Bookworms: The Martian (2014) by Andy Weir

“I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.” – the Martian*

His mission was scrapped in the face of a huge storm and he was left for dead. While the rest of his crew mates rocketed into Mars orbit and boarded a spaceship for Earth, he lay bleeding and unconscious in the rust colored dust. And when he woke up, Mark Watney found himself totally alone on an inhospitable planet, the only remaining inhabitant of Mars.

Thus begins the greatest human space exploration drama since Apollo 13, but where there were three astronauts working together to get home, here there is one struggling just to survive. Where there was a spaceship hurtling toward earth and a communication line home, here there is a small habitat designed to last 30 days, a decimated satellite dish and no way off planet.

Now no longer a spaceman on a mission of exploration, Mark Watney is a lone Martian with nothing but  70’s TV shows, bad music and a double specialty in botany and engineering. With that, and a small bag of potatoes, Watney must survive for over 400 days before rescue can possibly reach him, but with seemingly no way to contact Earth, he must plan to spend to rest of his life marooned on Mars because NASA doesn’t even know to come up with a rescue plan.

Watney, through regular log entries, tells the story of his daily duty in the service of survival. Not knowing if anyone will ever read his log, he relaxes into a humorous and sarcastic documentation style as a way to maintain his sanity and sense of humor in the face of almost certain death on a daily basis.

This is the exciting, engrossing story of humanity that Andy Weir crafted out of some science, imagination, and a love of space exploration. Rejected by traditional publishers at first, Weir started posting The Martian a chapter at a time on his website, much like Watney, not knowing if anyone would read it. When fans and friends requested a Kindle version, he published it on Amazon. After selling 35,000 copies in three months, he was contacted about a book deal, and later, a film offer. Now to be a major motion picture starring Matt Damon and premiering in the United States on October 2, 2015, The Martian has gone places that even Weir never imagined.

The science of The Martian is accurate, with Weir having actually plotted flight trajectories and performed the necessary mathematical calculations to perform every operation that his astronaut Watney undertakes. Grounded in such reality, the story cracks along at the pace of human ingenuity, imbued with the power of the human spirit.

Once I picked up the book and started reading, I couldn’t put it down again until I was finished. One of the best books I have read in a long time, The Martian now occupies a place on my top ten science fiction novels and my top twenty-five novels of all time.

It is remarkable that Mark Watney has gone from a serial character to having the face of Matt Damon in the less than five years since the Martian was self published in 2011. The story of the novel, like the story contained therein, is a testament to what can happen when a single man decides to not ever give up on himself.

*this quote is from the trailer to the major motion picture, coming soon to a cinema near you! You can watch the trailer here. Andy Weir’s website can be found at andyweirauthor.com. He can be followed on Twitter @andyweirauthor.

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