Skip to main content

The Martian (SF) - Andy Weir *****

I read The Martian a year ago this month, just after embarking on the research for my own (non-fiction) book Destination Mars. And it had an impact. Before reading Andy Weir’s novel, although I was fascinated on a theoretical level by the idea of sending people to Mars, I was immensely sceptical about it as a practical proposition. By the time I’d finished the novel, I was an out-and-out Mars enthusiast. Any work of fiction that can change the way you think about a subject – especially one you’re already familiar with – has got to be worth five stars.

 Actually, The Martian is pretty much the perfect science fiction novel. It’s strong on all the essential elements – an edge-of-the-seat plot with an engaging cast of characters, combined with a genuine respect for, and understanding of, a whole range of scientific disciplines. And it avoids all those unnecessary trappings that spoil a lot of contemporary SF, such as complex, soap-operatic relationships and political/philosophical preachiness. The result – in spirit if not style – is reminiscent of the great Arthur C. Clarke. On the inside front cover of the edition I read, Stephen Baxter describes The Martian as ‘the best space disaster story since Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust’. That’s a spot-on comparison; in both novels there’s good science on almost every page – not out of gratuitous geekiness, but because when you’re stranded in a non-terrestrial environment, you really do need a lot of scientific literacy just to stay alive.

 The basic storyline of The Martian – with Mark Watney accidentally stranded on the Red Planet when his fellow astronauts evacuate in the wake of a disastrous storm – will be familiar to anyone who’s seen Ridley Scott’s big-screen adaptation. However, while the movie sticks fairly faithfully to Weir’s plot, the novel’s best bits – Watney’s geeky sense of humour and limitless scientific ingenuity – are toned down to appeal to a wide, non-scientifically-educated audience. Fortunately, that wasn’t an issue when Weir was writing the novel – he originally published it in instalments on his blog, for a small audience of like-minded people. The result is a novel packed with science – not just to deal with the numerous crises Watney is assailed with, but all the everyday stuff as well. There’s physics, chemistry and biology, planetary science and orbital dynamics, electrical and electronic engineering, medical science – and probably a few others I’ve forgotten.

 In a book that’s so overtly geeky, it’s inevitable that some readers are going to pore over it looking for scientific errors. There are a few of these – perhaps most significantly the huge storm that triggers the mission abort in the first place. In reality, the Martian atmosphere is too thin to support a devastating storm of this type – but without it, Weir wouldn’t have had a story to tell! Interestingly, there’s another small error at the start of the story, which Ridley Scott spotted and put right in the movie (probably the only instance of the film being more scientifically credible than the novel). In Weir’s version, the mission abort happens 6 days after the astronauts land on Mars – in the movie it’s 18 days. Why? Well, the reason is somewhat indecorous, so I won’t spell it out. Let’s just say that Watney needs an adequate supply of human-sourced fertiliser to grow his potatoes.
Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you


Review by Andrew May
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Meteorite Hunters - Joshua Howgego *****

This is an extremely engaging read on a subject that everyone is aware of, but few of us know much detail about. Usually, if I'm honest, geology tends to be one of the least entertaining scientific subjects but here (I suppose, given that geo- refers to the Earth it ought to be astrology... but that might be a touch misleading). Here, though, there is plenty of opportunity to capture our interest. The first part of the book takes us both to see meteorites and to hear stories of meteorite hunters, whose exploits vary from erudite science trips to something more like an Indiana Jones outing. Joshua Howgego takes us back to the earliest observations and discoveries of meteorites and the initial doubt that they could have extraterrestrial sources, through to explorations of deserts and the Antarctic - both locations where it tends to be easier to find them. I, certainly, had no idea about the use of camera networks to track incoming meteors, which not only try to estimate where they wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more