The Martian

I'm surprised how well rated this book is, but I guess people are just suckers for a good survival story, where someone persevere when everything seems doomed. For the fiction part of the book, you might as well watch the film, which faithfully represents the book.

What you get when reading the novel is... numbers. And a lot of them! I thing that 3/4 of the book is strictly about calculations, statistics, measurements, physics, chemistry, botany and what not. It is very technical stuff, although written in an accessible way. Think the TV series CSI. Most people have no clue what's going on when the expert meticulously explains what has happened, but hey can't stop watching it anyway.

It is not bad writing, just not compelling fiction. If I were to judge the 1/4 that does not relate to technical stuff, i would give this a 3 stars. This is sort of my kind of book really. I like technical stuff. But its just not what I am looking for when I'm reading for entertainment purposes.

The thing I like about the book is that it faithfully represents what would happen to a scientist when he is forced to survive in an improbable situation. Scientist are great people! They do not give up, they are intelligent, creative and logical thinking. the world is your oyster when you understand how the building blocks of reality work together to create anything.

This is an extremely loved book. I knew going into it, I was getting an epic survival story. But I have to say it was even more that that. This book was filled with humor, snarkiness, science, and adventure and I loved every minute of it. I really wanted to see the movie for this, but I knew I had to read the book before I could see the movie. So of course I waited until the day before to start the book. It ended up not being a problem because I flew through the book and there was a never a doubt that I would not finish it before the movie.

I do not know how accurate all the science actually is, but it was believable and made sense to me. I loved how well explained all the choices were. We got to see Mark's stream of consciousness through the log of why he was making certain choices and his trial and error process until he got it right.

My favorite part of this book was how often I would laugh or giggle. I loved how sarcastic and snarky Mark was and it really added to the whole idea of being stranded on Mars and coping and surviving. I truly believe the book would have been much different had Mark not had the personality he did.

I do not think there was ever a dull moment in this book. We were constantly moving onward and toward bigger and greater challenges. I think the pacing of this book was incredibly well done and I applaud Andy Weir for making a book that mainly focuses on one guy alone on Mars so fascinating. We did have some scenes from others perspectives which added to the story but they were all necessary and helped break up the solo-Mark time.

I definitely recommend you read this book and then go see the movie because both are fantastic!

I received a copy of this book through BloggingForBooks in exchange for an honest review

Greatest, geekiest Robinson Crusoe ever

Terrific book, the Martian's braggadocio and smart aleck response combined with his humanity, courage and resourcefulness in the face of intimidating odds makes for a character and plot line that's truly fantastic. The weaving of innovative solutions and sometimes follow up problems to those clever solutions provide some great plot twists. I would recommend this for those that enjoy a literal hero-against-the-world-and-winning story and dreamers who'll love the “wow, this might happen in our lifetimes.” It's not just a science fiction story for all the nerds.

Space is fascinating. Space is fascinating because it is big and because it's filled with unknown stuff and it is fascinating because it is profoundly isolating. Most sci-fi can only handle at most two of those things. In fact, most sci-fi focuses on disposing of the isolation of space as quickly as possible. In contrast, The Martian dials up isolation and down exploration. This shouldn't work, but it does and it's awesome.

The whole book reads kind of like a merge of an escape the room game and an episode of MacGyver, except set on Mars. The entire first sequence is Mark trying to do the algebra and botany to figure out how to create a farm from his own stool and the provisions in his emergency kit. The utter solitude of Mark on Mars is omnipresent for the first third of the book, and I really enjoyed contemplating that. If your speed is more space opera, this runs slow and technical. There's a lot of math and a lot of science and a lot of facts about Mars.

It's also really novel and deeply enjoyable to read a book where the conflicts are people versus the environment. All of the characters in this book (and eventually, there is more than one) get along and work as a team. On the one hand, Weir cares little for his characters and most of them read flat, on the other hand, it really optimizes the exploration of what really smart people, working together at their best can accomplish. I have no freaking clue how they made this into an enjoyable movie, BTW, maybe watching that should go on to my to-do list.

This was an amazing page-turner! It passes the Neil Gaiman test (“... and then what happened?”) with flying colors.

If there's a weakness to the story, I guess that it's rather preposterous when you reflect on the whole ordeal - and people more versed in science might be face-palming throughout. I don't know how plausible the science is - I just let Mark carry me along. He's such a great character, it more than compensates for any plot drawbacks, in my opinion.

It's a story about an astronaut on a planet, how good can it be?

Turns out, pretty darn good. I'm not a space or sci-fi buff, and I haven't yet seen the film, and I'm pretty good about shielding myself from spoilers, so I didn't really know what to expect. I found the story surprisingly thrilling and quite often chuckleworthy. The prose is simple—which I appreciated, having just read Dickens a few days ago.

The Martian is just...well, it's just a fast, fun read, well worth your time.

This is the first science fiction novel I've ever read, as much as I can remember. I think it was easy for me because it focuses not on the science - while there is plenty of that - but mostly on the human condition and Watney's survival in the face of seemingly impossible odds. This is like any survival novel, only it happens to take place on the surface of Mars in the maybe-not-so-far-off future.
This book is written in Watney's logs, emails between him and various crews, and then normal exposition with the ground control teams. I think that made it a lot more interesting than simply reading Mark did this then said that, as you're getting several points of view including the most important: Watney's and what he thinks about his whole situation.

I think this book is very readable for anyone - this is from, like I said, someone with very little interest in science and science fiction - and is filled with a lot more humour than you'd expect. Watney is an instantly likeable character and you really care whether he lives or not. There were a few events in the latter half of the book that had me on the figurative edge of my seat.

“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.

You know how it's like when there's a minor problem with your computer, and you find an online tutorial that should solve it, and you start messing around with stuff you shouldn't be messing around with, and pretty soon you somehow manage to delete your operating system, so you try to fix this but you do so badly that after a while the computer doesn't even boot up, and you find yourself sitting on the floor at 2 am, coffee stains on your shirt, prying open your laptop with a screwdriver, cursing your life and the world and your maddening stupidity, because really, it was just a minor problem, dammit.

So, the Martian.

I've settled on 3 stars, because honestly I can't say that I really liked this book. It was absolutely exciting and I devoured it whole, but it's also got some glaring faults such as the cardboard cut out characters, or the fact that Watney is a douche and the world's better off with him on Mars (in space, nobody can hear your bad puns.)

Really, I can overlook all that, but the book's biggest crime is that it's got no sense of wonder. Mars is just technicalities and mathematics. We never get to experience that exhilarating moment of ‘omg space!'. How does the surface of Mars even look like? Better google this, because the book isn't about to tell you. You will learn a lot about gasses though, so there's that.

All in all, it was a fun read and I did tear up in the end. A little. A tiny bit. So 3 stars it is.

P.S. why the hell didn't Watney bring his own USB to Mars? This really bugged me.