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A review by thniels
Artemis by Andy Weir
2.0
It does replicate that "let's science the shit out of this"-charm of The Martian adding afast pace as well but it fails to deliver on so many other fronts:
1) The sceneries are seemingly taken out of a Hollywood notion of how oil rigs and other such pro-driven vessels operate (which is to say that not much resembles real life). Safety is taken much more seriously in places where life and death is measured by how well you tie your shoes or whether you use the railing when scaling stairs or not. An unfounded sense of machismo. Yes, there are many safety practices on Artemis, just not many realistic ones. Those few there are are readily ignored by supposedly trained personell.
2) Everybody seems to be quasi illeterate grease monkeys with little to offer but one single skill. That is not very sound practice considering how expensive it is to move people to the Moon. You would want to have as many skills in one person as possible. What is worse, however, is that they are incredibly restricted in their interaction with one another which gets very boring in the end. "He said that?"... "yeah of course he did, he's been like that the entire book".
3) And now we're at it; what is it with taking your time? Everything happens in rapid succession with no regards to periferal activities. Jazz even succeeds in having a complete welder's shop furnished in roughly a day, complete with in-wall gaslines and what have we.
4) You don't weld in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. Let's not even talk about the health risks of breathing pure oxygen for any extended time. Lighting a spark in an atmosphere of pure oxygen would almost certainly be catastrophic, not to mention lighting a cigar.
The Martian managed to let you overlook the little discrepancies. It was simply an example of science in and of itself being exciting, which is definitely less simple to accomplish. Very few books do. Unfortunately Artemis puts itself among those that don't. I hate to say it: it is what Dan Brown would have written, had he written a moon book. As with the DaVinci Code, you cannot profess authenticity and not deliver.
1) The sceneries are seemingly taken out of a Hollywood notion of how oil rigs and other such pro-driven vessels operate (which is to say that not much resembles real life). Safety is taken much more seriously in places where life and death is measured by how well you tie your shoes or whether you use the railing when scaling stairs or not. An unfounded sense of machismo. Yes, there are many safety practices on Artemis, just not many realistic ones. Those few there are are readily ignored by supposedly trained personell.
2) Everybody seems to be quasi illeterate grease monkeys with little to offer but one single skill. That is not very sound practice considering how expensive it is to move people to the Moon. You would want to have as many skills in one person as possible. What is worse, however, is that they are incredibly restricted in their interaction with one another which gets very boring in the end. "He said that?"... "yeah of course he did, he's been like that the entire book".
Spoiler
3) And now we're at it; what is it with taking your time? Everything happens in rapid succession with no regards to periferal activities. Jazz even succeeds in having a complete welder's shop furnished in roughly a day, complete with in-wall gaslines and what have we.
4) You don't weld in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. Let's not even talk about the health risks of breathing pure oxygen for any extended time. Lighting a spark in an atmosphere of pure oxygen would almost certainly be catastrophic, not to mention lighting a cigar.
The Martian managed to let you overlook the little discrepancies. It was simply an example of science in and of itself being exciting, which is definitely less simple to accomplish. Very few books do. Unfortunately Artemis puts itself among those that don't. I hate to say it: it is what Dan Brown would have written, had he written a moon book. As with the DaVinci Code, you cannot profess authenticity and not deliver.