The Martian
Ratings2,441
Average rating4.4
This was a fun, quick read. And funny, oddly enough. The brutal optimism of the protagonist was kind of contagious, and he reminded me of several of my favorite friends in various ways. A good summer read.
‘t Was al heel lang geleden dat ik met zoveel plezier een boek gelezen heb. Geen existentieel geëmmer, geen existentiële angst, geen diepe gedachten over de zin van het leven, eenzaamheid, het mens-zijn of wat nog: gewoon recht door zee Jongens & Wetenschap-science fiction.
Astronaut Mark Watney geraakt na een ongeluk alleen achter op de planeet Mars. Het ziet er naar uit dat hij ten dode is opgeschreven: niet voldoende zuurstof, water of voedsel, en geen kans op een reddingsmissie.
Volgen 384 bladzijden probleemoplossen en spanning. En grappig bovendien.
Er komt een film van, ergens in oktober 2015, geregisseerd door Ridley Scott en met Matt Damon in de hoofdrol, en dat zal ongetwijfeld leutig zijn, maar lees nu alvast het boek: van harte aangeraden.
I really enjoyed the technical writing of Andy Weir, but he is no character writer. By the end of the book, I didn't care if Watney lived or died, I just wanted him to stop narrating.
The Martian is a good book. The payback is worth it for whatever time you choose to invest in the book. Depending on your tastes and interests, you could be flipping through the pages, believing in the numbers thrown at you, or be meticulously googling, reconfirming and learning about every bit of factoid you stumble upon. However, it's not a great book. It falls short in language, presentation and subtlety.
The language and presentation has a cheerful naïveté to it – it's endearing in the beginning, And since the protagonist Mark Watney is introduced as a cheerful quirky guy, the tone suits the log-pages he writes. However, it quickly grows tiresome and hollow; and once you get to the point where NASA top brass are talking like high-school hipsters, you realize that the almost-stupid jive belongs to the author himself rather than the protagonist. I found strange sense of humor, the pop-culture references, one-line-quips (some of them coming out of the mouths of middle-aged executive men in highly inappropriate scenarios), and 70's-culture-bashing, all equally terrible.
The language and presentation are rather blunt. There are hardly any sentence that you'll want to read a second time for its beauty; no line or phrase that will stay with you days even after you put the book down. Similarly, the author attempts to streak the storyline with a few emotional threads (family-relations, conversations among crew members etc.), but most of them are underdeveloped, and fall flat on their faces.
However, The Martian isn't about exquisite language or subtle emotional sketches. The Martian is about the survival story of an estranged man caught alone on Mars. It's about the sheer joy of survival stories, and about the tiniest details of how a resourceful guy could fight an impossibly hostile environment. It's a good book, and is a must-read if you're the kind that waits for every update XKCD What-If comic. It's a worthy read if space even remotely fascinates you, or if you love books interspersed with factoids and trivia. I liked the book as a whole, but there are many things about it that I hate.
Story: 6 / 10
Characters: 5
Setting: 6
Prose: 4
I'm wondering if this book should even be considered “science fiction”. My impression is that everything accomplished in the book could take place now (in 2015).
Either way, it isn't a terribly interesting read. Between the “hard science fiction” description and the diary-style writing, it is quite difficult to digest. The one element that really sets it apart is the intergalactic survival story. Then again, survival stories aren't really interesting.
Recommended only for extremely technical, hard science lovers.
The Martian is a fine idea. It is a pretty massive failure of a literary work though. The only good part is the science–and even that gets dry after a while.
This is another book that did not live up to its potential. Here we have a man alone on a planet, but the only time he openly acknowledges this is in passing compared to how much talk of water reclaimers there is in the book. Mark doesn't have any more depth than the paper his journals have been printed on–unfortunately that is the case with every other character as well.
The overarching themes are supposed to be resilience and humans-looking-out-for-each-other and hope. Weir literally spells it out on the last page, opting to flood the preceding pages with tiring jokes and nary a hint of artful prose. He misses a lot, and opened up about his weak writing online when the book became decently popular.
The Martian was an opportunity for Weir to explore the loneliness and despair vs. hope in Mark. He could have put Mark in some real danger, threaded tension into the work. Instead, everything goes jolly well(pretty much) and the man has ONE episode of slight hopelessness. None of the other characters really matter and could have been robots. All that being said, the science did keep me reading earnestly for some time, it was just impossible to keep up. The more I read, the more I realized it was going to stay 99% shallow and repetitive throughout the whole book.
To be fair to Weir, he did self-publish this and probably didn't expect to be scrutinized. Better luck next time.
I couldn't decide between giving it a 4 or a 5, so the most accurate score would probably be 4.5.
I'm going to keep the review general, so it's spoiler free.
The things I liked:
- The beginning was really strong; I wanted to give the book 6 starts out of 5.
- I absolutely loved the technical part. It gave the book an immense feeling of realism.
- I learned a lot from this book and I sure love a read that can teach you something new.
- I loved the problem solving - both the technical and the creative aspects of it.
- I think the protagonist was fun and engaging. He reminded me of my circle of friends a bit. Although there were some irking moments (more in the “Things I didn't like” section).
- The book definitely fired up my imagination and filled me with inspiration. Now I can't think about Mars without thinking about all its potential (or this book, for that matter).
The things I didn't like:
- Some of Watney's jokes were either too stupid, or a bit over the top.
- The characters are rather flat, although I liked commander Lewis.
- Some things Watney said are a bit sexist.
Overall, it was an enjoyable read. I think the book is definitely worth the hype.
Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.
Wonderful, highly technical science-fiction. More science than fiction in this. Great motivational book, too.
what an adventure! I'm still coming off a high from finishing the book. humor, science, space what's not to love???
An excellent combination of adventure, technical realism and geek humour make this book a home run for modern sci-fi and modern fiction over all.
I chose this book for my book club (before the movie came out) knowing that most of the club members didn't like sci-fi but they all loved this! In fact, I was probably the most critical because I expected a little more fantasy and fiction. Instead this book plays out with the most realistic possible scenario for what would happen if a manned mission to Mars went wrong. That Chris Hadfield complimented its accuracy in a review attests to that point.
Watney is a lovable character, and the switching perspectives between Earth and space/Mars keep the pace of the book at a can't-put-it-down speed. I highly recommend this book! (Even if you don't like science fiction)
Robison Crusoe en Marte.
Actualizado y realista.
El protagonista se encuentra solo en Marte y tiene que buscarse la vida.
El libro te mantiene en un vilo continuo por un nuevo peligro, una nueva oportunidad, un nuevo descubrimiento.
El autor es un friki de Marte, con mucho conocimientos del planeta y los planes de su colonizacion. El libro esta basado en los planes actuales de la NASA para visitar a Marte. Es una ficcion pero tan realista como puede ser escrita.
Actual, emocinante , realista -> 5 estrellas
THIS BOOK STRESSED ME OUT SO MUCH OMG
I read it all in one day. Also I skimmed a lot of the math. There were a lot of equations in this book? Also I'm not really into space? Also surival/adventure stories tend to give me suicidal urges? basically what I'm saying is that I am not the target audience for this book and I probably wouldn't have picked this up if it hadn't been so talked up.
But I really enjoyed it! It's very funny in places, with a great cast of characters. It's a definite page-turner. I think people who are more interested in hard sci-fi, or just astronauts/space/whatever would really enjoy all the details in here (which are apparently pretty realistic, given Weir's scientific background).
also I NEVER WANT TO GO TO SPACE
If I am honest this is probably a 3.5 stars. It was a fun, quick, silly read, quick because I probably skipped 25-30% which consisted of techno-babble (the further along I got, the more tech-talk I skipped - it was pretty interesting in the beginning to watch the main character work out how to grow food, for example). The main character is certainly engaging, and the interactions between him and the NASA people on Earth are pretty hilarious. I can see why this is already being made into a movie, and I will for sure see it.
How to MacGyver your way to survival on Mars in case you end up stranded there. Highly entertaining, surprisingly many laugh-out-loud moments (if someone ever get's stranded on Mars, he better have that sense of humor) and lots of science and geekiness. Plus, it already has all the cheesy Hollywood-blockbuster moments pre-written. The whole world bonding together over one lost soul (hell, even China pitches in), the words echo the tear-jerker movie montages that will follow. I didn't even mind that that much, as it was a fun and exciting read, and tear-jerker moments are definitely better in book form, while they deserve more eye-rolling on the big screen.
For a story about an astronaut stranded on Mars, this ranks very high on the plausibility meter. The author is a space geek who works out orbital trajectories and stuff like that for fun. When I first started this book, I was a little worried that I was just going to be bombarded with a list of technical problems, that the astronaut, Mark Watney, had to overcome. But it kept drawing me along and in the first two days of reading I realized I'd zipped through 150 pages. (Which is good for my fractured attention span). Then some plot twists enter in and the story just gets more interesting and even funny as Mark Watney got a decent sense of humor about his predicament. And the climax I had to read all in a rush. Should be a killer movie cuz it was a cool book.
A gripping story with a great sense of reality and brilliant survival tactics. While Mark found himself in some dire situations, he tend to get out of them pretty fast. It seemed like more really tense moments needed to occur during the middle of the book.
The best part about this was the writing style. It's full of dry humor and vulgarity that you would expect from someone stuck on Mars for a couple of years.
Like none other. The main characters survival skills and the authors writing skills are totally out of the world!
What a great book.
The story is about Mark who is unfortunately stranded on mars and how he reached the home with his intelligence and luck and hard work of many NASA people..
I loved the watney(mark's) character it is just awesome. The author maintained intense and humor through out the novel. There are so many scientific details.
This book made me love the Human Shit That much i loved this book.
Thanks Andy Weir you are awesome...