Some time ago, Andy Weir, the author of “The Martian,” the greatest space adventure story of the 21st Century, announced that his next book would be set on the moon and would involve a professional criminal. Nerdist has announced more details of the book. The novel will be called “Artemis” and will come out on November 14, 2017. The movie rights have already been sold and will no doubt, hopefully, sooner rather than later, become a blockbuster film just like Weir’s first book did.
“Artemis” is the name of the moon’s first and only city, after the twin sister of the god Apollo who lent his name to the first spacecraft to reach Earth’s nearest neighbor.
Jasmine Bashara is living in Artemis and is not happy about it. The place is a Small Town and Jazz, as she is called, is at the lower end of the social-economic ladder, working as a porter. She supplements her income as a smuggler, and it is her side gig that gets her into trouble and involved in a conspiracy to seize control of the first community of humans to be established on another world. The story sounds like something from “The Expanse” than the straight human against nature story that was told in “The Martian.”
Weir promises that, just as with his first book, he has worked out all of the scientific and technical details of what it will be like to live on the moon sometime in the future.
Weir found the story to be a little bit more involved and complicated to write than “The Martian,” since the conflict was more than “Will Mark Whatney survive on Mars or not?”
Weir has also, for the second time in a row, achieved some marvelous timing. “The Martian” came out when Mars fever, enthusiastically drummed up by NASA and commercial companies like SpaceX was just starting to take hold.
The book and movie are set in a new golden age for NASA in which it is getting adequate funding to do some cutting-edge space exploration.
“Artemis” is due to come out as the new administration is mulling a return to the moon, a project that was canceled by the previous president. The new age of lunar exploration is likely to be more multi-faceted that the straight boots on the ground operation of going to Mars.
Scientists will be studying the moon and setting up observatories side by side with miners prospecting and extracting valuable minerals and tourists taking the trip of a lifetime. With any luck, people will be walking on the moon not much later than when the film version of “Artemis” comes out.
