The Martian Review

This week, we're looking at The Martian by Andy Weir.  This one was recommended by my friend, Tom.  I also enjoyed the movie.

When NASA's Ares 3 mission has to be evacuated due to a dust storm, astronaut Mark Watney gets separated from the team, presumed dead, and left on Mars. He has to survive with only the materials he brought with him, some ingenuity, and ~science~!

The science was front and center in this book, and I enjoyed that.  Watney goes on lengthy explanations of the math he's doing and the chemistry involved and the procedure he has to do to cut strips off a tarp.  I'm sure your mileage may vary, but I found it engaging and easy to follow, which is saying something for paragraphs getting into the nitty gritty of the calorie counts of potatoes.  It worked because it gave Watney validity.  He was a scientist explaining science.  He knew what he was talking about and I believed he was intelligent and qualified.  It also worked because his life depended on him doing the science correctly.  I was rooting for him, so I wasn't going to begrudge him talking it out.

On the other hand, the presentation was strange.  Most of Watney's story is told through his log entries where he explains what his problem is, what he's going to do about it, and later how his attempts went.  But I kept wondering about the intended audience of his log.  The tone was strange for it to be an official or scientific log.  He told jokes an explained science and downplayed his peril.  The closest thing it felt like was if Ares 3 had a YouTube channel where they told people what they were up to in a "Look how cool space is, kids!" kind of way, then Watney just kept it going even without an internet connection.  The log wasn't for future NASA astronauts who might find his site or for sending to NASA if he ever got a chance to tell them what he's been up to, because he over explained things that they would take as common knowledge.  He explains acronyms and that the hab is the tent where they live.  That's information the reader needs, but that someone from NASA would already know.  For the same reason, it didn't feel like he was talking to himself.  I think that's the most likely answer: that he was making the log not for anyone in particular, but to keep himself sane.  But the tone was so strange, I'm not sure what to make of it.

The other weird part about the log was that it sucked out most of the emotion.  All the dramatic events happened off camera and the reader is told about it later.  By then, Watney had apparently calmed enough to make a log entry and we heard the event through his analytical lens of assessing what went wrong.  The result is that Watney comes off as overly plucky in situations where it feels inappropriate.  There are very few signs of his deteriorating mental state and no signs that he fears or doubts. 

In this way, I think the log did the story a disservice.  It was able to convey loads of exposition about scientific processes and the capabilities of devices, but chopped into the emotional aspects of the story, making it less thrilling.

***

Next week we're back to our young adult roots with The Fill-in Boyfriend by Kasie West.