{"id":3064,"date":"2014-11-11T03:51:23","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T03:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/?p=3064"},"modified":"2017-01-12T13:51:58","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T13:51:58","slug":"miseducating-millions-of-taxpayers-en-masse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/2014\/11\/11\/miseducating-millions-of-taxpayers-en-masse\/","title":{"rendered":"Miseducating Millions of Taxpayers en Masse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Martian | Andy Weir | Talks at Google\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gMfuLtjgzA8?start=1978&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 120px;\">Unacceptable: &#8220;I just wanted to be as accurate as I possibly could. There are, there are a few places that are inaccurate. The<br \/>\nbiggest place that\u2019s inaccurate is right at the beginning. Um, don\u2019t &#8211; don\u2019t tell anybody but if you\u2019re in a dust storm on Mars<br \/>\nyou\u2019re not even going to feel it. Mars\u2019 atmosphere is less than one percent of Earth\u2019s &#8211; so a 150 kilometer per hour wind, would<br \/>\nfeel like about a 1 kilometer wind does on Earth. It wouldn\u2019t do any damage to anything. Shhhh. [\u2026] Most people don\u2019t know<br \/>\nhow Martian dust storms work. People don\u2019t realize that it\u2019s not like being in a sand blaster and it\u2019s just more dramatic that way,<br \/>\nso I just made that concession. I know I\u2019m a liar I just &#8211; I just, uh, wanted that more, it\u2019s just more dramatic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 120px;\">Update: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/user\/sephalon\">Weir<\/a>&#8216;s turning out to be a decent guy&#8230;(speaking at the Mars Society&#8217;s conference helps too!)&#8230;from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/themartian\/comments\/39rzyx\/psst_im_andy_weir_secret_ama_for_the_next_few\/cs5y501?context=3\">Reddit AMA<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"padding-left: 120px;\">\n<p style=\"padding-left: 120px;\">&#8220;If you were given the opportunity to go back in time to change one thing in The Martian, would you<br \/>\nchange anything? A character, a plot point, or something to do with the story?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 120px;\">&#8220;Yeah, I&#8217;d probably make the initial disaster an engine test failure instead of a sandstorm. It&#8217;s the most<br \/>\nglaring physical inaccuracy in the book and I wish I hadn&#8217;t made that concession to drama. I think I could<br \/>\nhave set it up so an MAV engine test blasted Watney, impaling him with debris, and started leaking<br \/>\nfuel, forcing them to launch. Something like that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Also:<\/p>\n<p>1) You have to actually write. Daydreaming about the book you\u2019re going to write someday isn\u2019t writing. It\u2019s daydreaming.<br \/>\nOpen your word processor and start writing.<\/p>\n<p>2) Resist the urge to tell friends and family your story. I know it\u2019s hard because you want to talk about it and they\u2019re (sometimes)<br \/>\ninterested in hearing about it. But it satisfies your need for an audience, which diminishes your motivation to actually write it.<br \/>\nMake a rule: The only way for anyone to ever hear about your stories is to read them.<\/p>\n<p>3) This is the best time in history to self-publish. There\u2019s no old-boy network between you and your readers. You can self-publish<br \/>\nan ebook to major distributors (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) without any financial risk on your part.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/442138\/ron-howards-mars-space-flight-beyond-nasa\">Zubrin<\/a>: &#8220;The Matt Damon character in\u00a0<i>The Martian<\/i>\u00a0isn\u2019t interested in Mars. He doesn\u2019t care about the search for life on Mars, or about Mars as humanity\u2019s new frontier. He just wants to get home. In contrast, Howard\u2019s ensemble crew is fascinated by Mars. For them, the Red Planet is not just a place of peril; it is also a place of wonder. So while\u00a0<i>Mars\u00a0<\/i>may not have the star power of Matt Damon, it has something that\u00a0<i>The Martian<\/i>\u00a0lacks: the star power of Mars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unacceptable: &#8220;I just wanted to be as accurate as I possibly could. There are, there are a few places that are inaccurate. The biggest place that\u2019s inaccurate is right at the beginning. Um, don\u2019t &#8211; don\u2019t tell anybody but if you\u2019re in a dust storm on Mars you\u2019re not even going to feel it. Mars\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,23,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature-films","category-film-crits","category-r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3064"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6187,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064\/revisions\/6187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/marsartists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}