Week 9 – The Martian by Andy Weir

Welcome to 2023!  On Mondays this year, let’s discuss and have fun with books. No I’m not writing book reviews. But this website is for writers, and writers like books right? So let’s have FUN with books!

Week 9 – The Martian by Andy Weir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)

Mark Watney is a botanist accompanying the crew of NASA’s Ares 3 to Mars for a one-month scientific mission. On Sol 6 (Martian day 6), a severe wind storm blows Watney out of sight and threatens to blow over the landing craft, which would strand the crew on Mars. The remaining crew leave Watney behind, believing him dead, before they can be stranded. But Watney survived and must learn how to stay alive while NASA figures out how to get him back to Earth. 

Watney is stranded on Mars on November 12, 2035, and rescued 549 Sols later, on May 29, 2037. A Martian sol is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, so this equals approximately 564 Earth days.

Curiosity

As a general rule, a PG-13 movie can include ONE use of the f-bomb, as an expletive and not as a verb. More than one f-bomb rates the movie as R.  The Martian is one of the few PG-13 movies which has two f-bombs.

Is The Martian realistic? Moreso than other films about Mars, but here are a few things that are questionable or even downright wrong [when NASA reviewed the movie script, the only thing they noted was the wind storm at the beginning of the movie would never have been that strong].

https://earthlyuniverse.com/how-realistic-is-the-martian-5-things-it-got-wrong/

https://www.space.com/31045-the-martian-movie-six-surprising-facts.html

I really like this review of the movie

https://theconversation.com/the-martian-a-space-epic-that-explores-ordinary-human-decency-47911

Here’s NASA’s take on the movie

https://www.nasa.gov/ames/ocs/2015-summer-series/andy-weir

The Martian was a box office hit, grossing more than $630 million worldwide. For a story that began as a self-published novel, that's extraordinarily rare.

https://www.slashfilm.com/914009/matt-damon-didnt-need-to-act-for-the-martians-emotional-climax/

I’ve mentioned my experience reading the book before. I first tried as an e-book from my library, but couldn’t get into it because of the lengthy scientific descriptions. I checked out the hardcover, and still couldn’t get into it. But then I tried the audio during my commute to work. I read the entire book and loved it.  In fact, there was one place where I ended up laughing so hard I had to pull my car over on the side of the freeway because I was cry-laughing and couldn’t see through the tears.

I enjoyed the movie also, but listening to the audio book was the best. What about you?