THE MARTIAN
by Andy Weir
Genre: Adult, Scifi
Pub Date: Sep 27, 2012
Publisher: Broadway Books
Length: 369 pages
Spoilers: N/A
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Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm forces his crew to evacuate the planet while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded on Mars’s surface, with no way to signal Earth that he’s alive. And even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone years before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, Mark won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.
Armed with nothing but his ingenuity, his engineering skills–and a gallows sense of humor that proves to be his greatest source of strength–Mark embarks on a dogged quest to stay alive. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
Not Fast
This is NOT a book you are going to finish quickly. If you are expecting a fast, fun read or perhaps are thinking it is super action-packed like the movie, you are very wrong. This is a book filled with lots of science, lots of math, and tons of actual thinking going on. Personally, as a scientist, I loved it! It probably took me WAY longer than it should have because I couldn’t just read and enjoy, I was actually trying to do all the math calculations and figure out the science along with Watney. But I’m a geek. 😉
REALISM!! YAS!!!
Okay. Anyone who reads my reviews knows just how much I care about stories being realistic. This means having plausible complications for the plans and legitimate consequences for their actions. THIS story had all of it. Every time you think things are going well, you knew something bad was about to screw it up because nothing (in science) EVER goes this smoothly. It was so legitimate and I loved it!
Personality
Mark Watney has so much gosh darn personality it hurts! Some times I couldn’t remember that he was a full-grown man with specialties in two different fields because he just acted so human and so childish. I loved this because it’s true to reality. We are all human. We all break and do stupid things and make selfish choices. Whats more is that Mark Watney’s coping mechansim was fantastic. He was definitely the best character to have along for the ride in this story.
TO MARS!
Alright. This is just me being a TOTAL geek, but this story actually made me want to go to Mars. (which goes against EVERY survival instinct I have that says space is the most dangerous thing I could ever do besides ocean diving.) And yet this story was fun. I actually loved hearing about Mars and what it would be like. More importantly, I would love to be so smart and so resourceful that I could get picked to join a 6 person Mars team. Do you know the cred you would have?! (especially in my field! Hahahaha!) Wonderful.
Burn Out
I’ll admit. Towards the end of 369 pages, I did get a bit burnt out on the science and the math. It’s tons of fun in the beginning. It’s like getting to know all the legitimate world building going into a fictional world (except Mars is real). But after a while, it did get a little tedious and I just could not keep up with all the math and chemistry and physics. I am a biologist, after all. However, at that point, I just needed to know if the ending was more plausible than the movie ending. So, naturally I had to finish. 🙂
Melanie Noell Bernard 
I can see you liked this book as much as me, the humour and personality really shone for me too and like you it made me want to go to Mars but also it switches you on the realities of it. I have to disagree on one thing though… I finished this faster than any book I’ve ever read!
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Hahahahaha! Well, to be fair, I’m also in grad school at the moment and deal with science on a daily basis. That part of my brain is usually pretty exhausted by the time I get home and sit down to read. :p
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That I can understand, it is a very technical but entertaining read.
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A good book for a science geek!
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Exactly. 🙂
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Very insightful review. Thank you for making it clear what appealed, and why some might choose not to read it.
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My pleasure, Adam. 🙂 I know that my personal tastes are different from most people. Hee hee!
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An excellent consideration to make in any review.
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I’ve been dying to read this books for a while. I’ve regretfully only seen the movie at this point …
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That was me, too, Kelly. I had watched the movie once and LOVED it. So then I was like: “Well, now I have to read the book.” The book is WAY more sciencey than the movie and much more involved. A lot of stuff is skipped over in the movie. So just be prepared for… well, a lot. Hahaha!
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I absolutely love science and astronomy, so hopefully the sciencey stuff won’t scare me away! Hahaha
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Hee hee! It’s not a ton of astronomy, but there is a ton of science. 😉 Hope you like chem!
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YAS I am glad to hear that you liked this book. I’ve been wanting to check it out for a while now! And dude, yes to realism lol
Great review!
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Hahahahaha! I always love your comments, Angela. :p
And I know! I was super excited about all the realism in this book. I hope you like it as much as I did! 😀
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I really enjoyed the book. I knew that when he solved something, something else was going to be coming up because there were too many pages left in the book 😉 My burn out was that at the end, so many bad things seemed to pile up that it was, in my mind, more the author throwing them in to make the end more dramatic than Mars (or science) doing it to stay realistic.
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Yeah. After a while it did start to feel a little redundant, but I think it was done that way because there were sooo many factors that a person can’t know even if they plan for the worst. I could see everything happening, but they did start to lose their impact, especially because nothing REALLY bad ever happened. There was always some perfect jury-rigged science to fix everything. So it was like Watney was never in any real danger, you know?
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Yeah, kind of how I felt. But things would go wrong, and for most of the book most of the bad things that happened made sense that something like that would happen. Also, I was, like you, nerding out on how he fixed things. That is, up until the very end when something different went wrong every other paragraph. That’s when it was just a little deep.
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Yeah. I mean, I understand why so much went wrong, especially when they were dealing with the movement dynamics in space during the rescue. But that comes down to an argument between realism and fiction. Which is more important? At that point, too much realism had been set up in the book previously to suddenly start skipping things.
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