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Comment by tgb | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with the complaint about Mark Whatney's lack of character depth. It's true that there's little character depth, but I don't think that's why Andy Weir choose not to do the deep, solemn scenes. There's moments where it's clear he's chosen not just to avoid those, but to intentionally choose the opposite (like the scene where someone on Earth wonders what he could be thinking, trapped alone on a planet, and then it switches to Whatney's viewpoint and we learn he is pondering Aquaman's abilities or something). Andy Weir didn't do that because it's been done a lot before. The book is deliberately not Castaway or any number of other solemn stories about isolated men contemplating human existence. It's fresh and new and was new precisely because it didn't do all that other, well-trodden introspective stuff. Starry Night doesn't have any character development - it's just not a requirement for all works to have.

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I'm also imagining that the bulk of his personality and self-identity are wrapped around science, engineering and space exploration. As much as he misses all the creature comforts of Earth, the actual challenges of surviving on Mars make him feel like a pig in slop. He's being asked to flex every mental muscle he's spent his lifetime building up, honed even sharped by fear of oblivion. If it were me, I'd probably have the same attitude.

The thing I think Weir missed is that as soon as he's embraced by his crew on their ship, I'd expect to him (and me) to absolutely break down in sobbing tears after a year of pent up tension.

Yeah Weir is clearly a geek like us. Preferring to write about the depth of technical challenges and using them to avoid facing the emotional darkness of the situation. To me this feels like very typical behaviour. I think it's showing a lot of genuine character depth from that point of view. People expect Watney to think like a normal person, not a geek.

I also found the balance of the book refreshing, and took the lack of "character development" as instead a sign of his intense focus on the problems at hand. It actually made it more plausible to me that he survived - sure, if he'd spent many sleepless martian nights agonizing and introspecting it could have made for more drama, but his optimism and ingenuity would have been less believable, and ultimately had he survived it would feel more fantastic than earned.

Weir himself has discussed the varying characterisations in the Martian, Artemis and PHM. In an interview at [0], he says:

Well, my previous two books, The Martian and Artemis (which are also available for sale!) feature characters whose personalities are based on aspects of my own real personality, Mark Watney [from The Martian] has a lot of my own personality traits and Jazz Bashara [from Artemis] who is a Saudi woman living on the moon, believe it or not, her personality is based on largely the way I was when I was her age.

I wanted to grow as a writer this time, so I made Rylan Grace’s personality not [be] based on my own. I created a new character out of whole cloth, not just using aspects of my own persona. So one thing I decided is that he’s conflict-averse and likes to stay in a safe environment (or something he considers safe) and being a middle school teacher is a safe environment. He doesn’t get a lot of adversity from the students. They look up to him because they’re not teenagers yet. He’s also a goody-two-shoes, so it makes sense that he would work with children.

In a separate interview (that I can't find now) Weir states that PHM was an attempt to write a character that evolves, unlike Watney, who in effect retains the same character (wise-cracking optimist) throughout the book.

[0] https://www.scifinow.co.uk/books/space-man-an-interview-with...

Interesting. In my school days I saw many classes that would definitely give a lot of adversity. It required tough leadership sometimes from the teachers.

By the way I thought Artemis was his best book by far. It wasn't all about science and the story wasn't as limited as there wasn't a single isolated individual. I thought it was a really good book and I hope he comes up with a sequel. I suppose as people now know him for The Martian they want more of the same and Project Hail Mary certainly fits the bill.

Agreed with this. In all three of Weirs books, the tone/atmosphere is almost continually lighthearted. You can interpret that as a lack of emotional depth, but for me it also shows Weirs laser like focus on stuff he is good at writing: resourceful application of "basic" but real science to solve problems.

Actually the movie failed to portray Mark as the unwavering optimist he is in the books. And besides some impressive visuals, the movie is rather dull, while the book is very entertaining.

Well, he did take a different tack on Project Hail Mary. No spoilers here other than the protagonist figures out the darkest, most reflective aspects as he goes along, which is a great counterpoint to the escalation in the story and evens things out a great deal.

I recently heard Project Hail Mary mentioned. I didn't know Andy Weir wrote a third book until that moment. It's a great novel on par with The Martian, and after the success of The Martian, I'm surprised I didn't hear about Project Hail Mary sooner.

I use an adblocker and don't watch TV comercials. Does anyone know if Project Hail Mary was advertised? I guess that's one downside of not seeing ads.

I learned about it via an ad on my Kindle lock screen. One of the only ads I can remember that led me to a purchase. Great book!

I wish I could somehow obscure your comment from everyone at Amazon.

I use an e-ink tablet, Android stock, due to eye strain. The kindle app is such a bloated pile of ad laden junk, it is barely usable.

Not only that, but it won't let me get rid of whitespacing around the text, and more, eating tonnes of real estate.

Meanwhile, every other app, eg moon reader, etc, is fast and slick.

Impressive, Amazon!

I buy what I can elsewhere, due to this, but sometimes have no choice... and I imagine losing a few sales is offset by more buy in due to the horrid ads?

Why do you have to use the kindle app? Because of books in azw format? If you use calibre you can convert it to other formats.

Newer kindle formats require all sorts of work, and constantly change. I also need to keep a window vm around, it is as annoying as the kindle app.

Thanks for the mention though, and I know calibre is quite convenient for some.

I run calibre on mint.. VM for the kindle app?

Yes, I've not seen docs pointing to any other way...

I usually get my list of "to read" from either; Goodreads (yes, I know... Amazon data capture) or John Scalzi's "Whatever" blog - but, I have never seen TV commercials for books, even before I went streaming platform only.

At the same time, you could tell that he deliberately didn't include those moments in The Martian because he's not comfortable writing from that standpoint. In Project Hail Mary, those moments seem shoehorned in and the voice turns back into being aloof and impassionate in the next sentence. Even the end of the book presented two options and he took the less emotional one.

I think the less emotional ending was pretty much a given. The whole book also hinted at that as it was a redemption for the character's earlier behaviour. Having him choose the other option would have been really dark especially because of the consequences for the 'other team' (obfuscated a bit because of the lack of spoiler tags here)

Interestingly, Andy Weir was on 'Imaginary Worlds' [0] the other day, and weighs in on this topic. I don't want to spoil you for it so I won't go in to it.

[0] https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/weir-science

There is a bit more character development in new Weir’s book - Project Hail Mary, but it still is a great book. Not as great as The Martian, but solid second.

In his second book, Artemis, Weir manages to build a somewhat more complex character...but with the exact same voice as Watney. It's disappointing.

I was watching a review of The Martian on YouTube a while ago. The reviewer was a young female, and her major complaint was that Mark Watney's character-voice just sounded like a middle-aged white American guy. I thought "well, he is ~ this isn't very valid criticism...". Perhaps not all readers identify with the main character, and that's a valid criticism, but I don't think it's a flaw of the writing itself. This same YouTuber had the same critique about Jasmine in Artemis. Yeah - that's fair criticism of the writing; Jasmine did sound like a middle-aged white American guy. If you can look past that, Artemis is still a fun, enjoyable read.

[Edit] Added sentence beginning with "Perhaps not all readers..." to clarify.

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