The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating survival story with a smart, witty main character who doesn't do everything perfectly, but still manages to macguyver his way to surviving and participating in his own rescue. The science is complex but understandable, and more than anything, you can't help but root for Mark.

I love the style the book is written in, with Mark's portion of the story being presented as a diary, and the rest traditionally. It felt like we as readers were really in Mark's head, seeing what he saw and thinking what he thought. It was fun seeing the earth perspective as well, especially when they watched him remotely without communication, trying to interpret his actions. I can only imagine the heartbreak the rest of the Ares 3 crew went through after they first thought they lost Mark, and then knew they had abandoned him to die, even if it was necessary to save everyone else. There's no way all 6 of them would have survived on Mars that long, so it was a small blessing that only one of them was left behind, and that of the 6 of them, it was the botanist, who could figure out how to grow more food, and engineer, who could take things apart and put them back together.

If you've seen and enjoyed the movie, you'll enjoy the book as well. The two felt remarkably similar in tone and pacing, which can be quite rare in book to film adaptations.

I loved this quote at the end, and I'm choosing to believe it, too, just like Mark:

But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. I might not seem that way sometimes, but it's true. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do. And because of that, I had billions of people on my side. Pretty cool, eh?

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