Andy Weir

Fiction 2011 / 376 pages

When a freak dust storm brings a six-person 31-day mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive.  One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of the deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth.

As it happens, though, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. And he is not ready to give up!  Luckily, Mark is a botanist and a mechanical engineer as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. And the person person to live alone on the planet.  And the longest living human on Mars, hundreds of "sols" longer than anyone else (a "sol" is a Martian day, which is 39 minutes longer than an earth day).  Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical, emotional, and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. (I stole this review quite liberally from a Goodreads reviewer.  She did such a fine job!)

While Weir writes to the lay audience, I still found the technical details of CO2, hydrazine, airlocks, water reclaimers, electrical connections, RTGs, rovers, fuel plant compressors, a Hab, and many tools, mathematical equations, hypotheses, and test-runs a little overwhelming intellectually.  Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.

But the technical story is interspersed with the human side, as we learn what is happening at NASA, especially when a low-level staffer, Mindy Parks, discovers that Mark is still alive, shortly after his funeral.

Mark Watney is not only brilliant, he is also an amazing optimist, and unwaveringly funny.  His humor contributes significantly to the pleasure of this book and often cuts the tension.  It is also an essential component of his survival and makes him easy to relate to.

Andy Weir did a great job with his first novel, which was actually created chapter by chapter on his blog.  And then it sold for a movie!  Good job, Mr. Weir!  Yes, I recommend The Martian.

This is on the Goodreads list, top rating, for 2011.

April 2025