Right now, Artemis by Andy Weir. I like his stuff because he creates a future that’s a lot more of a blue-collar space experience. His heroes are not the graduates of space academy and don’t necessarily have their shit together. They mess up, they do stupid things. They just plain don’t know what they’re doing.
I really enjoyed The Martian, I loooved Project Hail Mary but Artemis was lower down the rung for me. I think just because of Jazz. I couldn't gel with her, and maybe I'm being cynical but her character felt very 'male author struggles to write a woman'. Still, I love what he does with his books. The nerd stuff is the action and it's a delight to follow along.
It pushed Blindsight out of my top two. I have had probably 3 hours of discussion related to the order, magnitude and direction of why that book is so awful and why Andy Weir must never be allowed to write again.
One of my Hollywood Parables is M. Night Shamalyan. He used to mention to screenwriters, by way of inspiration, that it had taken seven drafts of Sixth Sense before he knew Bruce Willis was dead. I follow this up by pointing out that it was the last time M. Night Shamalyan was required to write seven drafts of anything, let alone anything after the seventh draft, which is why he mostly makes dreck like "The Happening" and "Lady in the Water." It also applies to Kevin Smith - once he made Dogma he no longer had to hear "no" from anyone so he surrounded himself with people who only said "yes." It took him from being the guy who kept Jason Mewes alive to being the guy who nearly died by imitating Jason Mewes. Andy Weir released The Martian a chapter at a time after spending two years honing it. Each chapter he could see what worked and what didn't. He could see what people liked and what they hated. And he never worked that way again. The Cold Equations is a short story about pathos that blames physics (or more specifically, engineering) for the plight of its protagonists. It is written by someone with no understanding of physics or engineeringl. Kaleidoscope is the exact same short story (5 years earlier but who's counting) that doesn't need any blame. They teach Cold Equations in English class because Kaleidoscope is too expensive to license; it's a Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury had the confidence to know that tragedy fucking happens you don't need to fumblefuck your way through a Rube Goldberg machine to justify it. Andy Weir is here for the Rube Goldberg machine. What's that quote? Andy Weir loves science like a child loves posies.Despite Wright's orations to the contrary, I came to the conclusion that he was not genuinely interested in the theatre. He certainly knew next to nothing about it. Yet he loved it, as a child loves posies without knowing how to make them grow.
I'm honestly not sure, and it's pretty embarrassing. I'm sorry. I don't know you. I've just been lurking here for a really long time and had some kind of episode last night. I must have disagreed with an opinion of yours? I'm not entirely sure. My bad. I can tell you this crow tastes terrible, though. I wouldn't recommend it.
Just say I'm sorry, I cannot provide a response next time