Book Review: "The Martian" by Andy Weir

It's been a read-ey kind of month for me in May thus far and while this might just be really common for some of you more intellectual types out there, for me to read 3 books in a month is not normal. The reason for me doing this is because I have been going to the gym more frequently and I don't want to rot my brain with social media while i am there so instead, I read a page or two between sets. You should try it sometime.

Anyway, like most people I was already very familiar with a lot of the story before I ever started page 1 because of the rather good movie starring Matt Damon. I was so familiar with it in fact that I thought I would get bored with the book and walk away from it before I was done with it. However, this book is so well written that it stays entertaining despite the fact that I already know almost all of what is going to happen in it.

Side note: Nadi is not unhappy. She gets treated like a damn princess all the time. What is going on here is that she is very protective of her toys and while this was being photographed, she was on high alert to prevent me from stealing "chicky," the squeaky toy to the left of her.

So as I am sure most of you know already this book is about a man who gets stranded on Mars after a manned mission to the planet goes horribly awry because of high winds threatening to topple their only means of exiting the planet. During the haste to depart the planet before the lander topples, thereby ensuring the fact that all of them will die, our protagonist Mark Watney gets struck by flying debris, is lost by his crew, and is presumed dead because his vitals are showing precisely that. His crew sticks with protocol and abandons him because had they not, the entire crew would have perished alongside him.

However, Mark wasn't dead, there was a malfunction in his equipment and he makes it back to the life supporting housing that they have on Mars. His communication with Earth has been completely cut off and the next 300 pages or so are dedicated to the methods that he takes in order to survive as well as attempt to get word back to Earth that he is in fact, alive and well.

Now again, if you have seen the film you already know that his objectives have their ups and downs and a lot of bad things happen (one really bad thing in particular) that would get the spirits of a normal person seriously down. The entire time he has a lethal dose of morphine in his shelter that he is prepared to use in lieu of starving to death.

The reason why this stays interesting throughout is because Weir, who is clearly very well-informed about certain physical aspects of potential space travel as well as the conditions on Mars, does a very good job explaining certain things to us about how sustaining life on Mars would actually be possible. Now I have no idea if this is in fact true but he paints a picture in such a way that sounds as if it could happen. I'm sure some NASA people out there would be rolling their eyes while reading this thinking "That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works!" but I would imagine that most of us are not physicists working with NASA so we can just take Andy's word for it.

It all makes a lot of sense and the tension is kept high throughout the entire novel. I found myself actually staying up later than I normally would in order to read just one more chapter and as I got into the last 50 pages or so I had gone too far to turn it off. That night I was awake until much later than I normally am and even though I already knew how the story ends, I found myself quite happy with how everything plays out.

If there was any criticism that I would give the book it would be some of the juvenile humor that is meant to be one of Mark Watney's defining characteristics. I don't think that the author really understands what is actually funny.

Now I am going to go and rewatch the movie again. As I recall it was a pretty enjoyable experience. I am now working on Weir's 2nd book called "Artemis" which is a similar story to "The Martian" but it takes place on the moon and the main character is a woman. So far it is just as interesting as this book and it is moving along nicely.