
Andy Weir, Author of the Martian, Shares Details About His Next Novel - apress
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/andy-weir-author-martian-shares-details-about-next-novel-180958708/?utm_source=twitter.com&no-ist
======
ethbro
Am I the only one who thought the writing wasn't particularly good?
Disclaimer: I still haven't seen the movie.

It kind of felt like a throwback to 1950s science fiction where
characterization was more of an afterthought than a fully-fleshed out
endeavor. I.e. the "I am an idea / political position / plot device wearing a
human-suit" school of character design. Except with more pop culture and cool
added in this case.

Which isn't to say it wasn't an entertaining book and I didn't heartily
appreciate the story!

~~~
AndrewStephens
You are not wrong about the writing, which was weak during the parts of the
novel that concerned groups of people on Earth or the rest of the crew in
space interacting. They all talked with one voice and seemed like stock
characters instead of real people to me.

However, the parts with Watley keeping his log on Mars seemed very true to me.
Not the fictional occurrences but the tone and style seemed consistent with
old-time sailors logs or autobiographies of people caught up in historical
disasters.

Interestingly, I attended a book club that discussed this novel, split about
50/50 between engineers and non-engineers. All the engineers agreed that the
Watley parts were great and the rest was not so good, but the non-engineers
almost uniformly had the exact opposite opinion!

(The film is good)

~~~
ethbro
To be fair, it's probably more reasonable to judge it in the stream of
epistolary / didactic literature than purely narrative. I remember Defoe's
_Crusoe_ and Stoker's _Dracula_ not having particularly inspiring characters
by modern standards either.

It is curious about the divergence between engineers and non-engineers. If he
ever writes another novel in the same vein, it'd be interesting to collaborate
with another author and have a richly-characterized political story on Earth
contrasted by a more "engineerly-characterized" space story.

(Keep meaning to watch film, have not gotten to)

------
julianpye
If you enjoyed 'The Martian', you should read his famous story 'The Egg', if
you haven't already:

[http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)

~~~
jjaredsimpson
I like to think that short story was inspired by the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
electron_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)

------
danpalmer
Glad to hear that he's doing another "scientifically accurate". For a while,
he was saying that the next book would be a 'typical' space-opera style novel
without that aspect, and while I do enjoy that genre, I didn't feel like the
writing quality of The Martian would be good enough to carry a space opera.

He's found a niche, something that he is good at, and I'm really glad to see
him sticking to this rather than trying to do something that I doubt his
ability to pull off.

~~~
Grishnakh
The Martian isn't scientifically accurate, though it's closer than a lot of
other stuff. The entire plot device of the storm at the beginning, needed to
give a reason for Watney to be abandoned on Mars, was total hogwash: Mars
doesn't have an atmosphere thick enough for that. Some other things were
questionable too, like the rescue at the end.

Personally, I'd like to see some more movies that really are scientifically
accurate, about things in space near the Earth, perhaps one set on the Moon
showing a colony there used for asteroid mining and ore refining.

------
readams
I find it kind of sad that he has to take crap just because his lead is a
female character. How is this in any way remarkable?

If he announced he's writing a feminist novel or something that specifically
addresses gender issues that might have been an interesting line of
questioning.

~~~
talmand
Where do you see that he's getting crap for a female lead?

~~~
jacalata
They might mean just getting the question "why write a female lead".

~~~
talmand
Why is that "getting crap" though? It's a legitimate question to ask with many
possible interesting answers. His answer was actually quite good, no real
reason other than it felt right for the character.

~~~
BEEdwards
The flip side is though if he was writing about a man no on would ask the
question, which is the issue.

Choosing a male protagonist is default, choosing to write about a women though
is strange and needs to be questioned.

~~~
munificent
> Choosing a male protagonist is default

Choosing a protagonist whose gender (and race, etc.) is the same as the
author's is the default. I don't think anyone asks Margaret Atwood why she
chooses a female protagonist.

~~~
dazmax
But they also don't ask why she chose a male protagonist.

~~~
munificent
Margaret Atwood may not be the best example because she so rarely chooses male
protagonists, but the gender of the author and how it relates to their
characters (and readers) comes up _all_ the time.

It is, for example, why Rowling published Harry Potter as "JK" and not
"Joanne"—she didn't want her own gender to affect how readers perceived her
book. A large number of female authors have done this over the years.

There does seem to be some asymmetry where male authors struggle to write
female characters well and are questioned about it more. I'm not sure where
the imbalance comes from.

