LOG ENTRY: SOL 6
So that’s the situation. I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m in a jab designed to last thirty-one days.
If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.
So yeah. I’m screwed.
**********
Dunno about you but I’d not heard of The Martian before cadging a freebie from Netgalley but the titbit above sounded great and the praise being heaped upon it couldn’t be ignored so I dove in and boy am I glad I did. With a tip of the hat to everything from Robinson Crusoe to Apollo 13 via MacGyver it’s bloody terrific!
The premise is pretty straightforward. Mark Watney is the Botanist and an engineer on Ares 3, the third manned mission to Mars. When a massive dust storm hits the crew, Mark is poleaxed by some flying debris and catapulted away from the rest of the team. Not being able to find him in the chaotic weather, and with his suit showing zero vital signs, the Mission Commander orders them to take off from the planet for the safety of the rest of the team and return to their ship. From there NASA abandons the mission and they start to head home.
But Mark Watney didn’t die. Due in part to massive good luck and in part to massive over-engineering by the awfully smart people at NASA, Mark lives through the storm only to find himself utterly alone on the barren red planet. His only hope of a ride home is the next planned mission which will land in 4 years, but with no means of communication and resources only designed to last 30 days, he’s going to need every ounce of ingenuity and fighting spirit he can muster to figure out how to stay alive long enough to live.
The story really takes off when NASA, after studying satellite imagery of the site to see what went wrong (and to find Mark’s body) realise that he’s alive, at which point a frantic scramble to figure out a way to communicate with him and figure out how to keep him alive and bring him back home starts. The action then cuts back and forth from Watney’s escapades on Mars and the NASA team’s work against the clock to bring him home.
Hats-off to Andy Weir this is one hell of a book. Given that it’s told almost entirely in the first person, as a series of log entries for whoever might find them, he’s created a character in Mark Watney that is so indefatigable, so dogged, so determined to get through this despite one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another being put in his way that you can’t help but route for him from the get-go. Watney’s logs are smart, fascinating, educational, funny, irreverent and so altogether human that you find yourself laughing out loud at one of his observations one minute and perched on the edge of your seat, gripped with tension the next while the plot rollercoasters along.
What makes it so very believable is that it’s set in a not-too-distant future where life on Earth is pretty much as it is now and the technologies and tools available are all things we can understand. This makes the entries where Mark explains his reasoning for doing something very relatable as his knowledge of chemistry, maths, physics and biology, while obviously somewhat specialised, are still very understandable and easy to grasp, and while this puts The Martian very firmly in the ‘Hard SF’ camp, you’re not blinded by science, you’re drawn-in buy it and that’s a commendable feat in itself.
It’s rare for me to say a book is unputdownable, but The Martian is truly unputdownable, to the point where I twice missed my stop on the tube because I was so engrossed. It’s tense, funny, touching and thrilling and it’s no surprise that it’s on it’s way to becoming the next great ‘space survival’ movie (is that new sub-genre?) with Fox naming Drew Goddard, director of The Cabin in the Woods, as writer/director for the project. Book of the Year already? Well it's too early to say yet but it's certainly a contender so really, do yourself a favour. Be one of those who read the book first. It’s joy, and you won’t regret it.
The Martian is published by Del Rey and is available with free delivery from The Book Depository or on the high street from Blackwell and all good book stores.