![]() ![]() He put his city 40 km away from the landmark, for the sake of preservation. While the wealthy tourists dine in fancy restaurants and stay in expensive hotel suites, most of the denizens of Artemis eat “gunk” (an algae-derived foodstuff) and shower in recycled gray water.įor Weir, the most obvious tourist destination is the Apollo 11 landing site, Tranquility Base. Once that happens, then you have a viable tourism economy.” Weir modeled Artemis after tourist towns on Earth, where the amenities enjoyed by visitors on holiday are often out of reach for those who live there permanently. “The main conceit in the story is that the price of low-Earth orbit has been driven down to the point that middle-class people can afford to go into space,” Weir says. Then he had to figure out how the city got there. The book started, he says, with the idea of a city on the Moon. In a way, Artemis is the main character of the novel, and designing the city is where Weir’s creative process began. Weir lights up when I ask him to describe the lunar city of Artemis in which the book takes place. The Martian’s Mark Watney and Artemis’s Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara sound very much alike-and also like Weir when he gets on a roll. It’s also a voice that comes easy to Weir. Artemis is narrated in a style that Weir describes as “first-person smartass.” That style allows him to weave in large amounts of exposition as his protagonist explains to the reader every technical detail, from the smallest circuit to orbital dynamics, of the world Weir has created in Artemis. Much of what made The Martian a success is present in Weir’s new work. “When all the dust settles, if people say it’s not as good as The Martian but it’s still pretty good, I’ll call that a win.” ![]() “I happened to get mine right out of the gate, so a lot of people are thinking, ‘Well, I assume that every one of his books is going to be that good.’ Well, you know, probably not.” Though Weir admits to being nervous about how Artemis will be received by his fans, he seems to have managed his own expectations. (It is #9 on the 24 December New York Times fiction bestseller list.) “A writer will get a success like The Martian once in their life if they’re lucky,” he tells me. He also knows it is why fans are lining up to buy Artemis. Weir knows that the success of his first novel, The Martian, was unusual. He told me the same thing 10 minutes later when he joined me for a conversation, sitting at one of the small classroom desks in the center of the room. As I entered the room, I overheard him tell a bookstore representative that he was suffering from a bad case of impostor syndrome. When I arrived at the posh Sidwell Friends School in Bethesda, Maryland, to interview Andy Weir, he was tucked away in a rehearsal space, bent over a stack of copies of his latest novel, Artemis, and signing them for fans. ![]()
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