Putting Weir in that list rather than Card or Ringo is an odd choice.
I recently learned about Orson Scott Cards history, and his article “The Hypocrites of Homosexuality” that he wrote for the Mormon church.
So we can add that to our list.
Because I hate clickbait titles: It’s Ayn Rand.
I’d heard so much about Rand and the “genius” of Atlas Shrugged so I sat down read it. The only thing 3 dimensional about the book was when it was closed and sitting on my table.
I’m glad to have read it just so I understand how shallow the arguments are of those that raise it as an ideal to aspire to.
You’re going god’s work
Andy weir? Why? Who would hate him and why?
Wow…. Hubbard sure, maybe Heinlein, but why would anyone hate Weir?
Hubbard has gotta be up there, though!
Heinlein is great, leave him alone.
Heinlen is a pompous twat that preaches his off-brand ayn rand ripoff philosiphy through shallow mary sue self-inserts that are never wrong, tell it how it is and are also perfectly competent, virile, have huge dicks and are somehow the most eminent philosiphers of their time. . His prose is juvenile, clunky, and artless . His characters are shallow and one dimensional. Worst of all, he just never stops ranting and preaching about the evils of communism.
It’s cold war era slop by mediocre propagandist who somehow became convinced of his own greatness.
Helinlein stayed in the navy long enough to pick up all their authoritarian traditions and buy into them full throatedly, but not long enough to go into combat and see them all falling apart and gain some wisdom about it.
He is fine and he wrote some gems but his political viewpoint is a bunch of poo poo.
Edit: Also, WTF, I am listening and who has a problem with Andy Weir?
Heinlein was still pretty liberal for his time, at least as far as authors trying to sell books went. Remember, most of his stuff was right around WW2 and then into the McCarthy era. Imagine trying to dance around socialism when the administration was just itching to put you in jail as an example to the others. And when you get into the 60s and things lightened up, he was right out there, writing the hippie bible, SiaSL.
Hm… according to this article, it’s the opposite. He started out as a Hippie and then married a Republican and everything went to shit.
I hadn’t know that much of the history (that link’s article links to an even more in depth article), but that’s what it says. I think the truth is probably a little more complicated; as you noted his most hippie-ish books came out after this thing says he was already a fascist. I think a certain amount of it is that he didn’t really have a single consistent ideology (and felt very differently about personal liberty as he did about governmental structure.)
I don’t know much about his personal beliefs, but his stories are kind of libertarian I think. Capable people usually get away with doing whatever they want.
The fun of speculative fiction is that it allows the author to posit different societies from our own. Heinlein wrote with many kinds of protagonists in all kinds of different structures. He was a product of his time, of course, but the only part that usually sticks out at me are that the women often don’t have much agency.
There’s an official Heinlein society community, by the way! They could probably weigh in. [email protected]
Some people want their Sci fic to be like Asimov all the time. From this point of view, I can see why they wouldn’t appreciate Weir.
I know some people consider Weir to be an Ernest Cline-esque hack. I can’t comment as I haven’t read any Weir stuff myself.
I loved The Martian and had high hopes for his followup novel. Artemis was so bad it put me off his writing. I’m told the book after Artemis was better, but I have lots of other authors to spend time with before I risk it again.
I really liked The Egg, The Martian and Project Hail Mary. It’s not any kind of earth shattering literature but it’s good and original and I like it. No idea about Artemis, so IDK how relevant any of these reviews might be for you.
I liked Artemis
What was wrong with Artemis? I didn’t notice any glaring faults in it.
What was wrong with Artemis?
The primary protagonist. In the climatic third act of the book I was so annoyed by her that I really didn’t care or not if she won over the antagonist. Both were awful people and there was no winner for the reader regardless of who actually “won”. I could forgive the protagonist being as horrible as she was at the beginning if it was part of a redemption arc, but she was just as awful at the end of the story as she was at the beginning without any notable character growth. The extreme situations she was in could have even been a good catalyst, but nope, she was just as unlikable at the end as at the beginning.
I bought the book instead of getting it from the library on the faith I had in Weir from The Martian. It was a disappointing purchase. I haven’t made the mistake of buying or reading any of his other books afterward.
I’ve heard the same about Artemis.
