Oh no, like I say I expect it'll do well at the box office - it feels like it was written to be a movie from the start. It's got everything that Hollywood seems to expect...
I haven't seen The Martian movie yet, but I really enjoyed that book!
Sounds like it basically misses the defining quality and entire point of science fiction as a genre - the "what if"! What would it mean for society/us/me/people in general/X people in particular etc. etc. if this that or the other aspect of reality were different.
Seems like this author has done a bit of a "Flintstones/Jetsons" and decided that no matter what differences there are in the world, society is going to be fundamentally exactly the same - essentially completely unchanged from the tiny little slice of human civilisation that they personally are used to ... oh dear :-s
Sorry you had a disappointment, but it was interesting to read your breakdown of why and how it fails to measure up :-)
Well, it focuses on the what if that the author - as a man - is presumably most interested in. I guess it was clear from The Martian that he liked the hard science of things (which is cool) - but ignoring society/people/relationships etc. is rather problematic...!
Hee for Flintstones and Jetsons - yes! It did feel rather like that. *g* And I guess my tolerance for it has worn rather thin. We should have been seeing changes - even gradual improvements by now, and it's so depressing to find that nothing has happened really since the 1980s... *sighs*
And hee - I'm glad you didn't mind my rambling! *g*
Well yes, I suspect so - although the acknowledgements show that he had the book "female-checked", and he did actually make an effort to include female characters who weren't entirely stock-screaming-girlfriend material, so he seems to be aware of something on some level... but not interested in addressing (or perhaps able to address) it in any depth, sadly...
Science fiction written by women is more interesting in my opinion. They know how to push the boundaries of the genre.
I think it's difficult for men who've never faced discrimination to write about it. I've just finished reading a 72 volume manga series by a Japanese author who was really clueless about women, even though he claimed he had his wife check some things for him. *sighs*
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I haven't seen The Martian movie yet, but I really enjoyed that book!
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Seems like this author has done a bit of a "Flintstones/Jetsons" and decided that no matter what differences there are in the world, society is going to be fundamentally exactly the same - essentially completely unchanged from the tiny little slice of human civilisation that they personally are used to ... oh dear :-s
Sorry you had a disappointment, but it was interesting to read your breakdown of why and how it fails to measure up :-)
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Hee for Flintstones and Jetsons - yes! It did feel rather like that. *g* And I guess my tolerance for it has worn rather thin. We should have been seeing changes - even gradual improvements by now, and it's so depressing to find that nothing has happened really since the 1980s... *sighs*
And hee - I'm glad you didn't mind my rambling! *g*
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I think it's difficult for men who've never faced discrimination to write about it. I've just finished reading a 72 volume manga series by a Japanese author who was really clueless about women, even though he claimed he had his wife check some things for him. *sighs*
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