C
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
I gobbled up Artemis, the new book by the author of The Martian, like a bag of chips. And like a bag of chips, it had many delights, but it was also problematic in many ways and altogether not very good for me. Like The Martian, Artemis is full of smart people, and I sure do love smart people. It’s also full of slut-shaming and bizarre comments about the main character’s body.
Artemis is the name of the first city, or rather small town, on the moon. It has areas where tourists gawk at the sites and shop and eat, and areas where the very rich live permanently. Most of the town’s occupants are people who keep the town running – welders, janitors, prostitutes, bartenders, hotel housekeepers, etc. Jazz Bashara was born in Saudi Arabia on Earth, but moved to Artemis at the age of six. Jazz is a porter and a smuggler, and is desperate to raise a large sum of money for a mysterious purpose.
Jazz agrees to take on a job for a regular client. This development turns the book into a heist story, which turns into a murder mystery/spy/thriller, which turns into a heist again, and ends in the action genre. The movie rights have already been sold and this is not a shocker given the success of The Martian and the movie-friendly structure of the book, especially regarding the last act which is very cinematic.
I would be lying if I didn’t say that I zipped right through this book, loving every bit of it. There was a lot of problematic stuff in it that I’ll address in a minute, but every time something came up I’d be all “Wow, this is so good – wait, WHAT?! Ooooh, something shiny!” and off my attention would run. One of my favorite things is watching or reading about people who are smart and competent, and this book is basically competence porn from start to finish. Everyone in it is a genius in their own field, and a lot of different fields are given due props – welders (a bad weld means everyone dies, so you better believe welders are respected), experts in politics and economics, chemists, etc. For all I know all the characters were speaking gibberish, but it was very convincing gibberish and as someone who likes smart people narratives I was thrilled to bits.
I’m not qualified to speak on the science aspects of Artemis, but the portrait of the town rang absolutely true. In a way, the town reminded me of Las Vegas, and in another way it reminded me of the small town where I used to live in Alaska. Like Las Vegas, Artemis is a tourist town with a vast social separation between the rich who are visiting (and who, in some cases, stay permanently) and the poor who live there, even though they all live in close proximity to each other. Like my small Alaskan town, the permanent residents all know each other and depend on each other for help in a harsh and isolated environment. Since Jazz grew up in Artemis, not only does everyone know her but most people knew her when she was a kid so she can never live down her troubled teenage past.
Another element that I found interesting was that people immigrate to Artemis from all over Earth, but tend to cluster by family and ethnicity. Unfortunately, while the actual pattern of immigration seemed realistic, the ethnic stereotypes therein I thought were lazy. Islamic Muslim parents are described as universally strict and don’t want single women to be sexually active, Ukrainians (at least, one Ukrainian) are zany, Canadians are super moral, etc. Yes, I loved having a book in which multiple genders, sexual orientations, and ethnicities are represented – but they aren’t represented with skill or nuance.
The most frustrating thing about the book is the constant slut-shaming and objectification. Everyone has an opinion about Jazz’s sex life. She’s slut-shamed by her father, by a friend of her father’s, and by her friends, who are all male. Her best friend wants her to test a new condom he’s invented (not with him) on the theory that she’ll probably have a lot of opportunities to try it out. Meanwhile, another one of Jazz’s friends is gay, and neither he nor any of the other characters ever lose a chance to mention it, as though his being gay was his only character trait. He is a smart and heroic character, but a cardboard one.
Meanwhile, Jazz constantly reminds the reader that she is female, and in case she forgets, her best friend refers to her as “my only friend with boobs!” Every time he makes a comment about Jazz’s breasts, Jazz promises to give him “woman lessons” meaning “lessons in how to interact with women” but she never gets around to it. Jazz is “one of the guys” and is usually the only woman in the room – although there are some scenes between her and other women, and for the most part those scenes are fantastic.
Because there’s such a fast-moving plot and because I’m so terribly smitten with competence porn, I was able to overlook a lot of the sexism at the time, but after I put the book down I felt more and more angry. The fact that the book has so much potential – other powerful female characters who pass the Bechdel Test, a smart protagonist who is able to get things done, and wonderful worldbuilding – made me feel worse. So close to success, and yet so far.
This book is smart, and it’s funny, and it moves fast. The setting is creative and fun to read about. It has a Woman of Color protagonist and an international, interracial group of supporting characters, mostly male but with some really powerhouse women. The book radiates good intentions but can’t deliver because the characters are simplistic.
At its best, reading this book is like attending a science fiction convention of incredibly talented and creative people who are at the top of their game. It’s a privilege just to watch them hold a pen. At its worst, this book is like attending those conventions at which Isaac Asimov used to pinch all the women’s butts. Yes, Jazz is a resourceful, knowledgeable, determined person, but in the eyes of herself and everyone around her she is too often reduced to being the person in the room “with boobs.” The fact that this is frequently attributed to ‘good-natured ribbing’ or to poor social skills makes it feel even worse than if characters were honest about their subconscious misogyny.
There are plenty of powerful women in this book, and I applaud the author’s dedication to writing an inclusive book (he addresses this in the Acknowledgements section). However, even though the science stuff kept me excited and happy while I was reading the book, as soon as I closed the covers I could not stop feeling sad about the idea that even in a future defined by ingenuity and optimism, women would still have to get along by ‘being good sports’ and being ‘not like other girls’ (my words, not the author’s). Based on plot, science, and worldbuilding, the book is an A level book, but the stereotypes and sexism bring it down to a C.
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Thanks!
Ew.
I think i’ll pass. I’ve read plenty of ‘good’ books that were excellent apart from the misogyny and grace notes of racism or homophobia. We can do better.
Yeah, lost me at slut-shaming, misogyny, and stereotype Muslim parents.
Quick note: the faith is Islam, the followers are Muslims. “Islamic” is not used to refer to people, unless you are speaking of Islamic scholars or Islamic societies, and then it describes what the scholar studies or the religious framework of the society, not the individual or society itself. I often see non-Muslims use the two interchangeably, but they really shouldn’t be.
I loved The Martian, but I can’t see rewarding this sort of storytelling.
Thanks for taking one for the team.
I’m almost done, so I’ve skipped a lot of the review, but my two cents is that as much as I’m enjoying it, I keep forgetting that Jazz is a woman. I know that it sounds bad, but she lacks some essential sense of femaleness for me. Maybe it’s just me. I have a friend who has called me his only friend with boobs, for which he got an eye roll, hell I did a boob bump with a couple coworkers the other day – don’t ask – so I don’t think it’s the language, but still….
I had no expectation of loving it like I do The Martian, so I’m not disappointed because I am getting what I did expect: a story full of smart people doing smart things and not having it dumbed down for the lowest common denominator in the audience. I don’t always understand the science, but I can grasp a concept with out pictures. Right now I’m hovering over C+ and B-. It’s going to depend on these last chapters/
I had a similar reaction to The Martian – fun, smart, zipped right along – but I found myself frequently pulled out of the narrative by some comment or observation in the text that left me shaking my head.
After reading Artemis, I felt like Weir was trying hard, but wasn’t able to write as Jazz. He might improve. He is good in other regards.
I think the C grade is spot on. I gave it a B for the science and the action and a D for the characters. Except for Jazz (who struck me as immature, in spite of all of her technical skills)everyone else was rather sketchy or ‘one-note’.
Weir does action and planning for action very well. Real people, not so much…
I thought it was notable that in a recent interview (forgot where, NYTimes maybe?) about his SF inspirations and favorite authors, Weir could not come up with a single woman author’s name. Most of his inspirations were from the “classic” days of the 1950s and ‘60s, but even then there were great women writing even if not under overtly female-gendered names. As I recall he loved folks like Asimov who although an SF great, also had problems creating woman characters with any degree of depth. I think this is telling.
I’m first to admit that I’m not the most critical reader, so perhaps it will come as no surprise that I did enjoy Artemis though I prefer The Martian. I will likely reread it at some point which means I really liked it. I appreciated reading your thoughts to learn how you felt about the book.
Some random thoughts I posted elsewhere when talking about the book. The author created an interesting setting; The book had a number of strong women characters though most of them are not the most moral; It had two father/daughter pairs but no mothers; It had the obligatory gay friend; It made me laugh from time to time.
@Heather: Thank you for the correction, and my apologies. I’ll edit that part right now. Thank you!
@Thank you Heather S, and thanks SB Sarah for the edit!
I was already planning on it being a library book for me, because the library is how I read The Martian (which I blew through), and I am really looking forward to the competence porn and world-building, but I think that I wish Weir was better at characterization.
Eww, guess I’ll be passing on it. There are just too many good female characters in too many other books to waste any time on one that will just get my blood pressure skyrocketing.
I think I got the rec here for Autonomous by Annalee Newitz for some sci fi that has multiple well written female characters across a range of ages, races, and even robots. It also had a theme of future Earth haves versus have-nots, competence porn, and an action/adventure feel.
Jazz, Jazz… couple things:
1) the character as written was so freakin’ immature. Her ‘big secret’ for why she needed that much money was something a 12-year old might believe, not something an autonomous adult would. And her refusal to ever get a ‘real’ job because.. because working and/or learning stuff sucks, apparently?.. is so childish. It really put me off of her.
2) It’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone. So how (spoiler) is she able to go into two different hotels, pretending to be a tourist, and not get recognized by the desk staff? Her Nemesis recognizes her instantly on video; everybody else she’s grown up with wouldn’t? Didn’t make sense.
It was a fun read, though.
Donna Marie, I felt the same: I kept thinking that Jazz was really a high scool age Mark Whatney – she spoke and behaved exactly like a 17 years old male. A lot of suspension of disbelief is required to believe that this character is a 26 year old woman.
I also felt that the story arc was too disjointed and there was way more information about welding than strictly necessary, plus the final action sequence is also on very shaky ground scientifically or at least medically (even bigger suspension of disbelief required than with the Jazz character)
And it really annoyed me because this could have been a really good book, there was a lot of good storytelling in it, and yet all the good parts somehow did not add up to a good book for me.
I realize I’m so tardy to this party, but I just finished this book on audio and… let’s just say I stuck with it for the plot. I think hearing a smart, talented woman (Rosario Dawson) read such a childish, poorly-written character really drove home the issues Carrie pointed out. I loved The Martian, but this book made me wonder what Weir’s own relationships with women are like—and seeing this in text, I can see where the other characters are flat as well, more so than I noticed in the recording since Jazz’s own voice was so dominant and dischordant. The combination of Jazz being a teenage boy’s idea of a woman combined with her complete lack of self awareness or introspection made her very hard to see as the supposedly 26 year old woman she was.