The Martian in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Feb 15, 2015 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: engineering, fantasy-and-sci-fi, stayed-up-way-too-late, lotsa-buzz

Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be "in command" of the mission if I were the only remaining person.

What do you know? I'm in command.

I absolutely loved this book! It was so much better than I expected. I mean, a book about a guy stranded all alone on Mars? boring beyond belief, right? WRONG. I do not know how Mr Weir did it, but he did it, a

Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be "in command" of the mission if I were the only remaining person.

What do you know? I'm in command.

I absolutely loved this book! It was so much better than I expected. I mean, a book about a guy stranded all alone on Mars? boring beyond belief, right? WRONG. I do not know how Mr Weir did it, but he did it, and he did it well.

The character of Mark Watney was so charismatic, I wouldn't have minded spending all 369 pages with just him - but as it turns out, there ARE other people in the book: his other crewmates (who accidentally left Mars without him), and various employees of NASA, JPL, etc who are back on Earth.

And part of it is like this is a book made just for ME. Mark Watney is a mechanical engineer - *I* am a mechanical engineer! Watney is a botanist, I'm a gardener! Okay, he's a little juvenile at times, and he uses some racist/sexist/ableist language at times, but hey, the guy is stranded, ALONE, on Mars. Death appears imminent. I'll let a few offensive terms slide. He is amazingly clever, occasionally witty, almost always a smart ass. There is, of course, a TON of exposition in this book, because the author understands that we aren't all NASA astronauts, but I really enjoyed that part too - it's fun to learn about some of this stuff!! (There was one off note, Watney is going to connect a drill to a 36 Volt power source, and thinks "I'll be playing with high voltage tomorrow!" and I think "uhhh ... 'high' voltage is 46,000 Volts, not 36 Volts." But maybe to NASA, 36 Volts IS high. I dunno. It doesn't matter. The book is still fucking fantastic.)

I knew this was being made into a movie starring Matt Damon, and there were passages where I could HEAR Matt Damon's voice saying the words, so much so that I started to wonder if Mr Weir had Damon in mind all along. I'm looking forward to the movie - this might be one of the very rare cases where the movie is even better than the book!!

There really isn't much else I can say about this. I did mark a lot of passages that I found especially witty or interesting. Here are a few:

I came up with a solution ... I'm going to use the RTG. The RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generator) is a big box of plutonium. But not the kind used in nuclear bombs. No, no. This plutonium is way more dangerous!

*

Things didn't go exactly as planned, but I'm not dead, so it's a win.

*

I tested the brackets by hitting them with rocks. This kind of sophistication is what we interplanetary scientists are known for.

*

As it is, going only south, I'm not nearly as fast. I'm traveling 90 kilometers per day as usual, but I only get 37 kilometers closer to Schiaparelli because Pythagoras is a dick.

At one point, Johannsen, one of the other crew members, tells her commander, "Communications five by five." - "five by five" is what Faith always said on Buffy, instead of "I'm okay." I always thought Faith just made that up (or, rather, the writers just made that up for Faith.) Is it an astronaut term???

Ah! Apparently it's a military term and amateur radio term! From Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_by... "Five by five is the best of 25 possible subjective responses used to describe the quality of communications, specifically the signal-to-noise ratio." I never knew! And now I know!

ETA: a month and some days later, and I am STILL thinking about this book! I might think about it more now than when I was reading it! I'm reading Sagan's Cosmos right now, and when I'm reading passages about Mars, I find myself thinking "yes, that is how they ended up doing that!" and then I realize "no, silly, The Martian was just a fictional book!! we haven't actually been to Mars yet!")

ETA x2: I saw the movie! And it is great! But they change a lot, the first line is NOT "I'm fucked," none of my favorite lines are included, most of the middle is discarded, and the ending is amped up for maximum drama and closure. ...more

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Jan 09, 2015 Heather - hturningpages rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: awesome-audiobooks, sci-fi

As a scientist I really have to say, well done Andy Weir. I mean, not only does this book seem insanely well researched, but it also really encapsulates the spirit of what it means to be a scientist in any field and also just a human being. A huge part of doing science every day is problem solving, and although most of my problem solving don't involve life threatening situations, the logic and perseverance required are exactly the same. Some days your experiments will just fail and you don't kno ...more

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Aug 29, 2016 ellen rated it liked it

Shelves: reviewed, fiction, read-2016, genre-speculative, group-office

Fun and engaging, but not exceptionally either. I liked the narrator's voice (and I've always been a fan of epistolary novels anyways) and was definitely invested in the story at the very end. Based on what I've heard a lot of other people say about it, I thought the book would be a series of infodumps strung together by jokes, but it really wasn't. I never felt overwhelmed by the scientific detail and the amount there was in the book seemed appropriate, if not minimal, considering he's a scient ...more

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Dec 24, 2015 taeli rated it it was amazing

read 12/23/15

An engaging, riveting read.

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Jun 28, 2017 Genesis Hansen rated it liked it

Entertaining, enjoyable read. Not much emotional depth. It was funny and kept me turning pages. I think I would have liked it much more if I hadn't just read The Wanderers, which had much richer character development in a Mars-related story. Just made Mark Watney seem very shallow by comparison. ...more

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Sep 28, 2015 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015

Pretty much everyone in the world has read this book by now, so I'm not going to review it other than to say this is a fantastic book and if you haven't read it, you should. Before the movie comes out. ...more

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May 11, 2015 Jaime rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, read-2014, bookclub

This book was fantastic. I'm not usually one for space stuff, but this sucked me in from the very beginning. Even the parts that were calculation-heavy didn't make my eyes glaze over. This is the book that got me reading again after the birth of my child, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a good adventure and doesn't mind a lot of cuss words. ...more

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Aug 15, 2017 Leanne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

Loved this book SO much.

4-stars is more like 4.5, but not a perfect 5 because of the ending. For all the build-up and edge-of-your-seat entertainment, it just didn't quite feel right. ...more

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