Artemis: Undershot the Moon

 Artemis by Andy Weir (6 Points)

After reading "The Martian," I was pretty intrigued by Weir's work and decided to double back during the jump into Cyber/Steampunk to see what this moon-based book was all about. 

I'll start by saying that I have mixed reviews overall of the novel but let's start with the bad:

I genuinely believe that Weir gave their own best effort in writing a strong female protagonist, and absolutely flunked it. It basically felt like his character, Mark Watney, had put on a woman-of-Muslim-descent-suit and then traveled out to a moon colony. Many of the interactions, dialogue, and overall emotional responses of the main protagonist, Jazz, just never felt genuine as a young woman surviving on a diverse moonbase, let alone a human being sometimes. Like, she would get close, and then immediately swerve into an over-exaggerated and overly-testosteroned version of what she could have been as a character: strong-willed, independent, and incredibly smart. 

Ultimately, Weir knew his audience was young male adults who like science and catered to that demographic heavily with how he built and depicted Jazz as a character. The whole novel was still heavily male populated and focused on a lot on Jazz's romantic and sexual relationships which I genuinely did not care about and didn't feel was relevant at all to the story. Don't get me wrong, I think sex is wonderful and should be empowering and enjoyable for those participating, and Jazz could have been written in a way that was empowering for women and their connection to sexuality, but it was always the complete opposite and felt...pardon me, but "man-handled" is the best term I can think of. 

She was also constantly surrounded by male characters, and given and standard "gay-best friend" who was initially hated throughout the first half of the book without any good explanation, had a boyfriend who was later revealed to be a pedophile, and constantly admired the physique of the only cop on the moon. While I loved the snark, intelligence, and strength of the main character, she just felt flawed, shallow, and fake because of prior aspects of her behavior and language. I also felt that the tight knit community on the moon and her father's reputation wouldn't have protected Jazz from sexual harassment or abuse. Not that I feel that it should have happened in any way, shape, or form, but any time she talked about men looking at her or gawking at her on the ways to the showers felt so alien to me. Being views by outsiders as female for a majority of my life, Weir's writing of Jazz's day-to-day life being a woman on the moon was so alien and unnatural. I can almost guarantee that no woman of an ethnic minority would have had the experiences she had on the moon at all, and it constantly sucked the air out of the novel. (Pun intended.)

So, what did I like about this book?

Science! A colony on the Moon called Artemis! New societal structures and currency! There was so much to the novel that was explored or discussed, and I would have loved to have had the nuance of the learning more about other people and life on the Moon rather than the testosterone, and I enjoyed the novelties of growing algae on the moon as a source of food as well as how to export resources from the moon to Earth. There could have been so much more discussion and focus on the relationship between Earth and the moon colony as well, and I felt that they were very detached from one another. I enjoyed that they kept most of the realistic realms of science within the story as well, but I do wish that they had expanded on what people could do on the moon and other activities that may have grown as a form of commerce or local enjoyments. Do people play sports? What about the music or arts? What aspects of life in our Earth society could have been enhanced in space? I also really liked the concept of conflict for financial reasons that nearly collapsed an entire city, and all of the conflict felt tangible with very real consequences.

I guess the point I'm getting at is that the book was only bearable due to the aspects I like, but was fairly uncomfortable to read because of the aspects that I didn't like. There was a lot more potential for the novel's characters and how they represented diverse sexuality and cultures, but it just didn't live up to that expectation whatsoever. If this were a yelp review, I'd give it a six out of ten stars, but since this book takes place out in space, I'd give it six percent of the total stars in the milky way in terms of approval.

Andy Weir, if you want to fix your book, try the following:

• Don't write female characters if you can't articulate them to be real woman.
• Don't write diverse topics into a novel like one would check items off a shopping list.
• Do some research, and for God's sake, learn how to respect and empower women not through making them "one of the dudes," but by letting women by real, honest women.

If I had a chance to re-write this book, I would take the concept of Artemis and enforce it all the way. Guess what? Women dominate the moon! Artemis is a goddess who could have been conceptualized in a modern sense of female empowerment and strength, and the outpost would have been incredibly iconic metaphorically if male figures were a minority on the moon, and all of the iconic side characters mentioned in the book were women instead! Female scientists! A strong community with female characters, and male characters who actually respected woman instead of a male-dominated moon! (Also, trans women are women and non-binary folk of course would be welcome and enjoying the moon!) 

Fuck the Patriarchy! Matriarchal Moon Maidens of science and empowerment all the way! 

Thanks for reading, David.