美国国家公共电台 NPR In New Novel, 'Martian' Author Andy Weir Builds A Colony On The Moon

In New Novel, 'Martian' Author Andy Weir¹ Builds A Colony On The Moon

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Life on the moon is no bed of roses. The coffee's weak because water boils at low temperature. The food is rank because it's hard and expensive to grow much more than algae² on the lunar surface. Artemis, the first human colony on the moon, is essentially³ a small frontier mining town and tourist trap and a place that attracts misfits who hope to strike it rich, including a young woman who grew up there named Jazz. "Artemis" is the second novel by Andy Weir, the former software engineer who struck it rich himself with his first novel, "The Martian." He joins us now from Palo Alto, Calif. Thanks so much for being with us.

ANDY WEIR: Thanks for having me.

SIMON: And tell us about this place that is at once otherworldly and gritty, Artemis.

WEIR: Well, it's a tourist town. The money comes into the system through tourism, mainly. And so I'd modeled it - kind of the social structures and the way things work - after tourist towns in the Caribbean, stuff like that where you have the really ritzy, nice, high-class hotels in one part of town and then the more, shall we say, austere⁴ living conditions of the people who live and work there.

SIMON: And tell us about Jazz - Jasmine, your protagonist⁵. She's a porter but really a smuggler⁶, Saudi by birth but really the first generation of people who consider themselves to be citizens of the moon.

WEIR: Yeah, exactly. She's very similar - I mean, I've seen this a lot with friends who are first-generation Americans, where you see the parents have the kind of original social norms and belief systems of the kind of mother country. And then the kids grow up, and they end up completely Americanized and part of our culture. Jazz is the same thing. She and her father moved to Artemis when she was just 6 years old. And so she's grown up there, and she considers herself an Artemisian. She is a citizen of Saudi Arabia, but she doesn't have much connection to the kingdom.

SIMON: What came first in your mind, Mr. Weir, the story, the character or this place, Artemis?

WEIR: The place. Basically, I wanted to write a story that took place in the first city that was not on Earth. And I thought about Mars. I thought about low Earth orbit. But the moon is the obvious place to build it. If you were on a football field, and you were standing⁷ at one goal line, and if Mars were at the other goal line, the moon would be four inches in front of you.

SIMON: Oh. Oh.

WEIR: That is the distance scale between them. So, yeah, colonizing⁸ Mars before you colonize⁹ the moon would be like if the ancient Britons colonized¹⁰ North America before they colonized Wales.

SIMON: "The Martian" was such an enormous and fabled¹¹ success - I mean, an early example of what amounts to how successful self-publishing could be. And then, of course, Crown bought the rights to it and republished it. Publishers must have been after you for almost any idea. How did you - for a second book, how did you settle on this?

WEIR: Well, actually, I didn't initially¹² settle on this. So Crown was like, all right. What do you want for the next book? And I had already been a little bit into a book called "Zhek" - Z-H-E-K. And I said, like, well, this - this is what I'm working on. They're like, good. Deal. Here. Sign this contract there. Have it done in a year. Bye. So I got about 70,000 words in. And I just realized it wasn't good. It wasn't any good. And so it was a very difficult decision, but I asked a publisher - I was like, hey, I don't think this is working. I want to start over with a completely different book. Is that OK? (Laughter) They're like, um, OK? But we're going to want to hear about the next book first (laughter). And so I pitched them "Artemis." And I'm so glad that I made that decision. It was really painful at the time, but I'm so glad I made the decision. Artemis is so much better than "Zhek" could've been.

SIMON: Yeah. Well, do you - I mean, do you sit down with a large sheet of drawing paper and draw what the moon colony looks like in your imagination? How did you create this?

WEIR: Well, I did make a map. But, really, I - cities are always formed via economics. And so I started with that. And I said, all right. So I want to build a city on the moon. There is enough demand for tourism on the moon that it would be viable¹³. So let's start with, how do I build a city at all on the moon? Well, I don't want to transport everything there. I want to make it out of local materials. So if I'm going to do that, well, what materials do I want to make it out of? Some research shows that there is a mineral on the moon called anorthite, which is extremely plentiful¹⁴. And you can just pick it up off the surface, you don't even need to dig for it.

So I'm like, OK, the first thing you need to do is have a refinery¹⁵, a smelting¹⁶ facility to turn ore into metal and oxygen. And then you build the city out of that metal. But smelting minerals takes an enormous amount of power, way more than you could ever hope to get with solar. So I'm like, all right. Then we're going to need some reactors¹⁷. OK. So put some reactors on the moon. And I worked forward from there. And, yeah, no, I had a lot of fun doing the worldbuilding. That part's always fun on a book. The hard part is those pesky characters and plot and narration¹⁸ and stuff.

SIMON: (Laughter).

WEIR: But if I could just - if I could get paid just to write Wikipedia articles about "Artemis," I'd be set for life (laughter).

SIMON: Andy Weir - his novel "Artemis." Thanks so much for being with us.

WEIR: Thanks for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF LINDSEY STIRLING'S "FIRST LIGHT")

1 weir   

n.堰堤，拦河坝

参考例句：

• The discharge from the weir opening should be free.从堰开口处的泻水应畅通。
• Big Weir River,restraining tears,has departed!大堰河，含泪地去了！

2 algae   

n.水藻，海藻

参考例句：

• Most algae live in water.多数藻类生长在水中。
• Algae grow and spread quickly in the lake.湖中水藻滋蔓。

3 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

4 austere   

adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的

参考例句：

• His way of life is rather austere.他的生活方式相当简朴。
• The room was furnished in austere style.这间屋子的陈设都很简单朴素。

5 protagonist   

n.(思想观念的)倡导者；主角，主人公

参考例句：

• The protagonist reforms in the end and avoids his proper punishment.戏剧主角最后改过自新并避免了他应受的惩罚。
• He is the model for the protagonist in the play.剧本中的主人公就是以他为模特儿创作的！

6 smuggler   

n.走私者

参考例句：

• The smuggler is in prison tonight, awaiting extradition to Britain. 这名走私犯今晚在监狱，等待引渡到英国。
• The smuggler was finally obliged to inform against his boss. 那个走私犯最后不得不告发他的首领。

7 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

8 colonizing   

v.开拓殖民地，移民于殖民地( colonize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The art of colonizing is no exception to the rule. 殖民的芸术是� 有特例的。 来自互联网
• A Lesson for Other Colonizing Nations. 其它殖民国家学习的教训。 来自互联网

9 colonize   

v.建立殖民地，拓殖；定居，居于

参考例句：

• Around 700 Arabs began to colonize East Africa.公元700年阿拉伯人开始把东非变为殖民地。
• Japan used to colonize many countries in Asia.日本曾经殖民过许多亚洲国家。

10 colonized   

开拓殖民地，移民于殖民地( colonize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The area was colonized by the Vikings. 这一地区曾沦为维京人的殖民地。
• The British and French colonized the Americas. 英国人和法国人共同在美洲建立殖民地。

11 fabled   

adj.寓言中的，虚构的

参考例句：

• For the first week he never actually saw the fabled Jack. 第一周他实际上从没见到传说中的杰克。
• Aphrodite, the Greek goddness of love, is fabled to have been born of the foam of the sea. 希腊爱神阿美罗狄蒂据说是诞生于海浪泡沫之中。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

12 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

13 viable   

adj.可行的，切实可行的，能活下去的

参考例句：

• The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
• The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。

14 plentiful   

adj.富裕的，丰富的

参考例句：

• Their family has a plentiful harvest this year.他们家今年又丰收了。
• Rainfall is plentiful in the area.这个地区雨量充足。

15 refinery   

n.精炼厂，提炼厂

参考例句：

• They built a sugar refinery.他们建起了一座榨糖厂。
• The purpose of oil refinery is to refine crude petroleum.炼油厂的主要工作是提炼原油。

16 smelting   

n.熔炼v.熔炼，提炼（矿石）( smelt的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• a method of smelting iron 一种炼铁方法
• Fire provided a means of smelting ores. 火提供了熔炼矿石的手段。 来自辞典例句

17 reactors   

起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 )； 反应装置； 原子炉； 核反应堆

参考例句：

• The TMI nuclear facility has two reactors. 三哩岛核设施有两个反应堆。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• The earliest production reactors necessarily used normal uranium as fuel. 最早为生产用的反应堆，必须使用普通铀作为燃料。

18 narration   

n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体

参考例句：

• The richness of his novel comes from his narration of it.他小说的丰富多采得益于他的叙述。
• Narration should become a basic approach to preschool education.叙事应是幼儿教育的基本途径。