Ah that's fair enough. I think The Martian is pretty inspirational, for quite a few reasons - it portrays a near future where we're preparing for a permanent Ma

Ah that's fair enough. I think The Martian is pretty inspirational, for quite a few reasons - it portrays a near future where we're preparing for a permanent Mars settlement, the characters display real engineering creativity and ingenuity, and everybody's working together towards a shared, altruistic goal. I don't think the issue raised in the article is with that aspect - but that it doesn't paint a vision of a Jetsons or Star Trek future, and Neal Stephenson wants to see more of that.