What would it be like to be the only person on an entire planet? How would such a person contend with the loneliness, the challenges, and the novelty? Andy Weir answers this question with his riveting novel The Martian, published in 2011. Astronaut Mark Watney, presumed dead, is left behind on the surface of Mars after a windstorm forces his crew to scrub their mission and abandon planet. Watney wakes up hours later, totally alone, and is forced to survive through catastrophic equipment failures and great odds until a rescue can be launched by NASA back on Earth. It is a tale of human courage, resourcefulness, and the intrepid nature of the human spirit.
I enjoy audiobooks as a great way to complement reading a book. I can hear the characters in my head. It serves to transport me even more completely into the world of the book. A great reader can add layers of emotion, humor, and nuance to the words on the page. Audiobooks are a performance that is quite different from a film or other adaptation.
I recently had the chance to review the audiobook of The Martian, a new edition for 2020, as read by Wil Wheaton of Star Trek: The Next Generation and many other popular science fiction shows. Wheaton is a nerd extraordinaire and to have him lend his unique voice to a fantastic story of the titular Martian is a plus.
As anyone who has read The Martian can tell you, astronaut Mark Watney is characterized by his wry sense of humor, even in the face of the inhospitable Mars. Most of the story is told through Watney’s mission logs, and thus is a raw, immediate, first-person take on life as lived on Mars.
Wil Wheaton energizes Mark Watney’s sarcasm, jokes, and indomitable will. Wheaton’s particular voice inflections and tone fits Watney’s character exceedingly well. Whether in sadness, elation, despair, or determination, Wheaton excells in making that come through each and every scene from the novel. In fact, as much as Matt Damon achieved in portraying Watney in the film version of The Martian, I think Wil Wheaton did just as good of a job creating a different version of Watney for the audiobook. Both, in my opinion, are excellent performances.
One minor quibble I had was that Wil Wheaton only created two accents for characters throughout the audiobook. One was for a BBC reporter early in the book, and the other was for German astronaut Alex Vogel. Other characters such as Venkat Kapoor (Ares mission commander) and Bruce Ng (JPL director) are of different ethnicities as well, and I would have liked to hear that reflected in their accents. But as I say, this was not a large complaint and did not hinder my enjoyment of the audiobook.
If you read audiobooks already, I would definitely add The Martian as read by Wil Wheaton to your collection for immediate listening. If you haven’t yet experienced the world of audiobooks, I would recommend starting with The Martian as read by Wil Wheaton. You will not regret it.
This edition of The Martian audiobook also includes a few bonus materials, such as letters and additional journal entries from Mark Watney that chronicle his acceptance into the Ares 3 mission, and a coda for his life on Earth after his fateful mission.
I am thankful to Audible for sending me a free copy of The Martian audiobook, and I will definitely be reading it again. (Audible in no way influenced my review. My opinions are entirely my own.) You can purchase and download your own copy from Audible today.
Also, do a search for Wil Wheaton while you are on Audible. He has read many of John Scalzi’s novels, and quite a few others as well. He is, as I’ve said, an excellent reader and well worth listening to.
One other note: I had already purchased the ebook version of The Martian shortly after it was published on Apple Books. I listened to the audiobook via Audible’s iOS app on my iPad, while following along with the ebook. This is a really good way to read and listen to a book simultaneously. I highly recommend this method of enjoying a story if you are able to do so.
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