Pop-Culturalist.com

Rosario Dawson and Andy Weir took the New York Comic Con stage to talk about Andy’s new book, Artemis. The follow up to The Martian, Artemis takes place on the moon and follows Jazz, an aimless twenty-something-year-old born on Artemis, the only city on the moon. Weir describes it as “Ocean’s Eleven, but on the moon”. Of course, it’s a little deeper than that. Weir has made a name for himself as a hardcore sci-fi author, relaying detailed and complex scientific concepts to his audience without being boring, and I expect Artemis to be no different.

Rosario Dawson, who performs the audiobook version in its entirety, was on hand to talk about her involvement. In the panel, she reveals that the book is chock-full of characters with a variety of backgrounds. It was actually quite tough for her as there were so many characters with different accents in the book—she actually had to bring in a dialect coach to help her with recording! During the panel, we had a snippet of the accents she had to do. Rosario later revealed that she had a ball playing “A Kenyan man and Kenyan woman, Saudi Arabian man and Saudi Arabian woman, a Korean man and a Korean woman…” It sounds like a hell of a challenge, but with her dialect coach and hard work, I have no doubt it will sound authentic.

Though Dawson has not read The Martian, and cold-read several hundred pages of Artemis, her excitement and awe at Weir’s newest work is palpable. Dawson said that she had to stop repeatedly during her recording sessions just to read ahead because she was so enraptured with the story.

I’m definitely excited to get my hands (and ears!) on Artemis. The Martian was published in 2011 and was one of the most refreshing sci-fi novels I’d read in quite a while, and now I’m so ready for another one. Artemis will be available on November 14th.

Listen to clips and preorder the audiobook at audible.com/nycc.