The Martian by Andy Weir: #tbt review

(Finished January 30, 2015—before the movie came out!)

I was worried that this book would be too intense—too Apollo 13—and indeed there is a strong element of that, of course, and of course those events are referenced here. Don't get me wrong: this book is definitely intense. But it's not *gratuiutously* intense. I didn't feel I was being played as I read it. And the protagonist's optimism and sense of humor kept things light enough that I never felt weighed down by the intensity. Not more weighed down than I could stand, anyhow.

For anyone who isn't aware of the plot yet, our protagonist and his colleagues are all early explorers on Mars. After a horrific accident, he is left for dead—only he isn't dead; he's the only human being on an entire planet that's extremely hostile to life. You'd be tempted to think that he may as well be dead, but you'd be wrong; he's too determined to live, no matter what the odds are.

What follows is several harrowing months of an extremely intelligent and resourceful man doing everything it takes to survive on an alien world—literally everything, right down to creating a biome in which food can grow, because of course the soil is completely sterile—includeing, not least, the herculean task of keeping despair at bay. Meanwhile, his fellow astronauts do everything they can to figure out how to rescue him.

This would be a fantastic book, not only for lovers of old-school hard SF, but also for anybody who likes a good, bare-knuckled but very realistic adventure. This is science fiction purely because it hasn't happened yet, not because it couldn't happen or takes place in some fantastical far future. This could take place... well, with NASA's current funding, not next year, but certainly in the next decade.

Verdict: I loved this and I highly recommend it to nearly anybody.