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Andy Weir

The Martian: A Novel Mass Market Paperback – March 30, 2021

by Andy Weir (Author)

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Brilliant . . . a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years . . . utterly compelling.”—The Wall Street Journal

The inspiration for the major motion picture

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE

“A hugely entertaining novel [that] reads like a rocket ship afire . . . Weir has fashioned in Mark Watney one of the most appealing, funny, and resourceful characters in recent fiction.”—Chicago Tribune

“As gripping as they come . . . You’ll be rooting for Watney the whole way, groaning at every setback and laughing at his pitchblack humor. Utterly nail-biting and memorable.”—Financial Times

Reading age

10 years and up
Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Dimensions

4.18 x 1.17 x 7.49 inches
Publisher

Ballantine Books
Publication date

March 30, 2021
ISBN-10

0593357132
ISBN-13

978-0593357132
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brilliant…a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years…Utterly compelling.”--Wall Street Journal

“Terrific stuff, a crackling good read that devotees of space travel will devour like candy…succeeds on several levels and for a variety of reasons, not least of which is its surprising plausibility.”—USA Today

“An impressively geeky debut…the technical details keep the story relentlessly precise and the suspense ramped up. And really, how can anyone not root for a regular dude to prove the U-S-A still has the Right Stuff?”--Entertainment Weekly

“Gripping…[features] a hero who can solve almost every problem while still being hilarious. It’s hard not to be swept up in [Weir’s] vision and root for every one of these characters. Grade: A.”—AVClub.com

“Andy Weir delivers with The Martian...a story for readers who enjoy thrillers, science fiction, non-fiction, or flat-out adventure [and] an authentic portrayal of the future of space travel.”--Associated Press

"A gripping tale of survival in space [that] harkens back to the early days of science fiction by masters such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke."--San Jose Mercury News

“One of the best thrillers I’ve read in a long time. It feels so real it could almost be nonfiction, and yet it has the narrative drive and power of a rocket launch. This is Apollo 13 times ten.”
--Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Impact and Blasphemy

“A book I just couldn’t put down! It has the very rare combination of a good, original story, interestingly real characters and fascinating technical accuracy…reads like “MacGyver” meets “Mysterious Island.”
--Astronaut Chris Hadfield, Commander of the International Space Station and author of An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

"The best book I've read in ages. Clear your schedule before you crack the seal. This story will take your breath away faster than a hull breech. Smart, funny, and white-knuckle intense, The Martian is everything you want from a novel."
--Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool

“The Martian kicked my ass! Weir has crafted a relentlessly entertaining and inventive survival thriller, a MacGyver-trapped-on-Mars tale that feels just as real and harrowing as the true story of Apollo 13.”
—Ernest Cline, New York Times bestselling author of Ready Player One

“Gripping…shapes up like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as written by someone brighter.”
--Larry Niven, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Ringworld series and Lucifer’s Hammer

“Humankind is only as strong as the challenges it faces, and The Martian pits human ingenuity (laced with more humor than you’d expect) against the greatest endeavor of our time — survival on Mars. A great read with an inspiring attention to technical detail and surprising emotional depth. Loved it!"
--Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse

“The tension simply never lets up, from the first page to the last, and at no point does the believability falter for even a second. You can't shake the feeling that this could all really happen.”
—Patrick Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Breach and Ghost Country

"Strong, resilent, and gutsy. It's Robinson Crusoe on Mars, 21st century style. Set aside a chunk of free time when you start this one. You're going to need it because you won't want to put it down."
—Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The King’s Deception and The Columbus Affair

“An excellent first novel…Weir laces the technical details with enough keen wit to satisfy hard science fiction fan and general reader alike [and] keeps the story escalating to a riveting conclusion.”—Publisher’s Weekly (starred)

"Riveting...a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man's ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds."--Booklist

“Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery…Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling.”—Kirkus

"Weir combines the heart-stopping with the humorous in this brilliant debut novel...by placing a nail-biting life-and-death situation on Mars and adding a snarky and wise-cracking nerdy hero, Weir has created the perfect mix of action and space adventure."--Library Journal (starred)

“A perfect novel in almost every way, The Martian may already have my vote for best book of 2014.”—Crimespree Magazine

“A page-turning thriller…this survival tale with a high-tech twist will pull you right in.”—Suspense Magazine

About the Author

Andy Weir built a career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian, allowed him to live out his dream of writing fulltime. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail. He lives in California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

LOG ENTRY: SOL 6

I’m pretty much fucked.

That’s my considered opinion.

Fucked.

Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare.

I don’t even know who’ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now.

For the record . . . I didn’t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can’t blame them. Maybe there’ll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say, “Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.”

And it’ll be right, probably. ’Cause I’ll surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did.

Let’s see . . . where do I begin?

The Ares Program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back heroes. They got the parades and fame and love of the world.

Ares 2 did the same thing, in a different location on Mars. They got a firm handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home.

Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be “in command” of the mission if I were the only remaining person.

What do you know? I’m in command.

I wonder if this log will be recovered before the rest of the crew die of old age. I presume they got back to Earth all right. Guys, if you’re reading this: It wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have done the same thing. I don’t blame you, and I’m glad you survived.

I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for any layman who may be reading this. We got to Earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes. All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. It’s really big and cost a lot so NASA built only one.

Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought us fuel and supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection orbits.

Hermes is powered by ion engines. They throw argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesn’t take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You’d be amazed at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time.

I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I won’t. I don’t feel like reliving it right now. Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other.

From there, we took the MDV (Mars descent vehicle) to the surface. The MDV is basically a big can with some light thrusters and parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing any of them.

And now we come to the real trick of Mars exploration: having all of our shit there in advance.

A total of fourteen unmanned missions deposited everything we would need for surface operations. They tried their best to land all the supply vessels in the same general area, and did a reasonably good job. Supplies aren’t nearly so fragile as humans and can hit the ground really hard. But they tend to bounce around a lot.

Naturally, they didn’t send us to Mars until they’d confirmed that all the supplies had made it to the surface and their containers weren’t breached. Start to finish, including supply missions, a Mars mission takes about three years. In fact, there were Ares 3 supplies en route to Mars while the Ares 2 crew were on their way home.

The most important piece of the advance supplies, of course, was the MAV. The Mars ascent vehicle. That was how we would get back to Hermes after surface operations were complete. The MAV was soft-landed (as opposed to the balloon bounce-fest the other supplies had). Of course, it was in constant communication with Houston, and if there had been any problems with it, we would have passed by Mars and gone home without ever landing.

The MAV is pretty cool. Turns out, through a neat set of chemical reactions with the Martian atmosphere, for every kilogram of hydrogen you bring to Mars, you can make thirteen kilograms of fuel. It’s a slow process, though. It takes twenty-four months to fill the tank. That’s why they sent it long before we got here.

You can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered the MAV was gone.

It was a ridiculous sequence of events that led to me almost dying, and an even more ridiculous sequence that led to me surviving.

The mission is designed to handle sandstorm gusts up to 150 kph. So Houston got understandably nervous when we got whacked with 175 kph winds. We all got in our flight space suits and huddled in the middle of the Hab, just in case it lost pressure. But the Hab wasn’t the problem.

The MAV is a spaceship. It has a lot of delicate parts. It can put up with storms to a certain extent, but it can’t just get sandblasted forever. After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort. Nobody wanted to stop a monthlong mission after only six days, but if the MAV took any more punishment, we’d all have gotten stranded down there.

We had to go out in the storm to get from the Hab to the MAV. That was going to be risky, but what choice did we have?

Everyone made it but me.

Our main communications dish, which relayed signals from the Hab to Hermes, acted like a parachute, getting torn from its foundation and carried with the torrent. Along the way, it crashed through the reception antenna array. Then one of those long thin antennae slammed into me end-first. It tore through my suit like a bullet through butter, and I felt the worst pain of my life as it ripped open my side. I vaguely remember having the wind knocked out of me (pulled out of me, really) and my ears popping painfully as the pressure of my suit escaped.

The last thing I remember was seeing Johanssen hopelessly reaching out toward me.

I awoke to the oxygen alarm in my suit. A steady, obnoxious beeping that eventually roused me from a deep and profound desire to just fucking die.

The storm had abated; I was facedown, almost totally buried in sand. As I groggily came to, I wondered why I wasn’t more dead.

The antenna had enough force to punch through the suit and my side, but it had been stopped by my pelvis. So there was only one hole in the suit (and a hole in me, of course).

I had been knocked back quite a ways and rolled down a steep hill. Somehow I landed facedown, which forced the antenna to a strongly oblique angle that put a lot of torque on the hole in the suit. It made a weak seal.

Then, the copious blood from my wound trickled down toward the hole. As the blood reached the site of the breach, the water in it quickly evaporated from the airflow and low pressure, leaving a gunky residue behind. More blood came in behind it and was also reduced to gunk. Eventually, it sealed the gaps around the hole and reduced the leak to something the suit could counteract.

The suit did its job admirably. Sensing the drop in pressure, it constantly flooded itself with air from my nitrogen tank to equalize. Once the leak became manageable, it only had to trickle new air in slowly to relieve the air lost.

After a while, the CO2 (carbon dioxide) absorbers in the suit were expended. That’s really the limiting factor to life support. Not the amount of oxygen you bring with you, but the amount of CO2 you can remove. In the Hab, I have the oxygenator, a large piece of equipment that breaks apart CO2 to give the oxygen back. But the space suits have to be portable, so they use a simple chemical absorption process with expendable filters. I’d been asleep long enough that my filters were useless.

The suit saw this problem and moved into an emergency mode the engineers call “bloodletting.” Having no way to separate out the CO2, the suit deliberately vented air to the Martian atmosphere, then backfilled with nitrogen. Between the breach and the bloodletting, it quickly ran out of nitrogen. All it had left was my oxygen tank.

So it did the only thing it could to keep me alive. It started backfilling with pure oxygen. I now risked dying from oxygen toxicity, as the excessively high amount of oxygen threatened to burn up my nervous system, lungs, and eyes. An ironic death for someone with a leaky space suit: too much oxygen.

Every step of the way would have had beeping alarms, alerts, and warnings. But it was the high-oxygen warning that woke me.

The sheer volume of training for a space mission is astounding. I’d spent a week back on Earth practicing emergency space suit drills. I knew what to do.

Carefully reaching to the side of my helmet, I got the breach kit. It’s nothing more than a funnel with a valve at the small end and an unbelievably sticky resin on the wide end. The idea is you have the valve open and stick the wide end over a hole. The air can escape through the valve, so it doesn’t interfere with the resin making a good seal. Then you close the valve, and you’ve sealed the breach.

The tricky part was getting the antenna out of the way. I pulled it out as fast as I could, wincing as the sudden pressure drop dizzied me and made the wound in my side scream in agony.

I got the breach kit over the hole and sealed it. It held. The suit backfilled the missing air with yet more oxygen. Checking my arm readouts, I saw the suit was now at 85 percent oxygen. For reference, Earth’s atmosphere is about 21 percent. I’d be okay, so long as I didn’t spend too much time like that.

I stumbled up the hill back toward the Hab. As I crested the rise, I saw something that made me very happy and something that made me very sad: The Hab was intact (yay!) and the MAV was gone (boo!).

Right that moment I knew I was screwed. But I didn’t want to just die out on the surface. I limped back to the Hab and fumbled my way into an airlock. As soon as it equalized, I threw off my helmet.

Once inside the Hab, I doffed the suit and got my first good look at the injury. It would need stitches. Fortunately, all of us had been trained in basic medical procedures, and the Hab had excellent medical supplies. A quick shot of local anesthetic, irrigate the wound, nine stitches, and I was done. I’d be taking antibiotics for a couple of weeks, but other than that I’d be fine.

I knew it was hopeless, but I tried firing up the communications array. No signal, of course. The primary satellite dish had broken off, remember? And it took the reception antennae with it. The Hab had secondary and tertiary communications systems, but they were both just for talking to the MAV, which would use its much more powerful systems to relay to Hermes. Thing is, that only works if the MAV is still around.

I had no way to talk to Hermes. In time, I could locate the dish out on the surface, but it would take weeks for me to rig up any repairs, and that would be too late. In an abort, Hermes would leave orbit within twenty-four hours. The orbital dynamics made the trip safer and shorter the earlier you left, so why wait?

Checking out my suit, I saw the antenna had plowed through my bio-monitor computer. When on an EVA, all the crew’s suits are networked so we can see each other’s status. The rest of the crew would have seen the pressure in my suit drop to nearly zero, followed immediately by my bio-signs going flat. Add to that watching me tumble down a hill with a spear through me in the middle of a sandstorm . . . yeah. They thought I was dead. How could they not?

They may have even had a brief discussion about recovering my body, but regulations are clear. In the event a crewman dies on Mars, he stays on Mars. Leaving his body behind reduces weight for the MAV on the trip back. That means more disposable fuel and a larger margin of error for the return thrust. No point in giving that up for sentimentality.

So that’s the situation. I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m in a Hab designed to last thirty-one days.

If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.

So yeah. I’m fucked.

Chapter 2

LOG ENTRY: SOL 7

Okay, I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and things don’t seem as hopeless as they did yesterday.

Today I took stock of supplies and did a quick EVA to check up on the external equipment. Here’s my situation:

The surface mission was supposed to be thirty-one days. For redundancy, the supply probes had enough food to last the whole crew fifty-six days. That way if one or two probes had problems, we’d still have enough food to complete the mission.

We were six days in when all hell broke loose, so that leaves enough food to feed six people for fifty days. I’m just one guy, so it’ll last me three hundred days. And that’s if I don’t ration it. So I’ve got a fair bit of time.

I’m pretty flush on EVA suits, too. Each crew member had two space suits: a flight spacesuit to wear during descent and ascent, and the much bulkier and more robust EVA suit to wear when doing surface operations. My flight spacesuit has a hole in it, and of course the crew was wearing the other five when they returned to Hermes. But all six EVA suits are still here and in perfect condition.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (March 30, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593357132
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593357132
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 10 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.18 x 1.17 x 7.49 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #66,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #68 in Teen & Young Adult Time Travel Fiction
- #141 in Teen & Young Adult Alien Science Fiction
- #167 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)

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48,907 ratings

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Andy Weir

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ANDY WEIR built a two-decade career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian, allowed him to live out his dream of writing full-time.

He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of such subjects as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail.

He lives in California.

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Doc Wood

So Good It's Now a College Assignment

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

I have read it three times, seen the movie twice.

I teach psychology and there is so much psychology in here (stress and health, cognition, intelligence, problem-solving, resilience, group dynamics. . . ) that I have made it an extra-credit assignment in my Introduction to Psychology courses at an engineering school. My engineers typically do not 'get' why they have to take a social science course, and because this is not terrifically SciFi but more of an adventure story (very near-future, based largely on existing technology, no aliens) it demonstrates perfectly how psychology is relevant to engineers. Plus I figure they'll enjoy it because the protagonist is a botanist cross-trained in mechanical engineering, which is what many of my students are majoring in. It is just geeky enough while still being, as one professional reviewer called it, "a cracking good read."

My point in telling you all that, knowing that the vast majority of you are not undergraduate engineering students or psychology instructors, is that this is the kind of book that anyone, even people who don't particularly like SciFi or aren't even regular readers of fiction can LOVE.

But for the rest of us, it is an adventure story with a character you can immediately both admire and identify with, and it is told perfectly. Seriously. Weir keeps up the tension, and just when you think you can relax. . . BAM!! (Literally: Things explode.) The dialogue is pitch-perfect, the dilemmas faced by all of the characters, both moral and practical, involve you in their struggles and make you think.

It makes a good movie, but you should read the book even if you've already seen it. There's a limit to what you can pack into even a 2-1/2 hour movie, and watching it all unfold is not at all the same as getting into Watney's head the way you do when you read it (it's written in first person POV).

172 people found this helpful

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Auslander

Exhausting.

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

I found this book tedious, not very funny, and the character's voice was just.. "off." It just didn't have the ring of an actual astronaut. He sort of pitched erratically between a kind of space MacGuyver with endless, tiring technical explanations, and a teenager with a smartphone. It's almost like the author felt like, hmmm.. this is a massive brick of technical detail... I'll sprinkle in a few "like, super super glad I didn't die there" or a "yay oxegenator!" and it will make it all relevant. I started skipping large chunks and sure enough nothing had changed: another plan that's dangerous, another lecture about how things work, and another "hey what do you know, it worked" and well, I just couldn't summon the interest to continue.

50 people found this helpful

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vmathew

If you have watched the movie, skip the book

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

The book moves at a good pace, and has the standard riveting appeal of man against nature, and lost in the wild themes.

However, Andy Weir's bad science become a sever distraction all through the book. Space establishments filled to 1 atmosphere with nitrogen in there, 28,000kph vs 720kph turbulence comparisons missing the 1% atmosphere, Potatoes in space (really?!!), microwaving food that already got freeze-dried, statements like figuring out longitude requires precise time. Then the RTG is in the trailer, and yet he's fine after the roll-over, and for that matter, at one point the RTG keeps up with just the rover with some insulation ripped up, but at another point the RTG covers the rover, the trailer, and the really-awful bedroom tent! I think I am really glad the movie-makers ripped out a lot of it. There is perhaps a reason good authors (like Isaac Asimov) hand-wave over parts of science when they know the science is sketch; this author on the other hand goes on to blunder through precise descriptions which detract from the story. And therefore, compared to the movie, what is "additional" in the book is really all bad.

I will say however, that it is a fast paced read - a good airplane novel.

44 people found this helpful

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Keith Moser

And I thought I was excited for the movie BEFORE...

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2016

Verified Purchase

[Pasted & edited from Goodreads]

For some reason I thought the Matt Damon movie was coming out next year, but as soon as I heard it was THIS October, this rocketed to the top of my To Read pile (get it?).

I'm sure the movie will disappoint (they almost always do; that's why I usually try to watch a movie to enjoy it first and THEN read the book so I can enjoy both), but I don't care because the book was amazing. Loved every minute of it.

It's set in the near future after NASA has already sent two manned Ares missions to Mars. Mark Watney is part of Ares 3, but their mission gets cut short after less than a week thanks to a huge dust storm that forces them to abort and evacuate immediately. During their escape, a piece of antenna impales Mark directly through his bio-monitor and the entire crew assumes him dead. Luckily for Mark, the puncture wound wasn't too serious and his space suit never decompressed. Unluckily for Mark, the crew continued with their planned evac after not finding his body & seeing his flat bio-readings, taking all comm systems with them.

Watney is stuck on Mars with enough provisions to last six people about a month (or one person about six months). The next planned mission to Mars is 4 years away so Watney has to rely on his botany background to somehow grow food on the desolate red planet.

A series of unfortunate events occur, and the storytelling by Andy Weir is just fantastic. There's a short essay written by Weir in the end of the e-book that talks about how he chose to create problems from Watney's solutions. As I read the book, I kept expecting the worst to happen and was surprised when he didn't have a meteor land on top of him as he became a new crater! It was nice to read how Weir specifically avoided giving Watney the worst luck possible and tried to stick to more real life problems.

The Martian starts off as a simple first-person narrative in the form of Mark's journal entries. The first lines:

LOG ENTRY: SOL 6
I'm pretty much f***ed.
That's my considered opinion.
F***ed.

immediately drew me in. Watney is intelligent, charming, inventive, and hilarious! His diary entries often go day by day with a good mix of science, math, suspense and jokes. Another great journal entry [after Watney realizes everything he writes will be broadcast all over the world (if he's saved)] is, "Look! A pair of boobs! -> (.Y.)"

Without getting too spoilery, the novel does switch from first person journal entry narrative to third-person authorial narrative as we see how the guys at NASA & JPL deal with finding out Watney didn't die on Sol 6 and how his Ares 3 crewmates deal with the fact he's still alive. The story transitions from day to day journal entries to entries & narration that span weeks or months, but the suspense never really lets up. Watney almost dies like a dozen times but he's always cheerful/humble as he attempts to stay alive ("Mars and my stupidity keep trying to kill me"). Back on Earth, dozens of scientists band together to spend millions (if not billions) of dollars to save one man and eventually the whole planet watches their televisions as everything draws to an exciting conclusion.

Can't lie—near the end I got a little misty-eyed. And I laughed out loud several times throughout. I think Ridley Scott (director of Alien) is going to do great with this. Can't wait to see Matt Damon use his funny bone as Watney. The whole cast (Mara, Wiig, Chastain, Bean, Ejiofor, Daniels, Peña, Glover, et al) looks great. I really want to just read the book again since the movie isn't coming out for another month...

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Valerie J.

Entertaining and enlightening

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 8, 2019

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When six astronauts from the Ares 3 mission land on Acidalia Planitia, a flat area on the planet Mars, they expect to leave after about 30 days. Then a serious storm blows in, creating chaos and causing the mission to be abandoned within the first week. During the storm, astronaut Mark Watney, a botanist and mechanical engineer, is injured while the team struggles to get to the Mars Ascent Vehicle, and all signs indicate that he is dead as he lies there in the red dust. Soon afterwards, he regains consciousness only up to find himself alone and the sole inhabitant of an entire planet. This should have been petrifying but Mark Watney is an amazingly resourceful survivor and, despite everything, manages to maintain a rather quirky sense of humour throughout his ordeal. Meanwhile, the other Ares 3 crew members are on their way to Earth and mourning his loss, while Mindy Park from SatCon on Earth notices that a satellite is picking up some rather unusual occurrences happening on Mars.

I knew that The Martian by Andy Weir was achieving high ratings and that it was to be a movie starring Matt Damon (excellent choice) but I had no idea it was going to be so engaging and so frequently hilarious. Author, Andy Weir, certainly has a witty way of expressing himself and as Weir's words appear in Watney's mind and tumble out of Watney's mouth, all I could do was laugh. There is some tension in the book (will Watney survive or not) but not much. Mostly it's an awful lot of scientific explanation as to how Watney strives to survive and NASA strive to help him. I found that fascinating but if you aren't the least bit interested in even basic science, I cannot imagine you'll get much out of this book. I appreciated the way Andy Weir used science fact to get his character both in and out of the tightest corners and to make the story more plausible. What was sadly lacking was a glossary of terms at the back of the book. Weir uses a lot of scientific terminology, not to mention acronyms, and mostly without any explanation. While reading, I did wonder though why Mark Watney had a problem with his space suit only giving him oxygen?
I also wondered how a botanist and mechanical engineer, would know so much about chemistry and physics—but it's a good thing he did! I expect that the author did resort to at least some artistic license here.

Before buying the paperback, I had bought the Kindle version. There is a map at the front of the book (printed and ebook). On the ebook, if you click on the map you can zoom in, in order to be able to see detail better. The Kindle dictionary came in useful, as did the facility for highlighting and making notes, as well as doing searches of the book. But I still wanted a printed version on one of my bookshelves, so I bought that recently. I once had a movie blog and actually wrote myself a guide to the terms in the book because, well, I'm no scientist and I wanted to understand the science behind everything that Weir threw at me! I've pasted in a text version here. All errors are undoubtedly mine, so please forgive!

Acidalia Planitia - A large flat region on Mars where the Ares 3 team landed, and Mark and the Hab is located.
Aeroshell - Protective shell during launch and landing (in this case, the Iris probe).
Ammonia (azane) - A chemical compound of Nitrogen and Hydrogen - NH₃ (one atom nitrogen, three atoms hydrogen). A colourless, corrosive, and irritant gas with pungent odour.
Arabia Terra - One of the dustiest areas on Mars.
Ares programmes - NASA missions to Mars. Mark Watney arrives on Ares 3 mission, Sol (day) 1. 124 days journey from Earth to Mars. Three years to execute mission. Ares 4 expected to arrive at Sciaparelli crater on Sol 1425.
ASCII - American Standard Code for information interchange, a set of digital codes representing letters, numerals and other characters.
Atmosphere - Gases surrounding Earth and other planets.
Atmospheric Pressure - The pressure exerted by the weight of the gases surrounding a planet (atmosphere).
Atmospheric Pressure on Mars - Less than 1% of Earth’s pressure
Atmospheric Regulator - The Hab atmospheric regulator ensures that the balance of gases (air) within the Hab are safe to breathe.
CAPCOM - Capsule communicator
Carbon DioxideCO₂ (one atom carbon, two oxygen) - A colourless, odourless gas produced by plants (at night), and animal respiration; decay of organic matter; burning of fossil fuels; volcanic and geyser activity. According to Mark Watney, 8% of CO₂ will ‘eventually kill you’.
Carbon Dioxide filters - Absorb carbon dioxide until saturated. They are not cleanable or reusable. Used on Rovers and Spacesuits. Mark Watney has enough for 1500 hours of CO₂ filtration.
Carbon Dioxide liquid - Formed by compressing and cooling carbon dioxide.
Centripetal gravity - Artificial gravity caused by centripetal force.
Deep Space Network - A scientific telecommunications system -
Deimos - Smaller of Mars’ two moons
Deneb - A very bright star
Dinitrogen (or molecular nitrogen) - Diatomic molecule ‘N₂’ (two nitrogen atoms). A colourless, odorless, gas.
Dioxygen (or molecular oxygen) - Oxygen gas - O₂ (diatomic molecule of two oxygen atoms). A colourless, odourless, gas. An oxidizer (a chemical that fuel requires in order to burn).
Dreideling - Action like a ‘Dreidel’, a Jewish spinning top. I think this refers to the wobble that a spinning top has just before it falls over.
EagleEye 3 Saturn probe - Fictitious but the ‘Cassini-Huygens’ Saturn probe certainly exists and was launched on 15 October 1997.
Earth atmosphere - 21% Oxygen, 78% nitrogen, other 1%
Earth distance to Mars - 34 to 250 million miles Average 140 million miles.
Earth distance to Moon - 238,000 miles
Earth distance to Sun - 93 million miles
Earth temperature - Average: 57 degrees Fahrenheit (13.899 celsius)
EO - Earth orbit
EVA - Extravehicular Activity
GC - Ground Control
Hab - Habitation, canvas dwelling – 92 square metres
Hermes - Ares missions spacecraft, powered by ion engines – transport between Mars’ and Earth’s orbits.
Hohmann Transfer Window - Window of opportunity to utilise the Hohmann Transfer Orbit
Hydrazine - N₂H₄ (two atoms Nitrogen, four hydrogen). A colourless, volatile, toxic, flammable liquid; a derivative of ammonia. 292 litres found in MDV tanks. Each litre of hydrazine has enough hydrogen to make 2 litres of water when combined with oxygen.
Hydrogen - Chemical element ‘H’ (one hydrogen atom). A colourless, odorless, highly flammable gas. Hydrogen is a chemical element in Hydrazine.
IR camera - Infrared camera used for thermal imaging.
Iridium - A silver-white metal with catalyctic (increase rate of chemical reaction) properties
JPL - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Lander - A protective shell which, during landing, protects a Rover, for e.g. Pathfinder’s Sojourner Rover.
Launch Status Check - Terms used at beginning of American space mission.
Liquid Oxygen - LOx - Liquid O₂ (liquid dioxygen). Stored either end of Hab in high pressure tanks to feed space suits and Rovers.
Mars - 4th planet from the Sun. Mars atmosphere - Mostly Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) about 95%.
Mars distance from sun - 142 million miles
Mars temperature - Average: minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.78 Celsius)
Mars water - Found as ice at polar ice cap.
MAV - Mars Ascent Vehicle
MAV fuel tank - Collects CO₂ (from Mars atmosphere) and converts hydrogen and CO₂ (by [Sabatier] chemical reaction) to fuel for MAV ascent to the spaceship, Hermes. MAV takes 20 hours to fill 10 litre fuel tank with CO₂ - ½ litre per hour. For every 1kg of hydrogen it makes 13 kgs of fuel. (Mark uses Hab oxygenator to remove oxygen from the CO₂, so he can use the oxygen and hydrogen to make H₂O (water).
Mawrth Vallis - A valley area of Mars carved out by major floods in the distant past.
MDV - Mars Descent Vehicle
MDV fuel tank - Holds hydrazine - N₂H₄. MDV makes its own fuel by way of an iridium catalyst in the engine (reaction chamber) which turns hydrazine into nitrogen and hydrogen. Mark finds 292 litres of unused hydrazine. One litre of hydrazine has enough hydrogen to make 2 litres of water when combined with oxygen.
MDV reactor - Separates hydrazine into hydrogen and nitrogen.
MGS - Mars Global Surveyor satellite
MMU - Manned Manoeuvering Unit
Molecule - Electrically neutral group of two or more atoms
Nitrogen - Chemical element ‘N’ (one nitrogen atom)
NSA - National Security Agency.
Oxygen - Chemical element, symbol ‘O’ (one oxygen atom)
Oxygenator - Removes oxygen from Hab’s CO₂.
Pathfinder - A space shuttle. It was launched December 4, 1996 and delivered the Sojourner Rover to Mars.
Phobos - Larger of Mars’ two moons.
Plutonium 238 - A radioactive isotope of plutonium, used in the RTG.
Polaris - A seemingly motionless bright star around which the northern sky revolves.
Pop Tent - Emergency rescue tent (inflate like air-bag) on Rovers
Precession - Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotational axis of a rotating body
Probe - Unmanned aircraft.
Rover - Transport vehicles on Ares 3 base, Acidalia Planitia, Mars. Same as the spacesuits, the Rovers use CO₂ filters rather than an oxygenator.
RTG - Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator
SAFER Unit - Simplified Aid for EVA rescue, worn like a backpack.
SatCon - SatCon Technology Corp.
Schiaparelli crater - 3200 miles from Acidalia Planitia, and where the Ares 4 mission will land.
SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Sojourner Rover - Mars MicroRover delivered by Pathfinder space shuttle.
Sol - Solar Day (on Earth it's 23 hours 56 mins, on Mars it's 24 hours 37 mins as it takes longer to rotate 360 degrees on its axis.
Solar Cells - Used to convert sunlight into energy and store by way of hydrogen fuel cells.
Spectroscopy - “Spectroscopy is a scientific measurement technique. It measures light that is emitted, absorbed, or scattered by materials and can be used to study, identify and quantify those materials.”
Telemetry - is the highly automated communications process by which measurements are made and other data collected at remote or inaccessible points and transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring.
Tetris - A tile-matching Russian puzzle game.
ULA - United Launch Alliance.
VASIMIR (4) - Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket.
Water - H₂0 (two hydrogen atoms, one oxygen). Mark wants 600 litres of water. He uses the CO2 from the MAV and the Oxygenator to create oxygen, and the MDV reactor to create hydrogen.
Water reclaimer - System in the Hab for pulling humidity (water) out of the Habs atmosphere.
Zirconia Electrolysis Cell - Used by the Oxygenator to remove carbon atoms from CO₂ and thus create oxygen.

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John

Live (vicariously) on Mars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 17, 2017

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Outstanding. I read this having already seen the film, and that sometimes means the book loses some of its impact - however even then it did not disappoint. It is hard to praise this enough – in fact I rarely write a review without some quibble (nothing’s perfect, right?) but in this case even if I have one or two doubts, it is so good I’m happy to let it go. The summary above of “Robinson Crusoe on Mars”, does the story an injustice.
Mark Watney a botanist-astronaut, lands on Mars as part of the six strong crew on the third manned mission to Mars, a thirty-day mission ahead. However, a vicious Martian sandstorm forced the mission to be abandoned on day 6, but a freak accident means he is left stranded on Mars. Alone and far from safety, it will take all Watney’s knowledge and ingenuity if he wants to survive on Mars, long after he was supposed to leave.
I disagree with the review below saying you can’t enjoy this if you aren’t interested in science – the writing makes the science part of the story, and this is the reason I rate this so highly. Weir manages to make the science interesting, even though there is a lot of science, it is not at the expense of the story. He explores Watney’s moods, his exploration of the local area and beyond, his ‘leisure-time’ and his desperate attempts to stay alive. Watney's gallows humour and unwillingness to look facts in the face (i.e. that he is going to die) and give up make you care about him.
I think one of the reasons this book is so popular, and certainly why I liked is it makes Mars feels so tantalizingly close. It is barely sci-fi – technically speaking most of the stuff in the book is feasible now – it's more political will holding back a manned mission to Mars (and cash, but it is politicians who allocate the cash). There are no warp drives, lasers, aliens (hope that's not a plot spoiler) or other staples of sci-fi – just a guy trying to get home after getting stranded.
I have just finished Artemis, Weir’s second novel (pretty good), and it has made me want to re-read The Martian, so my Kindle unread folder will remain undiminished for the next few days. If you haven’t read it, I cannot recommend highly enough.

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Raj

Great Sci-Fi & survival story!

Reviewed in India on October 31, 2017

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I can't imagine and the amount of research and homework that has gone into this. This is one of the best Science Fictions I have ever read.
Once Mark is abandoned in the godforsaken planet, it is a relentless series of life threatening problems thrown at him one after another, right till the end. But with his resourcefulness, intelligence and willpower to survive he finds some or the other solution to each of those situations.
One thing I would have liked is a better character development of Mark. Given his strong personality type, some background of Mark's earlier life, some personal stories would have been better for the readers to connect to his character. It would have also been a nice break from all the technicalities in the narration, which at times, I felt, was getting to a saturation.
Other than that, it is a phenomenal work of sci-fi, even better than the movie, I would say. Must read if you like science fictions or survival stories.

As far as Amazon's service is concerned, the book was delivered on time and in great condition. So full marks for that!

PS: Please hit "Yes" if you like my review.

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Iset

Is it funny? Yes

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2016

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Having just come off the back of watching the film, I’ve done what everyone else has no doubt been doing, and read the book. Is it entertaining? Yes. Is it funny? Yes. Is it amazing writing? Well… no.

The book and is carried on the witticisms and banter of main character Mark Watney, the titular Martian, and are jam-packed with pop culture references, science-y bits, and one-line zingers. And whilst I appreciated them, even found them amusing, this is also the story’s downfall. It sounds like the kind of dialogue I’d exchange with my equally nerdy friends on a Saturday night meet up – not Apollo 13 on Mars as it was billed to me by the hype. As a result it feels like it’s missing a sense of epic scale, and the stakes just don’t feel that high. At no point did I ever feel awed, or gripped, or really worried for Watney. Whenever something went wrong I simply wondered how he was going to fix it this time and what amusing commentary he’d provide. I never worried for a minute about his ultimate survival. Fun and entertaining? Yes. Compelling and thrilling? No.

The writing is competent, not outstanding. Apart from the complicated science-y bits, the language is kept simple, which is good for accessibility of the average reader, but for me I felt it lacked a little bit of creative flair – the language is very functional and to the point, there’s very little evocative imagery or creative description. The characters are largely functional too. Outside of Watney, everyone else basically boils down to their job at NASA or their role (e.g. Mark’s parents, Vogel’s wife, etc.). Watney himself is interchangeable – his vital stats could be swapped out for someone older/younger male/female American/non-American and there be no difference whatsoever to what happens in the plot.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, I would. It’s amusing, it’s entertaining, it’s interesting – it’s just not the most amazing, earth-shattering book ever written, so don’t go into it expecting that. It reminds me a lot of an old classic actually – The Moon Is Hell by John Campbell – in its diary format and its functional problem-solving (minus the crime solving that also goes on in Campbell’s novel).

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David P

Seen the film, but still really enjoyed the book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2020

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I read Artemis recently, and found it very good. I then saw that this was by the same author. I really enjoyed the film, and I really liked the style of writing in Artemis, so I gave this a go. Even though I know how it turns out, I really enjoyed the book, it manages to describe very technical issues without seeming to get bogged down in nerdy details, and really conveys the situation brilliantly. The way that such large pieces of the book are merely the stranded man's thoughts with no interaction or dialogue with other people, and yet remain so engaging, is really clever. I will be seeking out other books by this author now.

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