The Martian Response

This week, I decided to read, The Martian, by Andy Weir, mainly because I had seen the movie years ago. I thought it would be interesting to see how the original would be, considering I enjoyed the film so much. What I found so interesting in this story was Mark Watney’s survival along with how NASA and so many more on Earth got together to save Watney. I will admit, that this story was sometimes challenging to read and understand because of Watney’s engineering/mechanical descriptions and equations. However, while challenging it also made sense considering the story revolved around a man stuck on Mars trying to survive, which correlates to very intense and not so easy explanations for how he will get off this planet. I also think what made this story so intriguing was that all the information being given to the reader has already happened and you are reading his commentary. As I said before, it makes sense for the complicated detailing and even with his commentary he goes on to explain the importance of every single decision and how it is life threatening. I thought in the story there was a good mix between a complicated explanation of what is going on and the almost insanity of one man alone and trapped in the isolation of a planet. I thought Andy Weir did a perfect job at subtly showing this man’s intellect mixed with how one’s mind works after so long of being isolated. However, his commentary or what they are defined as, logs, in this story are intended to be read by those back on Earth in the event of his return or death. I think, because of overly detailed explanations and descriptions made this story very realistic. Sometimes when it comes to space focused stories it’s easy to make it very fictional and cheesy, however, in The Martian it was clear that this person knew what he was talking about and had that realistic thought process of “I might die, I better create logs to help those on Earth to understand how I lived so long on another Planet.” I thought this novel was great and the story was so intriguing because of the stressful atmosphere, Weir created.