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Recently Andy Weir, author of The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary, commented that he dislikes and avoids social commentary in fiction, preferring to seek to simply entertain with his novel and expressing a disdain for ‘lecturing.’
I will take Mr. Weir at his word that he dislikes the tendency for some authors and projects to pull out the soap box and lecture their readers and audiences, but I do believe that it is impossible for an artist, particularly a creator of fiction, to craft their work wholly absent of social commentary. In creating the setting for their stories, a process known as world building an author makes decisions and choices, sometimes with intent and sometimes by subconscious processes, about how that world works and that reflects what the author thinks of the world that they inhabit.
World building by an author can fall into one of three major categories, a world that they fear, a world that they dream of, and a world as they see it around them.
1984, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale are all examples of world building where the author has constructed a world that they fear, one that makes a decidedly explicit social comment on what would be bad for the world to be like, be that a tyranny of political power, a tyranny of ignorance, or a tyranny of sexual domination. While all three are works set in the author’s future they are not predictions but a nightmare of a world that the author desperately wants to avoid.
Stories such as No Country for Old Men or The Remains of the Day, reflect an author that is world building from the world around them as they see it. These settings are often morally grey or even absent any morality at all though that is not a requirement of the type of world building. When such aspects are absent the piece is often called naive for its representation of humanity as basically good in the face of the few bad and evil individuals. It should be noted that world building as they perceive the world around them is not limited to contemporary fictions. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire while set in a world of magic, dragons, and multi-year seasonal cycles reflects a world Martin sees around him, one where, as he has said, ‘ruling is hard’ and power attracts the corruptible. JMS’ Babylon 5 is as much about America as he sees it as it is about space wars and alien races.
The final category of world building, the world as they want it to be is usually, but not always, the domain of utopian fiction. Star Trek, both the original series and even more so for Star Trek: The Next Generation is world building that reflects a world that the author wants to be real but is not. Roddenberry explicitly created Trek in the 60s because he wanted to talk about social issues that the network’s standards and practices would not allow. (see some of the script he produced for his earlier series The Lieutenant for examples.)
So, with these categories of world building in mind let’s look at the three novels of Andy Weir.
The Martian is the story of Mark Watney, stranded on Mars when the rest of the crew evacuated and believed Mark had died. The entire novel is Watney’s brilliant struggle for survival on the environmentally hostile planet and the desperate rescue attempt by NASA and the international community to save him. The Martian has no villains. There are no bad guys, no one that hated Watney and stranded him for some misplaced revenge, no ‘bean counters’ that decide that rescue is too expensive and undermine the efforts, no grandiose figure proclaiming that Watney is dying due to man’s hubris. The entire book from front to back is packed with smart capable and competent people working hard to save the life of another human being. Dictatorial governments give up state secrets to save Mark Watney, that is the extent to which Weir goes to have a story that is purely about people working together for the good of one singular person. The Martian is world building for a world that I would argue Mr. Weir wants to be real. It is an idealized world, one in which smart capable people make smart intelligent decisions and without greed or self-importance derailing the greater project.
Project Hail Mary presents a very similar style of world building, but replaces the one man in danger of losing his life with the prospect of the entire world dying should the solution not be found. Once again, we are presented with a narrative in which there are no explicit villains, no religious fundamentalists proclaiming that the dimming of the sun is ‘God’s will’ nor are their fanatical environmentalist announcing that the crisis is humanity paying for their sins of pollution. No, once again we are presented with intelligent capable people working selflessly and tirelessly towards a common goal. (There is a twist on that but its major reveal in the story and I shan’t spoil it here. But even that instance is not presented as evil but simply one born of all too understandable fear.)
Artemis is a horse of a different color, a story of corruption and conspiracy set on the moon’s only city. The novel in addition to being a very different plot that Weir’s other books is also quite forgettable. I read the novel the moment it was published and found it quite lacking. Weir handled a criminal and frankly noirish plot quite badly and aside from a few scenes that have stuck in memory for their faults the entire book has vacated itself from my brain. While I am sure this novel of criminal and conspiracies had its villain or villains I for the life of me cannot recall a single one. His attempt to write about human evil left absolutely no impression at all.
Weir, despite his protestations, does indeed make ‘social commentary’ in his novel, it is clear that in his view of an idealized world, people work together for the common good and without selfish and petty considerations. It might strike some as Pollyannish and perhaps even deeply naive but that is a social commentary and one that strikes a deep and popular chord. Weir should take care when hurling stones concerning other artists displaying strong points of view and social commentary as it is inescapable for any artist, including himself, to not have a point of view that reveals itself in their creation.
