In the immortal words of Indiana Jones’ trusty sidekick Short Round, “Hold onto your potatoes,” because The Martian author Andy Weir is back with another story that is out of this world. After taking us to the red planet and teaching us the existential horrors of disco music, Weir’s next book, Artemis, is sending us to the moon. Nerdist has your exclusive first look at the book’s cover, the first details about the book, and a special video from the author himself.
The Crown Publishing Group will release Artemis in print and digital formats in the United States and Canada on November 14, 2017. Thanks to an interview Weir did with The Huffington Post in 2015, we knew certain details about the book, but now Nerdist has learned exactly what we’re in for come this fall.
The story follows Jasmine Bashara, a.k.a. Jazz, an aimless yet prodigal twentysomething who yearns to leave her boring, small-town life behind for something bigger and better. Except in Jazz’s case, her small town is named Artemis and just so happens to be the first–and only–city on the moon. But life on the moon isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially if you’re not obscenely wealthy.
Unlike astronaut Mark Watney, Jazz’s biggest challenge won’t be finding the perfect way to convert your living room into a makeshift potato farm. Rather, Jazz, who works as a porter, finds herself caught up in a life of crime when her side hustle as a smuggler leads her to the perfect score. Unfortunately, this so-called “perfect score” winds up having unexpected consequences and soon Jazz finds herself caught in the middle of a shadowy conspiracy as opposing forces vie for control of Artemis itself.
Much like The Martian, Weir’s latest novel is on the fast track to becoming a feature film. As first reported by The Tracking Board, the same filmmaking team behind The Martian is set to adapt Artemis too. 20th Century Fox and New Regency, along with Genre Films producers Simon Kinberg and Aditya Sood, have acquired the rights to Artemis and will transform it from book to blockbuster. Considering The Martian grossed $630 million worldwide, Artemis turning into a movie was an inevitability.
To celebrate the book’s announcement, Weir put together a brief video talking about its inception:
Artemis, according to Weir, was “much more difficult to write” than The Martian, and pays homage to both the Greek goddess of the moon and NASA’s Apollo missions. (For those of you keeping score at home, Apollo was Artemis’ twin brother.) As anyone who read The Martian knows, Weir suffuses his work with incredible amounts of detail (I never thought I would know this much about drilling holes on rovers), and Artemis is no exception. Weir spent “weeks and weeks” carefully crafting the details of the titular lunar city even though “the reader will see about one percent” in the final book. But such is the mark of a true nerd after our own hearts. And here’s hoping that Jazz will capture ours the same way that Mark Watney did when Artemis hits shelves this fall.
Andy Weir’s Artemis is available wherever fine books are sold on November 14, 2017. You can pre-order a copy on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Image: Crown Publishing Group
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@DanCasey).
