Revive Jules Verne. Teach him about space travel and modern technologies. Let him write a book. I'm pretty sure this is what you'd get. A man struggling to survive in a situation he never planned for, while people all over the world (and in space!) try to find a way to rescue him. I swear, this is the Mysterious Island in Space. He even makes a sextant!

Okay. I'm likely biased because I love the shit out of Jules Verne.

But the point still stands: this book is FANTASTIC.

Great characters. Great plot. EDGE OF YOUR SEAT type of story. Constantly wondering what's going to happen next, worrying about our intrepid hero.

So. So good.

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says:

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first man to die there.

It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he's stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to get him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

My Review:

The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. For today, which appears to be World UFO Day (snort), it's your favorite SF/F novel, and boy howdy does this qualify!

Starting from the get-go, "Well, I'm f***ed", you know Mark Watney isn't going to be one of those steely-eyed, square-jawed Ken-doll astronauts. Those came on the first and second Mars landings, vetted and trained (I don't doubt) by PR consultants as heavily as by scientists. Watney's on the third Mars landing, the one that won't get a parade on their safe return just a handshake and a Groupon for free Tim Horton's or summat like that.

And thank goodness for that, because Kendoll Astronautibot would've Died the Glorious Death for PR purposes. Watney's a helluva lot more fun.

And that is the crux of my review: FUN.



“Well, it is a photo taken from orbit,” Mindy said. “The NSA enhanced the image with the best software they have.”

“Wait, what?” Venkat stammered. “The NSA?”

“Yeah, they called and offered to help out.”

Maybe some po-faced Grimsby McFrownington doesn't think that's side-splittingly funny, but I sure as hell do.

This book is something unusual in my long experience of reading SF. It is exciting, it is convincing, and it is FUN. (Make that reading, not just reading SF.) Andy Weir took a very, very serious situation...life and death, not remotely figuratively...and didn't minimize any of the stakes, didn't make the mistake of downplaying OR overplaying the main character's nature, and delivered a believable smartass engineer, a lateral thinker and a complete fatalist who refuses to give up until he's actually assumed room temperature:

I could cut off an arm and eat it, gaining me valuable calories and reducing my overall caloric need.

I need a minute...laughing....

Now that, my chick-a-biddies, is Andy Weir making an angry, frustrated, maddened-by-stupidity old man lose it, howling with laughter, before he's finished his first cup of coffee. If I were religious, I'd have him on the Sainthood Watch List for performing miracles while still alive, from a long distance.

We all know that there's a movie on the way, starring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott (he's a hard sneeze away from EIGHTY YEARS OLD and he's directing this! mother, may I please be Ridley Scott in my next lifetime?). The odds are reasonably good that this team won't eff it all up and make it into a s'mores-around-the-campfire-Kumbaya-singin'-Murrika-First nightmare. There are real stakes here, and the book delivers laughs while delivering some deeply pulse-pounding action.

And Everything Comes Out Right.

How refreshing is that. How very seldom do we get entertainment where everything comes out right. Post-apocalyptic zombie-plague vampires-eating-your-mama political/prison dramas. Kids dying of cancer before they're old enough to drink played as a romantic theme. Soldiers coming back from the idiot wars our political scum sent them to fight for hugely profitable untaxed corporate "people," who now even have religious rights that I don't think ordinary humans deserve.

It is not a pretty world out there. But for a blessed day or so, Andy Weir made me, the bitterest angriest most man-the-barricades-and-lube-the-tumbrils old cynic y'all know, smile with the uncomplicated happiness of a churchgoer at a picnic. It didn't last, unlike the idiot's bliss, but I treasured it while it was happening. Mark Watney, you get the last word:

I can't wait till I have grandchildren. When I was younger, I had to walk to the rim of a crater. Uphill! In an EVA suit! On Mars, ya little shit! Ya hear me? Mars!

Unpopular opinion time: I don't like how this book is written. Watney's journals read like a nerdy blog rather than a dramatic survivor's diary. It's hard to find something harrowing and traumatic when the protagonist is saying "yay!" a lot and making incessant corny puns. "3.6 pirate-ninjas!" "Yay oxygen!" "Lol gay probe lol!!!!!1!" "Bad rover, no Scooby snack!!!111!" "LOL craaaaaaap!!1!" For me, those aren't funny, they're almost embarrassing.

No matter what horrible thing is happening to Watney, he's sure to pull though, but not before laying a smug, cutesy zinger on us. It sucks all the tension out of any situation, which is the complete opposite of what I want in a book that's supposed to be a thriller.

Now, don't get me wrong, Andy Weir is a great technical writer. When Watney isn't being a wacky douche, he's going on and on about some technical or mechanical or biological process that, with me not being a scientist, usually goes over my head. And that's fine, I have no fault with a book that's factually complicated like that. In fact, it's really admirable and cool that Weir is able to pool all of his expertise into a book about survival on Mars.

That being said, other aspects of the book suffer. According to the author's bio on the back of the book, Andy Weir "was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight." If I can stereotype here, it shows. My guess is that he doesn't really know how people behave or interact in the real world. The dialog is stilted and awkward. The characters are all one-dimensional and flat. They almost seem like an afterthought. The emotional and psychological trauma rendered by all these near-death experiences and complete and utter isolation? What trauma? There's no mention of that anywhere. Watney is apparently that cool and awesome of a guy, as evidenced by all his canned laugh track one-liners and grating sarcasm.

But hey, maybe that doesn't bother some people (obviously, considering that people actually watch The Big Bang Theory), and they're in for a technologically-driven, "funny" space-thriller. Because I have to admit, it's a terrifyingly cool premise. It just wasn't what I was expecting. I was hoping for an emotionally-taxing, horrifying, survival drama, but instead got a cutesily witty astrophysics manual. Just because something is nerdy doesn't automatically mean that it's good.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God’s love be with you

I know it's an obvious song, hearing Major Tom and reading The Martian at the same time, both of them set in outer space, but I kept hearing that damn song because it was infinitely more interesting than the book itself. Seriously, my mind kept wandering to Bowie's fictional astronaut and then it veered to thinking about cleaning my toilet because it was getting kind of grimy.

I felt I was wading through mud of the thickest kind while reading this and it was not only painstakingly slow, but hard work. I didn't like how the book was written, I couldn't give a toss whether the protagonist Mark Watney lived or died, in fact at one stage I wanted him buried ten feet under the red soil of Mars and never to surface again. I couldn't stand reading his journal, it was dull, vacuous and it got on my nerves that he kept saying YAY! on a frequent basis. The writing was too simplistic for my liking and it was lacking in tension. A forgettable experience.

According to Andy Weir on Salon.com “I created an unlucky main character named Mark Watney and then spent 368 pages making his life a living hell”. This quote just about describes how I felt reading this book. If you could imagine Bear Grills with a PhD in Physics and Chemistry on Mars then you have the character of Mark Watney in a nutshell. They are both a bit too good to be true!!

The problem I have with Weir using the first person narrative in journal form is that in order to make the voice of Watney more “realistic” it actually turned me off him. For a highly intelligent NASA engineer he was surprisingly inarticulate. The comments, especially his habit of saying “Yah” or “Boo” at every opportunity, were so puerile and downright irritating! I could not have cared less whether he made it off Mars or not. The journal entries were also crammed full of endless technical details. They were realistic, just too long winded and dull and in the end bogged down the plot. Rather than read through the minutiae I skimmed through them and most of the book. I only stopped skimming when the voice switched to the third person. The elements of the story back at NASA only just made the book bearable.

Sadly, the human element is lacking in this book. Watney seemed unaffected by the feelings of isolation and loneliness that being stranded on Mars would provoke. At no point do you feel the claustrophobic panic that most people would feel in the same situation. Weir’s over reliance on technical details and missed opportunities to develop the characters and their feelings in the book ruined what could have been an amazing story. Considering the hype and 4 and 5 star ratings surrounding this book it was the most disappointing read I have ever had! For those who haven’t read it, don’t bother just wait for the movie which has to be a million times better.