A great science fiction crime caper with outlandishly good plot and characters
Here’s a pleasant surprise: a sci-fi novel that’s short. Authors in this genre often have a tendency towards prolixity (I once read one which spent 600 pages setting up an intriguing story, then basically didn’t bother closing it out).
Andy Weir’s previous book, blockbuster The Martian — filmed by Ridley Scott and Matt Damon — was also a relatively brief 370 pages.
Now he sets his follow-up in the titular Artemis, the first city on the moon.
It’s not really a city, more a collection of large domes, along some 500 metres, which rise above and burrow into the lunar surface. The population is 2,000: tourists (the colony’s main industry is terrestrials blowing their savings on once-in-a-lifetime holidays to the moon), workers and a handful of criminals.
Jazz (short for Jasmin) Bashara is sort of a combination of the latter two. The 27-year-old has lived in Artemis since she was six, when her Saudi welder dad moved here for work. Now Jazz earns Artemisian “slugs” as a porter/general gopher, works towards getting an EVA licence (which will allow her bring tourists on well-paid trips outside the domes)… and does a little smuggling on the side. When Norwegian businessman Trond pays her to sabotage machinery belonging to a rival company — whose business he wants to take over — Jazz ends up in (pun absolutely intended) a world of trouble. Trond is murdered, Jazz is almost murdered more than once, and she discovers there’s much more at stake than she thought: in fact, it’s the entire future of Artemis.
In some ways, despite the literally outlandish setting, this book is as much comic crime caper as sci-fi; though importantly for nerds like me who appreciate the “science” element of science-fiction, Weir (below) doesn’t neglect that either.
The plotting is tight, there’s a vague, nod-and-wink noir feel to the writing; the characters are well-drawn and very likeable. (Jazz is hilarious: a bould pup with a foul mouth, quick temper, tangled love-life, fondness for drink and a very big heart; I’d imagine actresses would take your hand off to play the role.) And importantly, Weir ensures that the outer-space location is never superfluous. This is definitely science-fiction, albeit refracted through a mystery-novel prism.
Science is key to everything here.