The Martian

There is a lot about The Martian to like and I understand why there are people who absolutely love this book, but at the same time there is a lot to strongly dislike and I understand the people who hate this book at the same time.

The book feels split up into two distinct sections; section one is nearly endless logs from the protagonist, Mark Watney, section two is more of his logs as well as a look at everyone else involved in the story. Needless to say, the first part is not a joy to read unless you are really into reading the logs of what feels like a YouTube parody account that leaves comments in the voice of a mock Redditor.

Mark Watney is what Wesley Crusher would be like if he was stranded on Mars and left for dead if Beverly Crusher had somehow worked MacGuyver's DNA into the birthing process. There is zero tension in what should be an incredibly tense situation due to how effortless everything is for Watney. Not enough food to last? No problem, Watney is an expert botanist who is able to take his own shit, soil he brought with him and convenient potatoes, mix it with Martian soil and have an indoor farm that can sustain him for almost two years. Need more water? He's also an expert chemist who can create it out of thin air and have enough to last as long as he needs. He could probably end world hunger in the snap of his fingers if he wanted to, he's just that damned good.Every problem is met with a nonchalant series of jokes and asides while Watney is able to utilize increasingly convenient items in his vicinity while he rags on the poor taste of his teammates as he goes through their possessions in search for entertainment. What's frustrating is that when it's convenient for the plot to move along this innate ability to solve every problem regardless of complexity disappears from Watney's possession and he's left helpless.The big issue that I have is that I'm forced to fill in blanks and assign reasons and events to flesh out these strange holes in the plot and character. He probably had a mental break, maybe he lost his will, maybe he wasn't in class on the day when they had you clean up an experiment after a disaster to see that something might be salvageable, etc. What little is given about Watney is downright unlikable most of the time, which can make the early parts of the book a slog to get through.Things pick up when other characters are introduced and things move from the journal-based style to a more normal style of prose. You don't really get much of a feel for any of the characters, not much description about their features, personalities or lives outside of saving Mark Watney, but then again, this whole book is just about Mark Watney, isn't it? We know that Lewis and her husband like Disco and the 70's, we know that Johannsen is an attractive, younger female and so forth, but we're never given much of a reason to care about them and it kind of feels like a shame.The brief glimpses that the reader gets into these ancillary characters shows the potential for a lot more interesting, likable and worthwhile characters, but instead they are just to serve Watney and his brilliance as set dressing. I know that I'm really kind of ripping into this right now, but there were some really great things in this book as well. After around 40% or so it was hard to put down due to how the plot just flowed. There was a good sense of tension built throughout and it was genuinely exciting to read at times. There was obviously a lot of effort and research put into this book, which I appreciated and the approach kept things from being overly dry when veering into the realm of the scientific. I also appreciate the attempt at doing something different, but honestly the execution was just lacking and hurt the book overall. I'm also well aware that I just found the lead character to be abrasive and awful, but that's just personal taste and you might love him and feel a deep, soulful connection to him. I can only imagine how good this book could have been if the same level of attention to detail was put into building up the characters more and helping to create some increasing tension throughout the book as opposed to only in the second half.

The book has two flaws, it is too short and impossible to put down!

excellent! Hard science fiction, thriller, good characters, good pacing, humorous.

Fantastic book!! So entertaining!

reviews.metaphorosis.com

4.5 stars

When a major storm hits their base, a Mars landing mission is abandoned early. Badly injured, Mark Watney is left for dead. When he comes to, he's the only man on an entire planet, and must figure out how to survive on his own.

This reads more like a thought experiment than a normal novel. ‘If I were in this situation, what would I do?' The afterword reveals this to be essentially the truth. The thing is, it's a very interesting thought experiment.

While technically science fiction, this is really more in the category of ‘technology fiction' - not exploration of basic principles or ideas as figuring out how to apply current techniques an extreme situation. Sounds dry, doesn't it? Yet, despite constant descriptions of how to calculate this and that, the book is engaging and intriguing. Maybe it's because as an I-used-to-be-a-scientist, I liked the calculatory bits. They add verisimilitude. Some of them are a bit questionable, and I didn't take the time to check them, but overall, they seem like credible seat of the pants calculations - exactly the kind a stranded astronaut might concoct. In most cases, I read them, and thought “that sounds reasonable.” And Weir is thorough; there isn't much that he tries to get away with by hand-waving. (There is one consistency error, but it's not a big deal.)

Thoroughness and credibility carry a lot of the weight in this novel. But what really makes the book work is Weir's terrific sense of humor. It's that that makes you like his character Watney, and that makes you want to carry on. It's essential in a book that's largely monologue, and Weir pulls it off beautifully. I read this at the same time as a more literary collection by another author. Both books are the same length, but I managed only a few dozen pages in the anthology in the same time I read Weir's entire book. Wry adventure was always more enticing.

That's not to say the writing is perfect. Weir makes some cheap and slightly offensive jokes that should have been edited out. He leans a bit on stereotype for the other characters (the German in particular). And he can't get past the sheer crappiness of 70s entertainment. Generally though, the book is a lot of fun to read - in the way that Stephen Baxter (equally tech and projection-oriented) often isn't. In his afterword, Weir inadvertently suggests a Heinlein comparison, and I think there's something to that.

I picked this book up based on reviews, and I'm glad I did. It's one of the few books that matches its hype. It's a fun read, and one that builds respect for science as craft (not magic genius sorcery). Recommended for everyone, and particularly for young folk just getting interested in science. It's the kind of book I read when I was young, that made me think science was cool, and something I personally could do.

Wow. Just WOW. I enjoyed this way more than I anticipated. I was hooked from the very start. The audiobook probably played a huge role in that as it made the super technical parts really easy to get through and I didn't find them boring at all. Bray does a phenomenal job with Watney's voice, but I found the voices for the other characters a bit strange. They were bearable though and I got used to them after a while. The last 20 minutes or so of the book had my heart racing and I totally cried at the end. Definitely a thrill ride.

The story was engaging throughout, but I can see why it might not appeal to some people. I really recommend the audiobook version! I ended up reading some parts in print, but much preferred the audio.

Pros: tense, compelling, humerous, hard sf

Cons: swearing, some exposition

Mark Watney is presumed dead after being hit by flying debris and having his suit depressurize during the evacuation of the Ares 3 mission on Mars in a dust storm. But hours after his crew departs on the only ship, Mark wakes up. Now he's alone on Mars with no way home and supplies only designed to last a crew of 6 for 31 days.

This is a novel of survival under extreme conditions. It's predominately told from Mark's point of view via daily journal entries. Mark is a resourceful man with a dry sense of humour, which helps keep the novel upbeat even though things are constantly dire. It's a compelling book that's hard to put down with lots of tense moments.

It's also hard science fiction, meaning there's a good amount of science explanation and mathmatics going on. Most of the time it's quick and engagingly told (often using humour). Communications are reproduced with the time lag and flight times are dictated by real physics. According to an interview I read by him the only scientifically inaccurate point in the book is the dust storm on Mars at the beginning of the book.

There's a fair bit of swearing, which I'm not keen on, but a lot of it was understandable given the circumstances. My only other complaint is that a lot of necessary information was given in conversations in ways that - though they worked in the text - would sound odd in real life. So, for example, people would say things like “It's nice to be back in Houston.”, rather than simply “It's nice to be back.”, so the reader would know where the conversation was happening. Similarly, people often explained things to coworkers that their coworkers should know, like how various scientific things work, or what they're called, so that the reader would learn this information. It's a catch-22 in that the reader needs the information and there are only 2 ways to get it across, via dialogue or exposition. Dialogue is the more interesting way of reading it, so he made the right choice. And most people won't notice he did this, they'll just enjoy the fast paced story.

This is a fantastic book and I can understand why it made so many top 10 lists for 2014 and why it's been optioned for film.

I'm really looking forward to the film, even though I usually dread book adaptations; this book is a film on paper (or e-ink screen).
At the beginning I found Mark irritating but it picked up when the Earth POV was introduced. The idea of rescuing someone from Mars is obviously ridiculous, financially alone, but the action was paced well enough to keep the voice in my head from saying “that would never happen”.
I think this book captured the atmosphere of climbing disaster memoirs really well, such as “Into thin air” and “touching the void”, and I love those kind of books so it worked really well for me.

Well here's a book that makes science and Maths interesting. Not only that, it makes it exciting! This is a great read about an astronaut shipwrecked on Mars and his trials and tribulations as he tries to survive way beyond the length of time his mission was intended to last.

The astronaut's journal is really well-written and adds tension, humour and technicalities in equal measure. I did have some issues over the dialogue featuring elsewhere in the book as it felt a little stilted in parts but this in no way took away from my overall enjoyment.

Recommended

I listened to the audio version of this book on Audible, and I can't imagine enjoying this book without the wonderful narrator, which really made this story come alive for me! Normally, I would have skipped over all of the scientific talk because I wouldn't have been able to follow it. But somehow, the narrator managed to make those parts all the more interesting to listen to! He was the perfect choice for this book.

But anyways, enough about the narrator, onto the author! I give Andy major props for putting together such a believable science fiction story. I am seriously impressed with the level of research he must have done for this book.

I was hooked on the storyline from the very first chapter. I don't remember ever rooting for a main character as intensely as I did Mark Watney. Such a likable guy, from the get-go! And a beautiful ending, with a beautiful message for us humans: Yes, there are jerks in the world, but they are the exception. We are full of compassion, empathy, and self-sacrifice when it really comes down to it.

A surprise favorite. A very realistic take on what would happen if a person was stranded on Mars in the near future. But made interesting and fun by the monologue of our hero.

It has scientific descriptions of lots of things, long stretches of tedious work, and an entire scene of just driving in a circle.

It has no aliens, no deadly comets, and no lasers (or weapons of any kind).

And you should DEFINITELY READ THIS BOOK.

I liked it! It was sciency and entertaining. And that cover...I want a print of the cover to put on my wall. Just gorgeous.

I feel like my review is just going to be responses to other people's reviews. I understand why the negative reviewers don't like this book - there is a particular writing style that you either like or don't like. And, I'm not going to say that Andy Weir is a good writer...I don't really think he is. A lot of this book is Mark's log, which is blog-style...anyone can have a blog. All of his other characters sound the same though. They all have what I assume is Weir's sense of humour and timing. Some reviewers have blamed this on the fact that Weir can't interact with people, or using it as evidence that he's on the autism spectrum somewhere? I find this pretty ridiculous. I feel like I'm pretty high-functioning in my level of social interaction, but all the conversations I've written have been stilted and terrible. Because I'm a bad writer. I don't know whether or not Weir has autism, I'm just saying that the fact that he can't write people having conversations is not proof.

Something else that has come up in other people's reviews is that Mark's style of writing doesn't make sense because he's a NASA scientist and astronaut. Because people with that much education don't say “lol” or make jokes about pirate-ninjas. Because...who knows? Because getting lots of education in science makes you immune to internet memes? Because working for a space agency makes you irreparably professional? Remember that a scientist with the European Space Agency wore a shirt for a televised interview that had half-naked women holding guns on it. Which, regardless of whether or not you think it's sexist (it kind of is though), is decidedly not professional. So obviously you can like or not like the writing style, you can think it's embarrassing and unprofessional, but to say that it makes the book unbelievable because an astronaut could never talk like that is not very realistic. Personally, I would like more people in STEM fields to talk like “normal” people...I think that part of the reason that it's hard to get minority groups into STEM and especially professions like ASTRONAUT or ROCKET SCIENTIST is because people in those professions are assumed to have been abnormally smart for their whole lives. If average people don't feel like they could have a conversation with a rocket scientist, they won't feel like they could be one.

So anyway I liked it. Recommended!

Truly one of the best reads ever. Hilarious and kept me interested the entire time. Couldn't put it down. Space pirate.

Short review: This is a straight forward story. An astronaut gets left on mars and has to figure out how to survive. It is Robinson Crusoe with a space suit. But it was also very engaging, had good characterization and really kept me wanting more throughout the story. I think sometimes authors try to do too much. This book is proof that a fairly simple story, well told, is really what matters.

It will make my best of list this year.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-martian/

Great ride - well written and a breath of fresh (oxygen) for anyone wanting a stellar read.

Simply fantastic. Great story with a totally awesome main character. Funny and very emotional at times. Best sci fi book I've read and one of the best books of any genre I've read in a long long time.

“Hello, I'm Bear Grylls and for todays special episode...we're going to Mars” or “Well...shit”.

One of those two would be enough to describe The Martian. As someone who loves scifi and everything space this really tickled all my spots. It's a really thoroughly researched story FULL of science and survival. It's really interesting to see how Watney finds ways to overcome everything that Mars throws at him.

I don't nearly know enough about chemistry, physics or botany to understand everything that he comes up with, but that's the point. If Andy Weir would let some average person get stranded on Mars, the story would be over after 10 pages. I'm really impressed with what's possible in the face of death, if you have some scientific and mechanical expertise.

To not get the reader too overwhelmed or bored, the story is mixed up with the viewpoint from earth, where the whole world and especially NASA works hard to contact and rescue Watney. There could have been more emphasis on the human connections but that's okay. The story focuses on physical survival. But it helps that Watney doesn't loose his sense of humor and throws around some funny jokes here and there.

Especially the ending had some “Gravity” like action which was the icing on the cake for me.

I came so close to giving this a 5 its not funny. The premise is simple and the story even more so. But its the execution and the attention to detail that ticks my box. It just make the engineer hidden deep inside me smile to no end. The humour keeps my smile going and the end climax is an absolute classic. The only reason I think I dropped a star is because Matt never really gets to the deep end of despair and maybe Andy missed a trick there. But all in all a brilliantly written book full of numbers and attitude. Highly recommended!

It's between 3 and 4 stars. I enjoyed it pretty thoroughly. In the end, it was more of a fun experience than a great book, so I went with three. It's kind of how I felt about the movie Gravity: the actual plot, and anything they tried to do with it, wasn't great. But the way they made you experience it was still really fun. Maybe I'm trying to describe hollow fun? But I don't think this was quite hollow. Just ... it leaned toward glib, when its subject matter could've been a lot more thrilling. It favored procedure over storytelling (“here's how I'll construct this tool” rather than any of the potential fear/introspection/character work that could've happened). The glibness made it entertaining – I laughed a lot as I read it – but maybe detracted from the end product.

I don't know, mixed feelings: I really did enjoy it, start-to-finish, and I'd recommend anyone read it. But once it was over it felt a little shallow for what it could have been.

I first read The Martian in my pre-Goodreads days and I'm not 100% sure when, I do know it was before the movie was a twinkle in Matt Damon's eyes. When I first read this book I loved it, I enjoyed the science, the problem-solving and the (one sided) banter. It really reminded me of what I love about Asimov's writing, especially his short fiction. There's a problem that seems impossible to solve, let's look at what we've got and hack our way out. This is pretty much the same reason I like Sherlock Holmes.

Did I enjoy it the second time around? Absolutely, with one little caveat. I flew through the book, loving every minute of it - until the very last page where the story just stopped very suddenly. That was so not how I remembered it. I remembered a gentle and funny epilogue that eased the reader out of the extreme tension of the last scene of the book. I was sure it was there last time. I had a weird moment in which I considered the possibility I was in a parallel universe. Then I gave myself a mental slap for being a silly sod and instead started wondering if it was all a dream.

An internet search provided the answer - no I was not loosing my marbles, for some baffling reason they had removed the epilogue at some stage, leaving the story with the abrupt ending. The original (very short) ending can be found here:
https://the-martian.fandom.com/wiki/Original_Ending

Endings are very important, if you spoil the ending it can sour everything that went before. I'm leaving my five stars, but that is most definitely for the version with the epilogue. Now I'm off to cut and paste the epilogue back into my copy of the otherwise excellent The Martian.

This was sort of Gravity meets Castaway. On Mars.

It was full of techno jargon that I didn't have a hope of understanding, but it didn't matter one bit. Despite the date of the events not revealed, it all sounded extremely feasible and odd as it may sound for a science fiction novel, refreshingly realistic. No lasers, teleporters or androids here.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and was gripped from beginning to end. My only complaints are that despite the fact that the protagonist was alone and distant in a deadly nightmare scenario lasting for months, he never seemed to lose his sanity and despair over the sheer weight of it all, constantly quipping and joking like he was a character written by Joss Whedon. Though I guess NASA would pick ‘the best of the best' to be able to cope with anything on these missions.

Just small nitpicks really, it was a great read and I aim to seek out more of the writer's work.

This is a strong contender for my favorite book of 2014. Hard science fiction about a NASA mars mission? Sign me up! Add to this that the main character's approach to his desperate situation is a mirror of my own, to see the humor in every moment, and I could not love this more.

Best book I've read so far this year.

As one of my friends said, this isn't a book about deep theological or cultural problems. It's a fairly straight forward action flick (er, book) but a fun one nonetheless. At a couple of hundred pages it was a quick read and I really look forward to the Ridley Scott movie coming out next year.

Warning: there is some math, which you can largely skip other than to kind of know what the end product is. I know that it's turned off some people but what he figures out is the important part if you don't want to follow the math.

One of the best science fiction books I've read in years. Full of tension, and the “average Joe” tone of Mark really helps you connect with him.

I especially enjoyed the fact that the science involved was complex but understandable, it almost reminded me of Michael Chrichton in the way the realism contributed to the story rather than just being an info dump.

Overall, a fantastic book that any fans of realistic sci-fi must pick up!