man do not yet know on the synodic month , but source Andy Weir has a moderately estimable idea of how people could — and would — make their homes and live their lives there . He also has a pretty good grasp of how people could force off a heist there , too .
He lays it all out in Artemis , the highly hoped-for follow - up to his hugely successful book turned Oscar - nominate film , The Martian . And like he did for that book , Weir has done so much research and put so much thought into his new story , he do what ’s currently impossible sound possible .
“ possibly two or three year ago I said , I ’d like to do a narration about manhood ’s first urban center that ’s not on Earth , ” Weir explain to io9 . It ’s a simple statement that extend to Weir ask himself many more question — start with where the city would be . “ Is it on Mars , on the lunation , or is it just in orbit ? I decide the moon was the most probable place where that ’s croak to happen . It ’s much closer than Mars and it has resource you may use to work up your metropolis , unlike sphere where you would literally have to bring everything up . ”
Turns out the author already had some experience with the twist site . “ I ’ve been designing moon - base ideas [ since ] I was a kid , ” he said . “ So I did all the engineering , physics , math , research , and stuff to work out out how to build a city on the Sun Myung Moon before I made any stories or fictional character take office in it . creation - building is fun , you be intimate ? ”
But for Weir , “ world - edifice ” relies on a lot more than just his imagination . He wanted his moon city to be plausible and as realistic as humanly possible .
To do that , Weir started with the money — he contrive a scenario where it made economic sense for humans to travel to and live on on the moonshine . Once he figured that out , he had to figure out how to make the metropolis safe and livable , specifically how it could be constructed , and where it would get its material . All in all , Weir pass about a twelvemonth figuring out how his scope , the fabricated moon city of Artemis , could actually exist before invent a individual character or story .
“ The thing with all of this [ provision ] is the reader only drive one pct , ” he said . “ Cause if it ’s not indispensable to the plot , I ’m going to leave it out . ”
This , of course , necessitated that we land you the answers ourselves . essentially , Artemis takes place in the 2080s , when the commercial blank space manufacture has driven price down to the point that unconstipated people can afford to go into blank space . Weir modeled the hypothetical maturation of commercial-grade space locomotion after the commercial-grade airway industry . He figured the severe part of space locomotion is the Department of Energy — i.e. fuel — needed to get off Earth , so he took the percentage of revenue air travel spends on gas and figured out how long it would take for space traveling to get to a similar ratio . Weir figures in about 60 years , it could hypothetically be about $ 70,000 for a family to travel to the moonlight , a number he thought was just exuberant enough but not impossible . That was step one .
Step two is making certain the family arrives somewhere well-situated , safe , and sustainable . When we inquire him about how Artemis was made , Weir went into so much contingent that it was both amazing and ridiculous . Here ’s just a pocket-size sample :
You ca n’t ship five million tons [ of materials ] to the Sun Myung Moon , right ? You require to get as many imagination as potential from the moon . All right , what metals can you observe on the moon ? Well , there ’s a shit gross ton of Al . Great . So , there ’s a mineral anticipate anorthosite , and if you smelted it , pulled the oxygen back , you ’d get aluminum , silicon , calcium and O . Great , so make the moonshine base out of aluminum and fill it up with the oxygen . The lunar month base is made of moon , just some assembly command … and then you ’re going to need a lot of business leader . path more power than any solar farm could ever go for to bring forth for you .
So , that ’s nuclear reactors . So I run short and researched nuclear reactors . hoi polloi recollect of nuclear reactors as being gigantic chilling tug , and things like that you ca n’t upward enrapture , but , remember grinder can have nuclear nuclear reactor [ on them ] . So they can be build pretty modest . So I look up those , then I started to get into the stage secrets kind of field hard to find that information online — but , there are reactors that produce 27 megawatts of power that have like a gist and the independent nuclear reactor is like 1500 tons . That includes shielding and hooey like that . I ’m like , ‘ Okay , 15 metric scores , now we ’re getting into the image of ‘ you may put that on that moon ’ in this futurity .
And on and on and on Weir went , slowly , connect the dots of human survival using scientific discipline — until eventually , the city of Artemis begin to find existent . Then it was time to really produce the story and its characters
The military man character of Artemis is Jazz , a woman of Saudi Arabian fall who smuggles goods and service on the moon for a keep . She ’s offer an chance for one huge , gamy - stakes holdup that would set her up for life , but in doing so , she basically arrange all of the urban center at risk .
Having been raised on the moon , Jazz ’s culture is chiefly Artemis ’ culture , but Weir was still cognizant that he was a man drop a line a novel with a distaff protagonist .
“ I gave the manuscript to every woman I could believe with it — my girlfriend , my mother , my editor ’s boss , my editor program ’s assistant — and just said , ‘ Please give me feedback on how this char feels to you . Does she seem realistic ? ’ ” Weir explain . “ I receive feedback and made changes . But in the end , I ’m not a woman . I did n’t grow up one . I did n’t spend my life seeing the world as one . This whole worldly concern that I do n’t eff anything about , I [ seek ] to research . I give it my good pellet , but I was very , very conscious of this . ”
He was also witting of the inevitable comparisons between Jazz and Mark Watney , the lead character of The Martian . In Weir ’s mind , Watney was kind of idealistic and one - dimensional . He wanted to stretch himself with every character in Artemis , especially wind , and make them more complete and complex .
“ malarky is a very flawed fibre , ” Weir said . “ She ’s a very flawed individual . She ’s impulsive , she ’s unfledged , she ’s greedy . She has questionable ethical motive at times . Hopefully she ’s still appealing . She has a solid moral center . But she ’s not just this super - competent badass like Mark was . And some the great unwashed have misinterpreted that to be like , ‘ Oh , he write char as these mess - up head cases like wind . ’ And I ’m like , ‘ No , that ’s just Jazz . ’ ”
With Artemis out today , Weir is cautious not to get too far ahead of himself , but he ’s worked up about the possibilities . The movie rights have already been sold ( Phil Lord and Chris Miller are in talks to maneuver , and Weir is run into with them soon ) , and if everything works out , he wants Artemis to be the setting for more history .
“ I would have it off to write continuation to Artemis , ” he said . “ I ’ve already got ideas . But I do n’t want to just write sequels about malarkey and her contingence . I ’d wish to write many unlike stories that take place with many unlike group of characters . believe Terry Pratchett ’s Discworld . So maybe this character will show up in a small electrical capacity in that Holy Writ , but , it ’s really just a bunch of books that all stand on their own but take place in this fantasy setting . And that , to me , would be awesome , if I could have my personal resort area of Artemis to do that with . ”
Considering how much research he ’s already done to make a fancied yet functional rendering of the first human city not on Earth , observe new stories should be the easygoing part .
Artemis is out now . You canget a copy hereand meet Weirat one of these consequence .
- Correction : We misquote a John Rock Weir advert . We trust it was “ anorthosite ” not “ anthracite . ” Thanks to E.B.
Andy WeirArtemisThe Martian
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture news program in your inbox daily .
intelligence from the future , save to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
