The Martian, Andy Weir. Sheer coincidence this worked
its way to the top of my TBR pile a few days after The Beloved Spouse™ and I
watched the movie. Wasn’t even my book. She picked it up for something to read
on a long flight a few months ago. I figured I’d at least start it to humor
her—science fiction not often to my taste—and stayed up till well after 1:00 AM
two nights in a row to finish it.
For those
unfamiliar, The Martian is the story
of an astronaut who is injured and thought dead during the third manned mission
to Mars. The crew has to abandon him or risk death from the same storm that
allegedly killed him. The rest of the book is about how he stays alive while
NASA figures out how to get him back.
This is as close to
the perfect blend of thriller, plot, character, and good writing as you’re
likely to find. Weir hits my geek point—I was 13 when Armstrong and Aldrin
walked on the moon; a three-foot-high model of a Saturn V rocket sat in my room—so
all the NASA stuff struck a chord. Writing most of the book as a series of log
entries kept the detail from overwhelming the reader. The well-crafted and diverse
cast (not just ethnically; personality-wise) is led by Mark Watney, who could
have been written for Matt Damon. Sure, I’d just seen the movie and Damon was
in my head. Still. It was perfect.
Of course, Weir
didn’t write the book for Matt Damon. The greatest mystery of The Martian isn’t anything about the
story of what NASA and Watney do to try to save him; it’s why indie publishing
proponents haven’t been screaming about the success of this book at rocket-launch
volume. Weir is a programmer—a bit of a prodigy, hired by a national laboratory
at the age of 15—and, so he thought, a failed writer. He’s also a
self-described space nerd who wrote The
Martian as a serial on his blog. That’s right: he wrote it as a fucking
serial on his fucking blog. Friends liked it so much he self-published it as a
$0.99 Kindle book where it sold like hell, bringing him print book and movie
deals.
Never has anything
risen from more humble beginnings more deservedly. It doesn’t matter if you
like thrillers, science fiction, or, hell, even science. You’ll enjoy The Martian. You might even learn
something.
4 comments:
Loved the movie, loved the book.
Planning to read it. The movie was terrific.
I haven't read the book, but did watch the movie yesterday. I'm one of those people who tend to watch movies over 3-4 days, 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, not unlike how I often make my way through books. But I digress. Watched The Martian start to finish in one setting. I really enjoyed it, which is kind of odd as (a) I'm not really a fan of science fiction and (b) I'm not really a fan of Matt Damon. But somehow it all worked. I give a lot of credit to director Ridley Scott (whose work I generally enjoy anyway) and an amazing cast, who kept it all credible, but probably mostly the source from which the film was adapted. I haven't read the book, had no intention of doing so, but now I'll almost certainly make time for it. And better yet a previously unknown indie author doing so well.
Saw the movie, which I mostly liked, but it didn't inspire me to want to read the book, which I had but gave away unread. I hated Damon's character, to the point that I was hoping he'd die in the jaws of a sand worm or something.
Post a Comment