Andy Weir: The Martian (Hardcover, 2014, Del Rey)
Hardcover
English language
Published July 6, 2014 by Del Rey.
I'm stranded on Mars.
I have no way to communicate with Earth.
I'm in a Habitat designed to last 31 days.
If the Oxygenator breaks down, I'll suffocate. If the Water Reclaimer breaks down, I'll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I'll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death.
So yeah. I'm screwed.
--jacket
I have no idea why I didn’t read this book earlier. It is a fantastic story that kept me reading until I was done (a day and a half!).
I’ve always wanted to take a trip into space, but certainly not if it ends up like Mark’s.
I went in with the understanding this was a book about a bunch of whatif science problems so enjoyed it. The author did a good job of keeping things moving forward without getting too bogged down in detail. The structure of the story meant the protagonist was maybe the most upbeat superhuman I’ve met so it there was no emotional stakes but that was by design.
Content warning Minor spoilers about character-building
The Martian still rocks. It has everything that I love in those YouTube video where they walk you through their process of making a cool new machine (youtube.com/watch?v=vsTTXYxydOE&feature=share).
A few times throughout the book, Mark’s plans went out the airlock and he expresses his frustration and hopelessness to the log. Then in the next log, he’s back to working the problem. He decides to survive “off camera” and I think that we missed an essential part of his character.
Obwohl ich den Film schon kannte und wusste was passiert war das Hörbuch doch bin zum Ende spannend und fesselnd.
And probably at least semi realistic? Didn't like it as much as Project Hail Mary by the same author. This sorta read as a sequence of "oh crap, another thing went wrong" problems, followed by solutions. I'm certain this is realistic - or even still overly optimistic, given what they were surviving through - but kinda made for an overly long, repetitive narrative. I suspect this is part of why they cut some of these out of the movie (and to save time, but also it got repetitive). Nevertheless, a fun read if you enjoy sci-fi that sticks close to contemporary science.
(This review is crossposted from my blog here: daariga.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/the-martian/)
One sure aspect about The Martian is that it is gripping. Edge-of-the-seat gripping. I started reading it while waiting for the bus. I was hooked! Pages kept turning briskly on the way home in the bus, through dinner, all the way through the night until dawn. Took a few hours of sleep and then soldiered on until its happy and predictable ending.
Written by Andy Weir, a programmer by profession, this book got popular quickly and was made into a movie starring Matt Damon last year. Like pulp thrillers, it is very easy to read and the pace is fast. The year is 2035 and humans have walked on Mars thanks to a couple of Ares missions by NASA. Things go wrong during the Ares 3 mission and the crew aborts its stay on the red planet and escapes. …
(This review is crossposted from my blog here: daariga.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/the-martian/)
One sure aspect about The Martian is that it is gripping. Edge-of-the-seat gripping. I started reading it while waiting for the bus. I was hooked! Pages kept turning briskly on the way home in the bus, through dinner, all the way through the night until dawn. Took a few hours of sleep and then soldiered on until its happy and predictable ending.
Written by Andy Weir, a programmer by profession, this book got popular quickly and was made into a movie starring Matt Damon last year. Like pulp thrillers, it is very easy to read and the pace is fast. The year is 2035 and humans have walked on Mars thanks to a couple of Ares missions by NASA. Things go wrong during the Ares 3 mission and the crew aborts its stay on the red planet and escapes. Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead and left behind, but he is not. He makes his way safely back to their dome called Hab. There is ample food, air and power for him to stay inside the Hab for a year. Turns out he is a smart ass botanist and engineer and he figures out how to grow potatoes and make water and survive longer. However, the next Ares mission is 4 years away and Mars starts throwing a spanner into his plans mere days into his stay there.
Weir packs his pages full of ingenious solutions and techniques for his astronaut to survive. Every other page is littered with calculations resembling those statement problems we had in school with Mark computing his chances with this or that solution. All of this lends a strong aura of believability to the preposterous plot. It is quite mind boggling how much of basic math and science can be used when in crisis to fix problems. This book is essentially Apollo 13, but on a gigantic scale and with the mind of a brilliant engineer at work. It is hard not to root for this tiny human unflaggingly taking on the problems thrown by an entire planet at him. He has to literally make air, water and food to survive for years on a planet that offers none of them. How can you resist this yarn?
The biggest letdown of this engaging book however was its writing, which is sadly just mediocre. An American teen vibe pervades all the conversations. I can guess that Hollywood screenwriters had very little work converting this into a blockbuster script. Man has reached Mars and these adult astronauts talk about jocks and geeks and wedgies! You get the idea. Make no mistake, the science chops are very strong in this book, every ludicrous plan is meticulously backed by reasoning and the book is quite unputdownable. However, one does feel that a simple writing workshop for the author could have vaulted the book further into greatness.
Great story, surprisingly good drama and interest for such a basic setting and story. A great realistic space adventure, might be a bit technical for some but for me I loved the details.
