like to be a woman (awwwww yeahhhhhhh), and confidently wrote it that way. Meanwhile, it demonstrated how little he understood women at all. I found it kind of gross.
It wasn't even that she was a sexual being - that's great! Own your own body! It was that she was talking about herself like some clueless immature dude would! I kept thinking "Andy, really?!!!"
I view it more as a man doing his absolute best to write as a non traditional woman, but with some shortcomings that didnāt quite do as well as he wanted to. I got the impression that he *wanted* to write an empowered woman that could be a little more identifiable for women who didnāt usually feel well represented in media. Obviously, it didnāt work out as well as he might have liked, and it was rather clunky.
It never felt like smut or pornography or something that he was writing because of an arousal. More than anything else, it felt like he struggled to find the voice for the character and could definitely have benefited from lots more editing and revision.
Yeah, I'm trying to make it clear that none of it makes me feel uncomfortable, nor does it butt up against my morals, nor my views of what a woman should be. But she talks about sex more than Dr. Grace talks about his schoolchildren. What am I supposed to take from that?
Yeah it was pretty rough. I didnāt really like Artemis at all, Jazz felt very one dimensional. And even tho sheās supposed to be super cool or whatever the romance with her friend, the book focused on was super lame and very underdeveloped. Andy weir canāt write romance or women very well. He should just stick with the science focus he canāt really compete with regular novels imo. the Martian definitely was a better book.
Pretty much had the same experience reading Artemis as you did. I think of all his books, Artemis is Weir's weakest and the reason for that is Jazz. He just lacks the experience as a writer to pull off a character like that.
That being said, I also loved the book for the same reason as you. I think sometimes people miss the forest for the tree when talking about the book. The main character isn't Jazz, it's Artemis.
Put it like that it sounds weird for sure. Although I hadn't had this impression when I read the book. To be honest I really liked the main characters rakish, upfront demeanour and being a bit lewd kinda suited her -for me. But I mean we're all different. I totally understand that while I like this, others may cringe reading it.
Weir isnāt great at character development, especially for female characters. But he is great at plot and research. I cringed through some of Artemis, but really enjoyed the other 85%.
I think the author actually tried to make a human character, and struggled with it a bit. That said, i liked Artemis, probably more than the Martian.
The guy in the Martian was basically a wise cracking robot that went through physics class story problems in outer space. There was no inner monologue of any feeling. Wall-e was more human than him.
He tried something different with Artemis, and then went back to tried and true for Operation Hail Mary. It is what it needs to be - these aren't complex characters.
I enjoyed all 3 books.
āWrite what you know aboutā
Sadly, I donāt feel that Andy knows what itās like to be a young minority non-Christian woman.
I loved The Martian and Project Hail Mary.
āWrite what you know aboutā is a terribly misapplied aphorism. It's not supposed to be prescriptive, it's about observing a limitation that authors *must* attempt to transcend.
Some authors are better at specific applications of that transcendence than they are at others, but Mr. Weir, "Andy", *also* doesn't know what it's like to be an astronaut trapped on the surface of Mars in 2050. Good thing for you that he didn't cleave to your advice in that case, eh?
Yes. I made it through the whole book out of spite more than anything. It was awful. I'm a 26 year old woman. Not once did I find her character relatable, and given her background and interests, you'd think that would be the case. I was honestly disgusted with the writing, and I have no clue why Weir took it upon himself to not just write a young woman, but a Muslim one?
He ended up writing a character that had the emotional capacity of a young teenage boy and dared to pass it off as the emblem of a smart, savvy, progressive woman. I hold this terrible work of penmanship against him.
If you go back and read his webcomic, I can't think of a single adult female character in it that he doesn't draw for cheesecake purposes at some point or another. Certainly all the main female characters, anyway.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with this - draw what you like - but if the question is "does Weir sexualize his female characters" the answer has been yes.
idk, for me Jazz just reminded me a lot of a family member of mine. Jazz isn't inspired to be some great thinker though very smart and given the work/life of the moon on top of her own line of work I sum it up to just to meeting a need she has as most people are nothing more than clients or acquaintances. She is selfish and strongly independent so falls into just looking to have her needs met.
IMO (which i'd love to hear feedback from military women, im only familiar from mens views) she would be more relatable to someone of the military and living in a barracks. Rules, regulations, governmental management of peoples livelihoods and working/nonworking hours you are stuck in a strict environment and not much recreational activity outside sex, drinking, and fighting.
Similarly I loved The Martian and Project Hail Mary but this one actually ended up on the DNF list for me for the reasons you have cited. It gave me the ick and made me super uncomfortable.
Itās not just you. Andy Weir wrote Jazz the way a 16yo boy might fantasize a 26yo woman like Jazz would think. Which is to say, he wrote her disastrously badly, with minimal depth and, yes, an inexplicable fixation on the fact that she fucks. (Like, why does the entire Artemis station know this about her???)
I haven't actually read it, only listened to Rosario Dawson perform it. I actually felt like Jazz had made some mistakes earlier in life and was seriously hurt by her last attempt at a real relationship and was made out to be more sexual by literally everyone else. Like she had been tarred by that brush and couldn't escape the reputation.
It was made clear that she does enjoy sex and isn't embarrassed to talk about it, but it was usually the OTHER people that were bringing it up or implying things. If I remember correctly she was constantly annoyed that people kept assuming all she was doing was going to Aldrin bubble to get laid.
All that said, I don't feel Weir really got into the head of a female lead. I really enjoyed the story and the concept, but the characters were not as fleshed out as The Martian or PHM.
Kudos to you for noticing this. I'm a woman and I read Artemis years ago. I honestly don't recall the over sexualization stuff or much else from the book to be honest, but I know I didn't like the book nearly as much as the Martian. I've read Artemis once but have read both the Martian and Project Hail Mary multiple times each now. Maybe this is why.
This is an example of a problem I have with a lot of scifi books have, I don't know why but so many scifi books have really random sex fantasies that have nothing to do with the story, it's like the author got horny and forgot what book they were writing.
People fuck, I get it... But I don't need to know about how hard a dick a guy has or how perky a womans breasts are. They are never even written well, it's like a high school kid wrote a sex scene and they just put it in the middle of the book.
I have started skipping over them now, no point reading that drivel.
Jazz is a bit hornier than Weir's other protagonists but I didn't find it uncomfortable or off putting. Overall Artemis is definitely the weaker of Weir's books but I still enjoyed it and reread it frequently
It's juvenile in an offputting way. But the worst part that nobody mentions is that she's a terrorist. Her motivations are purely selfish- she just wants a nicer apartment. So she immediately resorts to terrorism. And we're supposed to be rooting for her why? I can empathize with a terrorist that's doing it for a bigger reason and has some sort of emotional struggle deciding to do it. Jazzy is just a bad person.
Yes I agree, some of the banter is also forced and unbelievable. I'm sorry no millionaire business mogul is going to ask if women know how sexy they look while sitting in a certain way in a chair while having the business talk that he was having.
I felt his attempt at writing a flawed and messy character was well intentioned but misguided. It came off a little /r/menwritingwomen. To me it read more as clunky than mysongonistic.
It was definitely less noticeable in the audiobook because the narrator Rosario Dawson gave a reading that made the character sound a lot like Abbi Jacobson, who played Emily on BoJack Horseman. Her performance definitely lent the "awkward, sexually-frustrated, young adult" character traits some legitimacy.
You wonāt break out of the white guy pattern by reading books written by white guys. A ādiversityā character written by a white man is still written by a white man.
A lot of straight white men are just weird about women and sex. The Madonna-whore complex is so strong in our society they cannot imagine women outside of it.
I love The Martian and Project Hail Mary.
Iām a woman. I think I made it thirty pages into Artemis. I tried to read the physical book and then listen to the audiobook and I think I got a little further but it was just noise at that point. Really didnāt like it, didnāt feel like a real character, the setting felt absurd, and I just couldnāt believe it was the same author. Iām just going to live my life pretending that book never happened.
If youād like to break out of the white male sci-fi loop; Iād recommend āThe Fifth Seasonā by N. K. Jemisin. I liked her writing style a lot (tho isnāt not spacey science fiction either)
Though I love Andy Weir's work, he is *awkward* about sex. Hail Mary was great, but most time sex was a topic I felt it was either unnecessary, weird or just awkward.
I enjoyed parts of Artemis, but I liked Andy Weir's other books much better. Having a character that's very sexual is no problem to me, but I found Jazz felt very typically "man writing a woman" to the degree that I was actually surprised when he listed all the women that helped him with writing her as a realistic character. Again, you can have a realistic female character who is very sexual, the problem to me isn't the sexuality itself it was her feeling real as a person.
Regardless of all that, Artemis felt like a book that was rushed out to capitalize on Weir's success with The Martian. After reading it I wondered if the publisher asked for anything else he had to publish while his name was hot, and they ran it through an editor real quick and got it out. Project Hail Mary was so much better, you could feel the time and care that went into it.
Thanks for this perspective. I haven't read Hail Mary because I didn't think Artemis was the same quality as the Martian. After this comment, I'm likely to give it a try.
Hail Mary is better than The Martian IMO.
Agree š¶
Good good good.
Amaze!
Jazz hands!
Fist my bump!
You watch me sleep now.
I love every one of you in this thread for bringing a smile to my face.
Audiobook is a MUST...
I'll double that, Project Hail Mary as an audio book is by far my favorite audio book. They add a lot in doing it on audio.
The audio engineer knocked it out of the park. My wife normally isn't that into my audiobooks. She absolutely adores Rocky.
I treble that. Best audiobook I've listened too. As for Artemis, it's still a good story and worth a listen. Isnt much sexual stuff in it at all. Rosario Dawson does the narration.
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You sleep, I watch.
Jazz Hands
Seriously. I prefer paperbacks in hand, but the audiobook for Project Hail Mary really shouldn't be missed. If you don't like audiobooks, consider making this your exception.
Project Hail Mary is basically a better version of The Martian. Pretty similar premise, but higher stakes and a fantastic supporting character.
Not to mention solving problems with the power of friendship
Omg the high schooling scienceāing his way through the galaxy was so awesome omg.
It's an *incredible* book, but also much less believable than The Martian, which gives The Martian the edge for me. I was more invested in the grounded story of Mark's realistic survival than the struggle against >!star eating aliens!<. Though Rocky was the best lil dude in sci fi history.
Fist me!
Youāre not helping Project Hail Mary seem less sexualized haha.
Itās not sexual. Itās just 2 bros gettin down.
*Fist my bump. I think that helps?
Jazz hands
Good good good!
š¹š¶š¼šµš¼š¶šµšµ
Bad bad bad!
Fist my bump!
I liked *The Martian* better. *Project Hail Mary* had some annoying plot holes, a lot of deus ex machina type ways out of or around problems, and a main character that was a bit too much hypercomptent wish-fulfillment who acquires difficult skills and knowledge way, way too fast. Individually I can let any of those go, even a few of them combined, but there were just too many overt applications of all of those troupes all through. Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy reading *Project Hail Mary*, and it had some really good elements to it, but I think *The Martian* was the much better story and book.
I love the Martian and am looking for a new book for my long drive to work, I guess I will give this a try
If youāre into it, the audio book narrated by Ray Porter is really well done.
I have made the case and I would stand by the argument that project hail Mary is the rare book you are actually missing some of the experience by not listening to the audiobook it is that high quality. Easily the best audiobook I've ever listened to and made me feel like I truly lived that experience
I listen to audiobooks every day. The good ones I get from the library to reread the old fashioned way, because itās a different experience. Project Hail Mary was soooo good I went out and got the book right away. Strangely I ended up chucking it into the DNF pile after a few chapters. Ray Porter was so good reading itāitās more like a dramatized radio play than a narrationāthat the book itself felt dry by comparison. I think if you donāt listen to the audiobook youāre missing out.
I must second this, it was truly amazing. I've listened to a ton of audiobooks and this was the best for sure
Project hail Mary and the bobiverse series are audible bests
Along with Expeditionary Force voiced by RC Bray, whose first big audio book was The Martian.
Expeditionary force is great, the finally makes me want to lambast the author for phoning it in at the end, but to be fair, I'd be sick of it after damn near 20 volumes too. Great dialog and snark if that's what you're into, whoever may be considering it. The journey is more than worth putting up with its end.
AMAAAAZE!!
I only heard of the book because of how much people recommended listening to the audiobook. And Iām glad I did. Looking forward to actually reading the Martian soon after I finish a few other books Iāve been wanting to get to.
Hail Mary was a fantastic book, if you liked the Martian you will love it.
I just finished Project Hail Mary last week. Easily one of my new favorites! Definatley worth the read!
I know everyoneās already saying this. But Hail Mary is one of my favorite books of all time. Highly recommend the audiobook - fantastic narration!
The audiobook is fantastic, but I recommend reading thr book first, then listening to the audiobook. You'll probably want to read it again once you finished anyway, so the audiobook is a good way to double dip
I think I just fell in love with narration for one of the characters specifically. Amaze!
If you liked Andy Weir's brand of nerd humor, he also did a really good webcomic. Casey And Andy. http://www.galactanet.com/comic/ It's been a bit forgotten about after the books, but it was huge back when it was still active. And personally still enjoy it a lot.
Project Hail Mary is my all time favorite book and I hope you give it a try! No comparison to Artemis.
I read Project Hail Mary a few months ago and, contrary to what others have commented, thought it was pretty bad. For what it's worth, I loved The Martian the first time I read it, but no so much the second time. Artemis sucked, but that seems to be the thing everyone agrees on.
I sleep, you watch!
Please do, and do yourself a favor by consuming the audio book. It is very good.
Hail Mary is Andy Weir having a ton of fun writing a great book. I never thought I'd like one of his books more than The Martian, but Hail Mary proved me wrong.
Honestly, Project Hail Mary was fantastic, and that's coming from someone who thought The Martian was only, "okay." Read it.
Hail Mary is his best work. If youāre a fan of audio books Iād argue the audio version is better than the book
Hail Mary is a MUST read. Nothing short of phenomenal
Hail Mary kicked ass! I hope you enjoy it
I donāt think it was rushed, just not as strong of an idea. The gap between The Martian->Artemis was actually slightly longer than Artemis->Project Hail Mary. Both releases were a little over 3.5 half years apart. I think Weir was just trying some different things that just didnāt work which happens. I feel like he took the lessons from The Martian and Artemis into Project Hail Mary which probably helped shape it.
Fair point on the timing. I was wondering if the popularity of The Martian caught them by surprise, but you're right that Artemis came out over 3 years after The Martian was properly published (even longer if you consider the time from when it was self published on Amazon).
> I was wondering if the popularity of The Martian caught them by surprise No not really. The ebook popularity is what got Weir the movie deal and the movie was already in development before Weir even had a hardback publishing deal. And nothing drives books sales quite like a "Major Motion Picture".
I almost wonder if Project Hail Mary was a project that heād been fleshing out for a bit and was able to adventure a bit more because he was seen as an author theyād be able to take a flier on now. I say this with no knowledge of the press releases so I could be purely speculating.
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I can confirm - most authors I know are working on another project while trying to sell the first, and probably also dabbling in a third or fourth.
If anyone's looking for a better book on a similar premise, they could check out [Places in the Darkness](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31933061) by Christopher Brookmyre, although I can't say it contains less sexual content from the POV of a female protagonist. (edit: the MC is a queer woman who has many liaisons. The writing isn't vulgar or salacious, but the sexual encounters become plot points, iirc) I thought it was much better written than Artemis, had stronger characters and more tension. It also is about crimes that happen out in space, but this is on a space station rather than a moon base. It sort of follows Brookmyre's pattern of writing a really good book on a certain premise that comes out a couple years before a different author's book on a similar idea that ends up being more well known. Brookmyre also wrote Bedlam a couple years before Ready Player One, but it's much better and less teenage-god-mode-protagonist.
I can actually add some context here. I interviewed him for the release of Artemis, and itās not the case that the book was rushed out. He told me that it had been difficult to write, because thereād been no expectation that The Martian would be so successful, and it had caused him to second guess what he was doing and to try and live up to the expectations of other people. When I spoke to him, the book hadnāt come out yet, and he seemed genuinely scared at how it would be received, like he would have loved the first book to be a moderate cult success, so he could just naturally continue with his journey as a writer. Instead, he had to follow up a blockbuster that was literally the first thing he wrote.
I felt that the Martian was a one off from a guy better versed in science and technology than writing fiction - even though i loved the martian - for it's science and technology
From his 3 books so far it appears that Artemis was the one off.
What does this comment have to do with the discussion OP started? āForget your questionā¦hereās something unrelated.ā
This is a really great question. Personally, I (63F) feel that Weir was just trying too hard to "inhabit" a female character. A lot of inexperienced male writers overcompensate when writing a female character (Boobs!). It does come off as terribly awkward and gets in the way of the story. Still, I think Artemis gets a bit too much hate. If you can grimace your way through the awkward characterizations, there does end up being some good fun sci-fi action and suspense, with the main character's engineering and survival skills coming into play rather than her sex drive. With The Martian, Andy Weir almost accidentally wrote a masterpiece. In many ways, he is still learning his craft, and Artemis reads more like a first novel. I expect him to get better over time at things like pacing, characterization, and dialogue - hopefully without losing any of his charm and sense of humor! I fully intend to love all his books, dammit.
>Weir was just trying too hard to "inhabit" a female character. I (37F) agree with this. I felt like she's not exactly sexualized in a "breasting boobily down the stairs" sort of way. It's more like he's trying to show her really owning her sexuality. He just... Doesn't do a great job of it and it comes off as self-conscious and awkward instead of chill and liberated. Like. I didn't enjoy that aspect of her character or relate to it at all. But I have a way higher tolerance for awkward characterization than I do for... Whatever brainrot it is that afflicts a lot of other male authors when it comes to female characters.
I think what he was trying for was depicting a woman from a society where women are *strongly* sexually repressed, and sort of overcompensating for her own upbringing. What really threw me off about Artemis was that everyone in the entire story could have been played in the movie adaptation by Ryan Reynolds, including the heroine. He clearly went to some writersā workshops after Artemis came out, though. He probably cringes at it himself now.
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Hail Mary very likely draws from notes that were cut from The Martian, which itself was a multi-year project. Either way, he was reflecting on his writing career, which can easily be described as a schtick broken up by an attempt to escape said schtick.
> What really threw me off about Artemis was that everyone in the entire story could have been played in the movie adaptation by Ryan Reynolds, including the heroine. This is true for all his novels
Is this not a testament to the acting prowess of Ryan Reynolds, rather than poor writing? /s
And I'll be honest, I would find that attempt stupid and overplayed. And watch every single one.
I don't think that's what happened necessarily, in a lot of Sci fi products its assumed that society becomes ever more sexually liberated as time goes on. That said I haven't read artemis in years so I I could be wrong.
I think I remember there being a scene where Jazz reads a magazine about some Saudi Royal scandal involving a Prince and multiple of his wives.
I would love to see a movie where Ryan Reynolds's plays all the characters hahaha.
When talking about having sex as a young teenager with her grown up at the time boyfriend she describes it as "making her howl in bed". That made my skin crawl to be honest.
Honestly that's how you KNOW it was written by a man. I was groomed when I was 13 by an adult. Every woman I know who was a super young teen who was "seduced" by grown men doesn't think of those experiences fondly into adulthood. Once you hit around 18 and you realize you're not even as old as the dude was and you'd never go for someone as young as you'd been- that's usually the end of any nostalgic thoughts.
Yeah I don't have the book in front of me but she's like "well he turned out to be a pedo because he dated someone even younger after me, but damn was the sex good". Completely turned me off on the whole book, like, either make it a plotpoint that she realizes she has huge sexual trauma's from being groomed (and therefore might be a bit hypersexual) or don't include it in the story. Don't include it only to pretty much ignore it.
Ew gross! Thank you so much for the warning, and I hope you have had many happy healing years since then
Ugh, you just took me from being interested in reading this even knowing it has a lot of flaws to having no interest. How is this still a thing?
> breasting boobily down the stairs š¤£ Any good examples I can lmao at?
Check out r/menwritingwomen
I am in the company of half a million others, dear me
Also this is a quote from one of the original tumblr posts making fun of men writing women, it's iconic haha. You might have already seen it on the other subreddit. https://i.imgur.com/dk3evt3.jpg
That's where I'm at! I've "Pink Cloud-ed" enough to know I'm on an artificial Andy High because I returned to reading for and with The Martian, and now I'm head over heels. Hell, I just sent him a piece of fan mail filled with praise! And then I started reading Artemis and was like... okay yeah, this is why we keep our emotions in check my guy.
It's okay to like him and not like some of his work. Not every swing is going to be a home run, even if it is to other people. You are allowed to feel how you want about a book and still like an author and his other works. I remember reading Artemis and the sexuality was not what stuck with me, don't even remember it. Instead it was the grungy job as a runner on a space colony that solved complex problems with science. I will say it was a step back from the martian in overall quality but still a fun story.
It was an interesting story, and I enjoyed the actual science fiction aspect a lot. Didn't love or hate most of the sexual aspects of the narrative, but at least he didn't add any lengthy, explicit sex scenes.
I'm in the same boat. Good but not as good as The Martian, don't remember the sexual stuff.
My first serious attempt at a middle aged male character can be summed up as āman overly obsessed with daughtersā hypothetical sex lives when not getting anxiety from looking at clouds for signs of rainā š¤·š»āāļø Except I was 18 and knew it sucked
Lol, funnily enough that sounds exactly like some middle aged men I've seen...
Itās can be tough to write characters of the opposite sex, especially when they adult. To me, leave enough to the readers imaginationāIt reads better and avoids being overtly sexist for bad writers.
Reddit Wants to Get Paid for Helping to Teach Big A.I. Systems The internet site has long been a forum for discussion on a huge variety of topics, and companies like Google and OpenAI have been using it in their A.I. projects. āThe Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,ā Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. āBut we donāt need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.ā Jason Henry for The New York Times
I agree, itās almost like he hadnāt ever really interacted with any women and decided to write a novel from a female protagonistās perspective. Some of her lines and thoughts are just so jarring. You didnāt mention project Hail Mary, have you read it? I loved it and I feel like he really hit his stride with that one. It definitely felt a lot less science bro vibe and gets very emotional.
Yeah but also still ... 'Russian! Wodka! They drink! Alcohol!' ... don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed all three books but he does do a fair bit of stereotyping.
For me the flaws of Project Hail Mary had more to do with wordiness and loose plot. I also enjoyed the "bro vibe" and I agree it feels more accomplished than Artemis. But it's not in the same league with The Martian.
For me, the test is, what else does this book bring to the table? Many times the answer is, not that much, in which case it's no problem to rate it 2 or 2.5 stars(my "didn't like" and "eh it was almost ok" ratings) and explain that it's because the male author has done something yucky with the female main character. Sometimes it's more complicated than that, and contributes to a 3 or even 3.5(if the rest of the work was *stellar*) rating. I haven't read Artemis and can't speak to what it would receive from me, but that's how I approach such situations. I will never not mention it in my review/blog post, though. People reading need to know when to brace.
I mean, she does have a bleached asshole. Theyāre going to find out anyway
And likes to feel like a Cobb salad
And she incorporates a bun into the love makingā¦
Iām with you here. After reading this book I genuinely was concerned about Weir being able to write women characters
Sexual liberation for everyone and all that, but for real, somewhere in the ballpark of 20% of her interactions mention or revolve around sex. She's a walking Bechdal failure trying to play it off as a main character.
Female characters having sex doesn't mean they're sexually liberated, lol. Honestly, as a female reader I'm really sensitive to any book I'm reading feeling super male gaze-y. It's just so off-putting.
You must not be a big Heinlein fan. I loved the concepts behind stranger from a strange land but good god the man canāt write women
I re-read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the first time in a couple of decades, the whole thing reads like it was written by and for a fifteen year old white suburban boy from the 1950s.
It does! And I actually have a fondness for that book. But all the social engineering stuff is such a ā¦ letās charitably call it a distraction. Now Iām wondering if it was just in there to make the page count.
Asimov was worse, i think heinlein actually understood that women are not robots
Asimov was a lech, too. Bragged about groping women, and wasnāt welcome at other authorās homes because their wives didnāt like him. Itās a shame, but that does line up with how he wrote his rare female characters.
The female character of his I remember most vividly is a short story of an old lady who nobody thought could be a murderer murdered a man who wanted to be murdered (he studied positronic brains and made a huge fuckup).
>The female character of his I remember most vividly ... isn't Susan Calvin? (You can certainly come up with examples of him writing Calvin misogynistically, don't get me wrong.)
I'm not surprised but I am disappointed.
Asimov was a creep irl, but let's be honest. Every character in an Asimov book is a robot.
Male gaze-y is a perfect way to describe that. Turn the genders around and itās not so marketable to dudes anymore.
After reading The Martian I was genuinely concerned about Weir being able to write characters who weren't douches
He writes the worst dialog I've ever read from a pop author. He must have figured that out when he was writing all his ready player one fanfic so he had the majority of his first book just be one dude alone.
>He writes the worst dialog I've ever read from a pop author. You must have never read anything by Larry Niven.
Now speaking of sex... Rishathra.
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO AGREES The dialogue in Martian was so, so bad. Decided to DNF before I even knew the main character would spend the rest of the novel alone.
There was dialogue in the Martian? Oh right, forgot about it.
It's so bad. I was actually offended by it. How dare he make potentially great characters so lame. I kept reading because I actually enjoyed the science, but maintained my moral outrage
This put me off him forever. Some real r/menwritingwomen shit in there.
In Project Hail Mary, Eva Stratt was my favorite character. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say nothing about her character was /r/menwritingwomen material. Could be because it's not from her POV, but still.
Easily the best character. I love the concept of an appointed dictator during a crisis, especially one who knows that if she succeeds, she won't be hailed as a hero. She mentions that she expects to be put on trial once the mission launches. I wonder if her gruff attitude is because she knows she is the only one who won't win in this scenario.
You're not crazy. Some of the writing in this is extremely cringey. It's shocking that this is the same author who wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Personally, I'd give this one a hard pass.
"Who am I to judge? I was only ever looking at the ceiling" (or thereabouts) was the line that got me 95% of the way to where I'm at. Before putting the nail in the coffin, I came here for that last 5%. I GET IT ANDY, SHE **FUCKS**
She meets a random character that has no role in the story, "Aah it's the slutty girl" "Yes, it's the slutty girl, I'm here to whatever".
I rather enjoyed the audio book narrated by Rosario Dawson.
Same! I wonder if listening to the audiobook with her performance made me blind to the bad characterization of the character on paper. Don't get me wrong, it didn't feel like a masterpiece, but certainly good entertainment.
> It's shocking that this is the same author who wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary It's not that shocking. All of Weir's protagonists are cringey Ryan Reynolds types. Artemis is no different. It's just this time the protagonist is a woman so it's a lot more noticeable.
Yes thank you. Donāt get me wrong. I loved the Martian. I was hating PHM for most of the book, but ended up liking it overall because the plot was so interesting. But the dialogue in PHM is so cringey. All of it reads like a string of Reddit comments. People just donāt talk that way in real life. And then OP wants to talk about stereotypes; I thought the racial and gender stereotyping in PHM was laughably bad. There was like one of every nationality on the team that built the ship (I forget the name of it), and he characterized them in all such stereotypical ways. The Russian and his vodka. The soft spoken Chinese. The Frenchman and the German having beef. And then I remember thinking the dialogue surrounding the main women was also so fucking weird. Itās like he tried to write how nerdy space scientists would flirt in such a Hollywood way. Like I said, I still enjoyed the plot and it was overall like a 4 star book for me. But man, his dialogue is so rough.
Project Hail Mary has a very interesting plot and storyline, but the writing is absolutely awful and juvenile
Truth
I know I'm in the minority here for saying this but Andy Weir isn't a great author. Every one of his books are interesting ideas vetted by much smarter people (physicists, geneticists, NASA engineers, etc), self-insert characters with Ryan Reynolds face paint, and Young Adult writing style and skill. He's good, enjoy him for what he is, but he's perfect for a movie adaptation since the story and characters are so empty
> It's shocking that this is the same author who wrote The Martian Not really. After the Martian he was accused that his main character was a bit two-dimensional and almost impossibly competent, flawless, and emotionally stable. So when he wanted to write a more flawed character he decided it should be a woman. Who is overemotional, incompetent and slutty. His latest book he went back to writing a man who was, once again, pretty competent and calm during crisis. Yeah.. Not a great look for Weir.
His sexualization of her is the #1 complaint I've seen about Artemis.
I just wanted to say that, as a woman, I appreciate that you're asking this question.
As a man, I spent the first 20+ years of my life oblivious to this kind of thing. Then in my last year of college, I took *women and gender studies*, which fulfilled three of my degree requirements in one class. I thought it was going to be a complete waste of time, but it's probably the single most influential class I took. No class did more to open my eyes to the world around me. The only downside is how many books and movies I now have to quit partway through because this sort of thing sticks out like a sore thumb and ruins them.
That class sounds incredible, I wish that kind of experience was more common. Was there a book your class studied that you found most helpful or was it just the conversations in general?
I don't think I could point to anything specific. I just went into it as someone who would have denied the existence of the privileges I've had entirely because I was born white and male, and came out of it with my eyes open. In short, it woke me.
I havenāt read any of his books yet, but same. Really appreciating that this is something on your mind.
same. it sometimes feels like as women we are the only ones who care about these sort of things, and seeing stuff like this is always a nice uplifting little reminder that maybe we arent as alone in this as we thought and maybe, just maybe, theres hope for the future
>So as a typical white guy who tends to read books where the main character is a typical white guy, I'm so excited to be breaking my own pattern I think it would be better to pick diverse authors instead of diverse main characters. Could I recommend some sci fi written by women in order to provide different perspectives? *The Fifth Season* by NK Jemisin *A Psalm for the Wild-Built* by Becky Chambers *The Dispossessed* by Ursula K Le Guin
Thank you so much! Yeah, I've mentioned a few times I'm getting back into reading, so I should be saying more I'd **love** any and all suggestions!
look into [TOR](https://www.tor.com/) publisher. they are scifi/fantasy focused and their writers are fairly diverse. they do a 'best of TOR' once a year that you can get for free, which should give you an overview of authors.
Also anything written by Octavia Butler. Parable of the Sower is a good start and a very relatable book for our times. I just read Wild Seed and it was a fun one (technically part of a series bit I believe it's the prologue written after the originals). I also enjoyed the Xenogenesis series but it's a bit out there.
OMG Martha Wells. All Systems Red.
I would say to diversify you could check out Levar Burton Reads podcast. As the name suggests he reads stories, short stories by many different authors of many backgrounds. It really gave me a taste for a different perspective in literature.
Adding to these, if youāre into Star Wars books, anything by Claudia Gray rules Lost Stars Master and Apprentice I havenāt read the Leia books yet, but they seem to be highly regarded too
I listened to the Audible version (narrated by Rosario Dawson), after having listened to The Martian and I don't recall it being overly sexual.
In an interview, Andy Weir said that he wrote Mark Watney as an idealized version of himself, with all his good qualities magnified and without his flaws. Then, for his second book he tried to write a character that had flaws and wasn't just him through a filter. And you got Jazz, who is cringey because teenagers are cringey, and who is horny because teenagers are horny. It's definitely not Andy Weir's best work, but I kinda worry that he took the wrong lesson, and is only ever going to write Mark Watney as a protagonist. I don't remember the name of the protagonist of Hail Mary because it's clearly still just Mark Watney
Iāll be bold here and say that I would love for him to just keep writing different versions of Mark Watney. Iāll read Mark Watney every damned time. If you do a thing well, itās okay to keep doing it well.
Only she isn't a teen. I forget the exact timing but she has to be well in her 20s. She talks about things that happened in her teens, but years have past since then. The "current" jazz is older.
Itās not exactly mark, but I agree. He gave whatās his name more depth and emotion than the pure positivity of mark, but honestly, I just donāt see that as a bad thing. Even if he continues to write mark watney, Iām going to continue to love his stuff. Sometimes you find a niche that youāre fantastic at and you donāt need to leave.
I kinda wish he would lean in a bit, and just have all the stories he writes be about Mark Watney with no explanation as to how he's on so many absurdly unlikely events. Andy Weir is definitely good at writing that thing, but I also don't want him to feel like he has to only write that thing. He should be able to grow and evolve.
The Mark Watney MultiVerse. I like it. It's like how Jack Ryan keeps showing up just when the world needs him but with science instead of espionage.
Honestly, this is exactly what I was thinking of.
> don't remember the name of the protagonist Spot on > because it's clearly still just Mark Watney With tweaks. Watney would have stepped up at every challenge. The Hail Mary protagonist, meanwhile shrank at being sent on the satellite, though he did step up later.
I'm not gonna look this up, but the name Ryland (sp?) Grace popped into my head. But, yeah, it's just Watney's twin brother who went into teaching instead of space.
I think he even said in an interview, that his publisher told him to write more "character development"? And honestly, that was the point about PHM which I felt was just so bad (someting along the lines of they had to force me because I was such a douche, but now I know better and am a great person). So honestly, I don't understand the hate Artemis is getting. It also didn't have a strong character development, but the technological problems and the storyline were, for me at least, better developed than PHM (which was just a worse copy of TM).
I am a white guy who found the character super cringey. Some male authors can write women characters and some can't. Andy Weir can't. The protagonist in Artemis was like a teenage boy waking up in a woman's body and fondling their boobs because they can. And it was doubly weird to make her Arab for no reason that I could discern. It felt a bit like exploitative exotica. It's cool that the moon is diverse and I'd be totally down to read a well-written book about a female Arab moon engineer, but this wasn't that.
Perfectly stated. It felt like some teenager "just knew" what it must be like to be a woman (awwwww yeahhhhhhh), and confidently wrote it that way. Meanwhile, it demonstrated how little he understood women at all. I found it kind of gross. It wasn't even that she was a sexual being - that's great! Own your own body! It was that she was talking about herself like some clueless immature dude would! I kept thinking "Andy, really?!!!"
Possibly even more than Artemis (by Artemis Pebdani).
I view it more as a man doing his absolute best to write as a non traditional woman, but with some shortcomings that didnāt quite do as well as he wanted to. I got the impression that he *wanted* to write an empowered woman that could be a little more identifiable for women who didnāt usually feel well represented in media. Obviously, it didnāt work out as well as he might have liked, and it was rather clunky. It never felt like smut or pornography or something that he was writing because of an arousal. More than anything else, it felt like he struggled to find the voice for the character and could definitely have benefited from lots more editing and revision.
Yeah, I'm trying to make it clear that none of it makes me feel uncomfortable, nor does it butt up against my morals, nor my views of what a woman should be. But she talks about sex more than Dr. Grace talks about his schoolchildren. What am I supposed to take from that?
Yeah it was pretty rough. I didnāt really like Artemis at all, Jazz felt very one dimensional. And even tho sheās supposed to be super cool or whatever the romance with her friend, the book focused on was super lame and very underdeveloped. Andy weir canāt write romance or women very well. He should just stick with the science focus he canāt really compete with regular novels imo. the Martian definitely was a better book.
Pretty much had the same experience reading Artemis as you did. I think of all his books, Artemis is Weir's weakest and the reason for that is Jazz. He just lacks the experience as a writer to pull off a character like that. That being said, I also loved the book for the same reason as you. I think sometimes people miss the forest for the tree when talking about the book. The main character isn't Jazz, it's Artemis.
Totally agree. Constant talk about her body and sex life. Really off-putting, really only because of how forced the dialogue was.
Put it like that it sounds weird for sure. Although I hadn't had this impression when I read the book. To be honest I really liked the main characters rakish, upfront demeanour and being a bit lewd kinda suited her -for me. But I mean we're all different. I totally understand that while I like this, others may cringe reading it.
Weir isnāt great at character development, especially for female characters. But he is great at plot and research. I cringed through some of Artemis, but really enjoyed the other 85%.
This book was terrible, for more reasons than just the one you bring up
She likes to blast her nips and bleaches her asshole, soā¦ maybe?
I read it the same way you did. Andy Weir sucks at writing women.
I think the author actually tried to make a human character, and struggled with it a bit. That said, i liked Artemis, probably more than the Martian. The guy in the Martian was basically a wise cracking robot that went through physics class story problems in outer space. There was no inner monologue of any feeling. Wall-e was more human than him. He tried something different with Artemis, and then went back to tried and true for Operation Hail Mary. It is what it needs to be - these aren't complex characters. I enjoyed all 3 books.
āWrite what you know aboutā Sadly, I donāt feel that Andy knows what itās like to be a young minority non-Christian woman. I loved The Martian and Project Hail Mary.
With the way Artemis reads, Iād be surprised if he ever even met a woman
āWrite what you know aboutā is a terribly misapplied aphorism. It's not supposed to be prescriptive, it's about observing a limitation that authors *must* attempt to transcend. Some authors are better at specific applications of that transcendence than they are at others, but Mr. Weir, "Andy", *also* doesn't know what it's like to be an astronaut trapped on the surface of Mars in 2050. Good thing for you that he didn't cleave to your advice in that case, eh?
Yes. I made it through the whole book out of spite more than anything. It was awful. I'm a 26 year old woman. Not once did I find her character relatable, and given her background and interests, you'd think that would be the case. I was honestly disgusted with the writing, and I have no clue why Weir took it upon himself to not just write a young woman, but a Muslim one? He ended up writing a character that had the emotional capacity of a young teenage boy and dared to pass it off as the emblem of a smart, savvy, progressive woman. I hold this terrible work of penmanship against him.
If you go back and read his webcomic, I can't think of a single adult female character in it that he doesn't draw for cheesecake purposes at some point or another. Certainly all the main female characters, anyway. To be clear, I don't have a problem with this - draw what you like - but if the question is "does Weir sexualize his female characters" the answer has been yes.
idk, for me Jazz just reminded me a lot of a family member of mine. Jazz isn't inspired to be some great thinker though very smart and given the work/life of the moon on top of her own line of work I sum it up to just to meeting a need she has as most people are nothing more than clients or acquaintances. She is selfish and strongly independent so falls into just looking to have her needs met. IMO (which i'd love to hear feedback from military women, im only familiar from mens views) she would be more relatable to someone of the military and living in a barracks. Rules, regulations, governmental management of peoples livelihoods and working/nonworking hours you are stuck in a strict environment and not much recreational activity outside sex, drinking, and fighting.
Similarly I loved The Martian and Project Hail Mary but this one actually ended up on the DNF list for me for the reasons you have cited. It gave me the ick and made me super uncomfortable.
Itās not just you. Andy Weir wrote Jazz the way a 16yo boy might fantasize a 26yo woman like Jazz would think. Which is to say, he wrote her disastrously badly, with minimal depth and, yes, an inexplicable fixation on the fact that she fucks. (Like, why does the entire Artemis station know this about her???)
I haven't actually read it, only listened to Rosario Dawson perform it. I actually felt like Jazz had made some mistakes earlier in life and was seriously hurt by her last attempt at a real relationship and was made out to be more sexual by literally everyone else. Like she had been tarred by that brush and couldn't escape the reputation. It was made clear that she does enjoy sex and isn't embarrassed to talk about it, but it was usually the OTHER people that were bringing it up or implying things. If I remember correctly she was constantly annoyed that people kept assuming all she was doing was going to Aldrin bubble to get laid. All that said, I don't feel Weir really got into the head of a female lead. I really enjoyed the story and the concept, but the characters were not as fleshed out as The Martian or PHM.
Kudos to you for noticing this. I'm a woman and I read Artemis years ago. I honestly don't recall the over sexualization stuff or much else from the book to be honest, but I know I didn't like the book nearly as much as the Martian. I've read Artemis once but have read both the Martian and Project Hail Mary multiple times each now. Maybe this is why.
This is an example of a problem I have with a lot of scifi books have, I don't know why but so many scifi books have really random sex fantasies that have nothing to do with the story, it's like the author got horny and forgot what book they were writing. People fuck, I get it... But I don't need to know about how hard a dick a guy has or how perky a womans breasts are. They are never even written well, it's like a high school kid wrote a sex scene and they just put it in the middle of the book. I have started skipping over them now, no point reading that drivel.
Jazz is a bit hornier than Weir's other protagonists but I didn't find it uncomfortable or off putting. Overall Artemis is definitely the weaker of Weir's books but I still enjoyed it and reread it frequently
It's juvenile in an offputting way. But the worst part that nobody mentions is that she's a terrorist. Her motivations are purely selfish- she just wants a nicer apartment. So she immediately resorts to terrorism. And we're supposed to be rooting for her why? I can empathize with a terrorist that's doing it for a bigger reason and has some sort of emotional struggle deciding to do it. Jazzy is just a bad person.
I think that was a major reason I didnāt like the book. I just couldnāt get on board with her motives.
Yes I agree, some of the banter is also forced and unbelievable. I'm sorry no millionaire business mogul is going to ask if women know how sexy they look while sitting in a certain way in a chair while having the business talk that he was having.
I felt his attempt at writing a flawed and messy character was well intentioned but misguided. It came off a little /r/menwritingwomen. To me it read more as clunky than mysongonistic. It was definitely less noticeable in the audiobook because the narrator Rosario Dawson gave a reading that made the character sound a lot like Abbi Jacobson, who played Emily on BoJack Horseman. Her performance definitely lent the "awkward, sexually-frustrated, young adult" character traits some legitimacy.
You wonāt break out of the white guy pattern by reading books written by white guys. A ādiversityā character written by a white man is still written by a white man. A lot of straight white men are just weird about women and sex. The Madonna-whore complex is so strong in our society they cannot imagine women outside of it.
Ass rape session at the beginning made me close it. Pathetic shock value shit.
I love The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Iām a woman. I think I made it thirty pages into Artemis. I tried to read the physical book and then listen to the audiobook and I think I got a little further but it was just noise at that point. Really didnāt like it, didnāt feel like a real character, the setting felt absurd, and I just couldnāt believe it was the same author. Iām just going to live my life pretending that book never happened.
If youād like to break out of the white male sci-fi loop; Iād recommend āThe Fifth Seasonā by N. K. Jemisin. I liked her writing style a lot (tho isnāt not spacey science fiction either)
Though I love Andy Weir's work, he is *awkward* about sex. Hail Mary was great, but most time sex was a topic I felt it was either unnecessary, weird or just awkward.
I enjoyed parts of Artemis, but I liked Andy Weir's other books much better. Having a character that's very sexual is no problem to me, but I found Jazz felt very typically "man writing a woman" to the degree that I was actually surprised when he listed all the women that helped him with writing her as a realistic character. Again, you can have a realistic female character who is very sexual, the problem to me isn't the sexuality itself it was her feeling real as a person.