Review: The Martian by Andy Wier

In the not-so-distant future, Mark Watney was one of a crew of six astronauts to land on Mars in the Ares 3 mission.  But just as their mission began, tragedy struck: a dangerous storm came upon their landing site and caused the team to abort their mission and flee the planet.  While the crew evacuated to the launch vehicle, Mark was struck by debris, launching him far from his companions, knocking him unconscious, destroying his biomonitor.  After a desperate, fruitless search, his crew was forced to presume him dead and leave the planet without him.  Despite all odds, however, Watney survived and made it back to the Hab.  The only problem was that he was stranded on a desolate, inhospitable planet with a finite supply of food and no way of communicating with with Earth.

So begins The Martian, a fantastic survival story by Andy Weir.  Much of the story is told through first-person logs that Mark uses to document his step-wise puzzle through each problem.  The tremendous appeal of this book, beyond the thrilling survival story, is that Mark makes use of a lot of real-life science in this tale.  His food problem comes down to a strict issue of calories: he has vitamins and protein tablets, but how can he produce the precise number of calories he needs in time to be rescued 4 years later during the next Ares mission?  Traveling to the next Ares site becomes a problem of power: how can he maintain his life support system and still have enough energy to power the rover using his solar cells?  If that doesn't sound like gripping reading, perhaps that's the genius of this book: despite its sometimes technical nature, its pacing, humor, surprises, and quality writing make it a gripping tale that kept me up many nights far past a reasonable bedtime.

Like many people picking up the book now, I read this after having watched the superb movie last year.  The movie is extremely true to the book in many parts, even down to extended stretches of the dialog.  But in other places, the movie deviates substantially from the book.  While I was initially concerned that reading it would be too much of a rehash of the movie, it quickly became clear that there was a lot more in this book to sink my teeth into.  And even those parts that do match up to the movie are just so thrilling that they still will keep you up late reading.

The movie was the best film I'd seen in years.  This book is right up there with it.  Highly recommended.