this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Makes sense. The book was really good and had a lot of the same energy that The Martian did. Weir very clearly grew up on Whedon/Tarantino and the constant self-quipping lines up with that. But, at its core, it is competency porn driven by a refusal to fail. The Martian was about Wattney's personal survival whereas PHM is more about the survival of a species. Of course it is going to be good.
That said: never read Artemis. That ALSO makes it very clear that Weir grew up on Tarantino an Whedon and why it is probably only a matter of time until "nobody could have seen this coming". Jesus fucking christ. Jim Butcher isn't even that creepy and there are a LOT of open secrets about who his characters are "inspired by".
Wait, what's the deal with Jim Butcher?
He has always tended to spend multiple pages lingering on the bodies of any female character in his novels (... and I am intentionally not going to think about how old whatsherface was in Codex Alera) and they almost always have very "porn star" bodies. This is explained by Harry being a self-admitted chauvinist as though that is a good thing.
For years, the big "what the fuck" bits were Lara Raithe (who is literally a sex vampire so she kinda gets a pass) and... one of Harry's best friend's daughters (Molly) who literally stripped naked and tried to seduce Harry at least once. But his true love was his cop friend who was very clearly Butcher's wife.
Then Butcher got divorced. Then the cop friend got got. Then we continued to get stories about how Molly is possessed by a primal energy and almost fucks someone to death. And quite a bit of text that she still wants to bang Harry and how it might even be HIS responsibility because of the primal energy he is possessed by. Then Harry is randomly betrothed to the porn vampire but its cool because they are into each other.
And... people with connections to the publishing/convention world can very much tell you that it is barely even an open secret who Lara Raithe was "inspired" by. And it is NOT mutual and has caused a fair number of headaches for folk over the years. Which then raises the question... if Karrin was his wife and Lara is then who is Molly?
I gotta be honest, that just sounds like a lot of very boring drama.
Yeah. Butcher's other books don't have the same misogyny issues so it's usually agreed upon that it's a Harry Dresden issue and not a Butcher issue...
It's also very hard to verify this Lara Raith stuff online (or at least I haven't managed to find anything about it).. almost as if it's not such an open secret.
That plus the fact that Murphy and the ex-wife look nothing alike and Murphy dies 4 books and 7 years after the divorce, in a series of books in which everyone knows the main character has never been allowed to be happy and keeps reminding himself that a villain once cursed him to die alone...
Then there's Molly who got shut down by Harry pretty hard and there's been no more tension since that one scene, so... Yeah, pretty meh stuff.
If you can get passed the weird shit, the books are pretty good, but yea a lot of the stuff in said books, are just pointless.
I was referring to the personal drama, not the books. I've listened to several during road trips and have been fully entertained; my wife is also a big fan overall, and we even have a plan for me to cosplay as Harry; the only inaccuracy is that I'm only 6'5".
If you're looking for more competency porn like The Martian, they pivoted HARD away from that with this adaptation. They turned Grace into a bumbling idiot and a top to bottom coward. It was awful. Did the screenwriters even read this fucking book, or just the plot synopsis?
he was crying in the book and threatening to blow up the ship if they sent him.
While Grace wasn't an idiot in the books, he was a self proclaimed coward. Like most of the book he's trying to get away from his problems.
He might have thought himself cowardly, but he was certainly not a coward. That same "coward" didn't sit on his ass and drink the second he woke up, he figured out what was going on and set his mind to solving the problem. Grace didn't scream bloody murder when he shut down the centrifuge, he... just did it I guess. (Like, wtf else did you think was about to happen, movie Grace?) He didn't scream and try and run away from Rocky, he was instantly excited and eagerly worked his ass off for a first contact with an intelligent alien race.
The amnesia in the film was downplayed a lot (or the film would have had to be a couple hours longer). In the book he didn't even go though the personal bags until much later (he had already remembered the heroin bag so was not surprised to find it).
His panicked reaction when the Hail Mary stopped deccelerating for the first time (when falling into orbit around τ Ceti) is also indicative.
"He looks like a spider, a big ass spider". He was terrified at first glance.
Also, the movie failed to balance a tube centrifuge, that really bugged me.
I haven't seen the movie yet so I can't make any comments on it, I was just saying that in the books gracy literally proclaimed he's a coward... it's kinda how he was put on the mission...
The word coward was used 5 times total in the novel, and it was Stratt accusing him of being a coward twice before he ever called himself one, denegrating himself AFTER recalling the memory of his selection for the mission.
Like I said, he did certainly have a cowardly act when faced with death. One act does not make a person a coward, and for the whole story up to AND after that point, he dives headlong into danger.
Maybe the literal word wasn't used - but I'm failing to think of a single other cowardly act from Grace in the whole novel. I'd be happy to reread any section that you think fits your narrative, but for now I really strongly disagree and had the opposite takeaway.
A MAJOR point of the book was that he was forced onto the mission against his will. He was just a guy that liked what he was doing and didn't like being forced into things. This was very clear in the book, and was illustrated well in the film.
Yes, that is the ONE moment of cowardice I have repeatedly alluded to, sorry if I was being too discrete while trying not to directly spoil the plot. Let's pretend like he didn't persevere, even after remembering, and save two planets in the process. Now where are all the other book moments that make him a proper coward? Or is one weak moment when faced with death all it takes for you? He's just irredeemably a coward because he couldn't force himself to elect to die with 4.5 hours notice?
I guess you went to the bathroom during all the montages where he did Science™ ... at the exact times he did in the book.