TM: POV/Structure stuff. Structural spoilers? I guess?

[Rob]

So Weir does so ring really interesting hat I haven't seen anyone mention yet. He breaks a major rule of storytelling, and risks throwing the reader out of the novel. When you read, you don't just accept a genre conceit ("this is scifi, I expect scifi tropes and suspend my disbelief for them") you accept wider fictional conceits ("I am being told a story by a character int he story through fictional logs" or "there is some kind of narrator conveying a story to me that has nothing to do with the action"). When you break a genre conceit, you're in huge danger-- like if Martians had shown up in the Martian in chapter 23 we'd all be upset. We thought we were reading one kind of book, and it turned out to be another. The wider POV conceit, if broken should demolish the reader. You were hearing logs and suddenly an omniscient dude broke in and told you other non loggy things. It shouldn't work! But here it works really really well.

The first time it happens you don't know what's going on. As noted above, you're a little confused about why non logs are happening. Is mark screwing around? Imagining what's going on back on earth? And then you slowly realize that no, we have a narrator now, and everything we're hearing is actually happening. And the reader shouts for joy because that means mark's chance for rescue just got immensely higher. The confusion that would normally throw someone out of a story is used to heighten the reveal. If it had switched from a limited 3rd person POV around mark to one around NASA, the effect would be greatly diminished.

And then the reader gets used to this back and forth 1st person and limited 3rd person dynamic. It becomes the new conceit. It's comfortable.

And then suddenly we get a third narrator. One who checks in every now and then to tell us every little last detail about the history if a certain HAB panel. And the reader goes, what the hell, why does this guy keep pointing a panel-- oh no. That panel must be important. And massive tension is introduced. Every paragraph is a greater sense of foreboding as the new narrator catches up to the present and you know something terrible is about to happen.

Anyway. It's a really interesting, really unique way that a basic narrative rule is broken and instead if incoherent writing it leads to two of the most powerful moments in the book. At least it was interesting to one lit nerd. :p

[David Sven]

Rob wrote: "The wider POV conceit, if broken should demolish the reader. You were hearing logs and suddenly an omniscient dude broke in and told you other non loggy things. It shouldn't work! But here it works really really well."

I think the switch from first person to third person POV works because Watney's POV comes indirectly to us through his logs and as such you can still treat them as being read by a third person POV. A 3rd person POV reading the logs would still sound the same. I found it a little jarring when we jumped temporarily to an omniscient narrator like when we get the birds-eye view of (view spoiler)[the rover crash and roll (hide spoiler)]. But it wasn't enough to throw me out of the story.

[Sandi]

David Sven wrote: "Rob wrote: "The wider POV conceit, if broken should demolish the reader. You were hearing logs and suddenly an omniscient dude broke in and told you other non loggy things. It shouldn't work! But h..."

If you just got Watney's POV, you would automatically assume that he lives. The back-and-forth switching between his logs and the 3rd person narrative add tension. I didn't know until the end whether he made it or not. I had an assumption, but I didn't know for sure. If it had just been a straight first-person narrative, the dramatic tension would have been greatly reduced. A good example is The Hunger Games. The story is told by Katniss. It's not a diary, and it's in past tense. That immediately tells you that she survives the games. I loved the book, but I never once worried about whether or not Katniss would survive.

[Skip]

I read it as borrowing from a movie convention, and in a book like this I felt it really worked. Reading those a sections I "saw" the action with more film grain and in different lighting color tones. It also allowed the author to work some exposition or show something that would have been difficult to show otherwise.

I read and listened to the book, and the reader did an excellent job of vocally distinguishing the breaks. If anything I think they were less of an issue in the audiobook.

I never really expected Watney to die on Mars. The tone the book sets off on is much more "adventure" than "realistic disaster". It put me in mind of Robinson Curuso or Castaway, and somewhat of Apollo 13. You know the lead is going to live. You read because they are well told stories with perils that are interesting and believable in the story context.

I'd be more accepting of Martians in the book than I would of Watney ending up dead. Not that it wouldn't be realistic, but like the OP said, we accept we are reading a certain type of book. I just wouldn't have enjoyed the book as much if he'd died.

[Eric]

Rob wrote: "So Weir does so ring really interesting hat I haven't seen anyone mention yet. He breaks a major rule of storytelling, and risks throwing the reader out of the novel. When you read, you don't just ..."

I liked the omniscient narrator - made me think of Hitchhiker's Guide

Sandi wrote: " If you just got Watney's POV, you would automatically assume that he lives. "

I don't think that's true. The logs could have been found by someone else - I've seen that conceit many times. I've also see movies/read books in which you thought the narrator was alive since he appears to be telling a story but then it's either a) movie magic reading the story to us in his voice when it's being read by someone reading his diary/logs/etc or b) being told by the person before they get shot or c) it's the person's life flashing before their eyes. I have one example I can think of off the top of my head: (view spoiler)[the end of Bamboozled (hide spoiler)]

[bob]

I thought the switch to Earth worked perfectly, indeed it created a lot of narrative tension, but I did spend a few minutes pondering the switch at the end to a more omniscient third person about the main character. It worked only because it had a good novel in front of it. Had it been early in the book I think it might have been a problem.
Fantastic book.

[Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth]

Sandi wrote: "If it had just been a straight first-person narrative, the dramatic tension would have been greatly reduced. A good example is The Hunger Games. The story is told by Katniss. It's not a diary, and it's in past tense. That immediately tells you that she survives the games. I loved the book, but I never once worried about whether or not Katniss would survive. "

I don't think the survival of a character can be assumed unless it is clear that a living character is narrating a story of his or her past. I've come across too many tricks around this kind of thing. Also, I don't have the book to hand, but I thought The Hunger Games was told in present tense? I'm sure parts of it were, at least, because I remember finding it odd.

I was going to start a thread about the change of POV when I first came across it, but decided to wait and see how I felt about it when I'd finished the novel. Overall, I can see that it was needed for the story Weir wanted to tell, and I really enjoyed the book, but I still feel a little sad that it didn't continue solely from the logs. I liked the building sense of isolation, and I think the flip back to earth actually relieved some of the tension for me, because I then knew there were all these people trying to help Watney. And scenes such as his first communication with earth and his first communication with the crew who left him behind would have had a greater emotional impact if we had only his eyes to look through. It took that 'wow, another human voice' moment, and made it more of a 'yay, they can talk to Watney; haha, wise ass!' moment.

That said, I really enjoyed the earth bits, and the awareness of dangers Watney didn't see coming added a different sort of tension. Ultimately, I can't say it if it was a good or a bad move, and without it, it would have been a different book. I loved the one I read, but I also want to read the other one it might have been. So mixed feelings, basically.

[Eric]

Ruth wrote: "Overall, I can see that it was needed for the story Weir wanted to tell, and I really enjoyed the book, but I still feel a little sad that it didn't continue solely from the logs. "

Definitely tricky to say which is the better novel. On the one hand, if it was only logs, then you get the tension of Matt suddenly getting comms from NASA and when things go wrong, not knowing if NASA is getting his solutions. Very interesting sort of novel.

On the other hand, by seeing the NASA point of view you get a different tension. For example when they spot him and he doesn't know it. I was like "OH NO! He might go on an unnecessary suicide mission because he doesn't know they can work to save him. Especially because of the nearly 2 year timeline for supplies."

One good thing about the NASA chapters is that Weir doesn't have to waste time having the characters explain everything to Matt.

[Erik]

While I loved the book, it felt like Weir was, for lack of better term, cheating when he would break out the omniscient narrator in the Mars sections. There was no setup in the 1st act for those sections, so when the first one popped up out of nowhere, I thought he just couldn't come up with a creative way to tell that part of the story from Watney's or NASA's POV, so he had to introduce this new voice and it was incredibly jarring. When Watney switches to an "Audio Log" for one chapter, that also bothered me. That easily could've been set-up earlier.

The jumping between the 1st person Watney stuff and the 3rd person NASA stuff, however, I think is great. It really helps break up the book. When you're just reading one person's journal, the novelty of the format can wear off quickly (it's a minor miracle I finished AMONG OTHERS when we read it last summer).

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I think changing the POV was needed to add intensity to the novel; however, Weir introduced it a tad clumsily. I think he waited too long to bring in NASA.

[Shad]

One thing I haven't seen anybody mention was all of the detail Watney would put into his logs. They contained WAY too many details about how things worked than any self professed nerd like Watney would put. A specific example (this is from the first chapter, so it's not really spoilery) is all of the detail about how the suit patches work. Things like a suit patch would be such an everyday part of life for a Mars astronaut (I'm sure NASA would have drilled their use) that he would not explain so much in a journal entry. All of the excessively detailed data dumps kept knocking me out of the story. The important details could have been handled much more smoothly (but this is an early novel, so it is understandable).

[Clyde]

Shad wrote: "One thing I haven't seen anybody mention was all of the detail Watney would put into his logs. They contained WAY too many details about how things worked than any self professed nerd like Watney ..."

Funny, that never bothered me at all. Different strokes ...

[Rob]

It seemed to me early on that watney was framing his logs for an audience-- he knew he was going to die and wrote for the audience that would,years later, after his body was recovered, listen to the tapes,

[Trike]

Shad wrote: "One thing I haven't seen anybody mention was all of the detail Watney would put into his logs. They contained WAY too many details about how things worked than any self professed nerd like Watney would put."

I think that's due to the artificiality of the storytelling, but people also do it in real life. I once walked in on my dad playing Pac-Man explaining how the game worked to the cat. I find that I also do that when I'm trying to remember something. I did it on Thanksgiving when the power went out and I was trying to recall how the generator worked.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Trike

I REALLY like your dad.

[Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth]

I echo the comment above. :D

Shad wrote: "One thing I haven't seen anybody mention was all of the detail Watney would put into his logs. They contained WAY too many details about how things worked than any self professed nerd like Watney would put."

As Trike mentioned, this is something people do. When I'm writing journal entries, I often do so as if I am talking to someone, even though I would never show my journal to anyone. I'm inconsistent with it, so sometimes I will just write directly to myself, but other times I will write as if I am explaining my whole world to someone new, someone that doesn't know anything of my life. Watney's circumstances are definitely the kind that would trigger more explanatory entries, so it was completely believable to me.

[Trike]

aPriL eVoLvEs (ex-Groot) wrote: "Trike

I REALLY like your dad."

Old school, 1982: https://flic.kr/p/fADnC1

(Weird thought -- in that photo my dad is the same age I am now.)

[Shad]

Some interesting views. As as astronaut, he would probably used to making personal appearances where he would have to explain stuff in that kind of detail. My problem with that thinking is if he is thinking that much about people reading to explain things in that detail, wouldn't he think about his words and not put in as much profanity as he does?

Maybe that is what struck me as off in his journals, the balance between it being for himself and for others.