Skip to main content

Artemis (SF) - Andy Weir ****

It's impossible to read Artemis and not be reminded of that one-time SF great, Robert A. Heinlein. Not only was what was arguably Heinlein's best book also set on a Moon colony (more on that later), he had a penchant for feisty young female lead characters who were very intelligent but do not make conventional use of their abilities (think anything from Podkayne of Mars to Friday) - a perfect match for the central character of Andy Weir's new novel, Jasmine (Jazz) Bashara.

Artemis is set on a permanent Moon colony of around 2,000 inhabitants. Its bubble habitats are set up a short train ride from the Apollo 11 landing site, which reflects the colony's main source of income - tourism. Jazz makes her living apparently as a porter, moving goods around the colony, but in reality as a smuggler. This brings her into contact with others who will involve her in something far bigger, with drastic consequences.

Told in the first person by Jazz, this is a fairly conventional space adventure, though Weir does make use of his trademark ability to bring in excellent thinking through of the real practicalities of doing things away from the Earth - such as welding in airless environment or the workings of a Moon-based ore smelter.

Weir also thinks through the implications of keeping the economy of a small Moon colony viable, which brings us back to the comparison with Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. There too, the lunar colony's independence is under threat, though reflecting Heinlein's libertarian inclinations, his threat is the Earth-based government, where Weir's is organised crime - though there is a similar distrust of traditional government here too.

Although there are strong similarities with Heinlein's work (including a certain naivety of characterisation) - and it's hard to imagine that Weir has never read Heinlein - this is in no sense a pastiche. Perhaps the only slight problem is that it probably doesn't come out on top in a comparison with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - but that was a hard act to follow.

Artemis stands on its own as an enjoyable thriller, though, especially as tension mounts towards the end. It's an easy read, and Weir's introduction of plenty of thought-through science and engineering makes it a pleasure for those who like their science fiction as close as possible to physical reality. Writing a follow up to the remarkable success of The Martian was always going to be difficult. Artemis isn't as good - but stands up well in its own right. The book is a pleasure to read - but even more fun if you know enough SF history to recognise its heritage.


Hardback:  


Kindle:  

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you


Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We Are Eating the Earth - Michael Grunwald *****

If I'm honest, I assumed this would be another 'oh dear, we're horrible people who are terrible to the environment', worthily dull title - so I was surprised to be gripped from early on. The subject of the first chunk of the book is one man, Tim Searchinger's fight to take on the bizarrely unscientific assumption that held sway that making ethanol from corn, or burning wood chips instead of coal, was good for the environment. The problem with this fallacy, which seemed to have taken in the US governments, the EU, the UK and more was the assumption that (apart from carbon emitted in production) using these 'grown' fuels was carbon neutral, because the carbon came out of the air. The trouble is, this totally ignores that using land to grow fuel means either displacing land used to grow food, or displacing land that had trees, grass or other growing stuff on it. The outcome is that when we use 'E10' petrol (with 10% ethanol), or electricity produced by ...

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that â€˜Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...