Andy Weir: The Martian

[bibliogramma]

Andy Weir's The Martian is one hundred percent non-stop competence porn. Which is exactly what a story like this has to be, because survival under the circumstances areonaut Mark Watney faces is the ultimate scenario for the techie high-stress mantra - "do the next thing. And the next thing. And the next thing. Til you survive or die."

If you've been living under a rock, here's the set-up. Watney is part of a six-person mission to Mars. When a serious high-wind sandstorm threatens to destroy the MAV - the craft that will take the crew back to their ship in orbit - they are ordered to abort the mission. Watney is struck, wounded,and knocked unconscious by flying debris; his suit's biotelemetry circuits is damaged, and when the rest of the crew try to find him, they can't - and the feedback from the suit makes it appear that he's dead. They continue with the abort, leaving Watney behind, unaware that he is alive.

Fortunately for Watney, there is a habitat and supplies and life support equipment left behind with him, but unless he can communicate with Earth and let them know he's alive, there's not enough to last him until either the next planned Mars mission or some kind of rescue mission can be organised. So he has problems to solve, lots of them.

What makes it a great story rather than a Martian survival tech manual is Weir's gift of characterisation. Watney becomes real in short order. He has a voice, a sense of humour, a humanity. Most of the story is told through his logs, and these cleverly avoid infodumping by having Watney work out the problems as he goes along, talking the reader through his own logic as he solves problem after problem, sometimes screwing up but never quite fatally, sometimes being foiled by unexpected chance occurrences, but never so badly that he and the experts back on Earth can't figure out something to keep him alive.

While we see much less of his fellow crew members and of the mission specialists and administrators back on Earth, we see enough to get a sense for them as people too. And to watch them as they do the same thing Watney does - try the next thing, and the next, and the next....

A fast paced read, but one that pulls you into the action and makes you care.

Comments

[wild_irises]

Sounds like the movie (which I saw more or less by accident) echoes the book very well; this could be a review of the movie.

[bibliogramma]

Yes, the movie follows the book rather well, and they both have that non-stop competence porn thing going for them. My one complaint about the movie is that some characters that I read as being PoC in the novel were white in the film.