So this was the shortest of the stories in the "Forward" collection and honestly my least favorite. It was beyond boring and the ending was just a meh moment to me. I wanted something more for a supposed science fiction book. Talking about quantum physics and entanglement didn't do a thing for me.

"Randomize" is at the heart just a boring heist story. We follow a member that plans on stealing from a Las Vegas casino using quantum physics. Yeah, that's a new one on me. It's still boring though. And the last little bit is just a lot of talking about things that made me go huh? Seriously? What is happening? I finally got annoyed though when I realized this was not going to end in a very dull way. I wondered at first if Weir misread what Crouch wanted all of the authors to do when he put forward his premise.

The writing was boring. Unlike with "The Martian" Weir does not make this easy to understand. I am not a stupid person, but nothing that was said even made a little bit of sense. I went back to my "The Martian" review and saw that I did love that book, I also noted that Weir was too technical at times. And boy is he here as well.  

The flow was nonexistent. We go from discussion of heist, heist, and post-heist so fast there's no time to even settle in. There is zero development of characters too which is why I didn't even bring up one of the people we follow. 

The ending felt unrealistic to me. 

So to wrap up here was how I rated this collection:

Ark by Veronica Roth, 4 stars

Summer Frost by Blake Crouch, 5 stars

Emergency Skin, by N.K. Jemisin, 5 stars

You Have Arrived at Your Destination, by Amor Towles, 4 stars

The Last Conversation, by Paul Remblay, 5 stars

Randomize, by Andy Weir, 2 stars. 

Overall rating 4.5 stars. 

My least favorite out of the collection. Also the shortest and frankly the least science fiction driven. I don't care about quantum physics and how to use it to win at playing a game at a casino. I felt like this was a bad mash of Ocean's 8 and 21 (or whatever that weird black jack grad student movie was). This was the last story of the collection too and it really dragged the overall collection down to 4 stars for me.

If science bores you, then this is probably not for you. As in the film, Mark Watney gets stranded on Mars and the novel deals with how he survives, using his scientific knowledge and later NASA’s. There’s buckets of science information which presumably is correct but may put readers off. Despite my limited knowledge, I got quite a lot out of the book and there’s tension and adventure involved.

Quite good novel and I’m sure that many will enjoy it.

Boring = Bad.

As the little sister in "Lair Of The White Worm" exclaimed: "Ooh! Me spotted dick!"

'Artemis' read like a Haines manual. The main narrator had no personality beyond hating disco (so I wished death on her from about page five - better than no reaction, I suppose) and then it switched to Mission Control in America c.1995. The book was an elaborate daydream for people who watched enough 'MacGyver' to think they could fix everything with gaffer-tape and a Swiss Army knife, modified by NASA's website regurgitated almost verbatim.

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

I seem to remember reading a lot of reviews expressing disappointment with this book when it was first released, but, whilst not perfect, I thought it was actually a big improvement on The Martian, even if our protagonist is only a female criminal version of Mark Watney.

It feels like Weir learned an enormous amount about novel writing between the two books; character development, differentiation and impact on plot are all enormously better. The plot is, by comparison with The Martian, a sophisticated and not entirely predictable thriller, holding more interest than purely survival/engineering problems.

That's not to say there aren't still flaws - Weir's love affair with exposition explaining how everything works is still somewhat out of control which makes for a first third that is slower than necessary. Some of it could be cut and explained in the relevant plot moment (because it is, causing a repetition) or just cut altogether because it's never relevant.

There's some clumsy moments that include details you just know are going to be super plot-crucial later - not well disguised despite the barage of similar details. The protagonist at times verges on being unsympathetic and the reaction of the general populace to her actions during the denouement seems not entirely realistic.

There are much worse novels by much more experienced novelists than this, however and if Weir can carry on learning he will become a really good writer.