Book Review: The Martian

The Martian has been getting high praise from the geek community for a while now, which isn’t surprising at all. It is a story about astronaut Mark Watney, who ends up stranded on Mars during a mission and must use his skills, knowledge, and wit to survive. This is the kind of thing geek dreams are made of. But I put off reading it for the longest time. I had heard it was pretty technical, and comics like this one from XKCD (because there is always a relevant XKCD) kind of scared me off. I like sci-fi, but technical details can be a little uninteresting to me.

It turns out, I shouldn’t have put this off. Yes, there are a lot of technical details in the story, but they’re not distracting like I thought they would be. And really, if the technical isn’t your thing, you can skim over those parts. The heart of the story is more about the strength of the human spirit and the will to survive.

It is also hilarious. You don’t expect a harrowing tale of survival to make you literally laugh out loud, but The Martian has that effect. Mark is incredibly sarcastic and maintains his sense of humor throughout the story. There are lines like:

I told NASA what I did. Our (paraphrased) conversation was: Me: ‘I took it apart, found the problem, and fixed it.

NASA: “Dick.”

That serves to show Watney’s personality and provide a bit of comedic relief to the gravity of the situation he’s in.

The Martian is an incredibly realistic piece of science-fiction that will appeal to sci-fi fans and adventure fans alike. It’s as if you mixed Apollo 13 with Into Thin Air, and the result is just as awesome as that sounds. You can pick up a copy of book now, and the movie comes out on October 2nd.

Disclaimer: I received the movie tie-in edition of The Martian for review from Blogging For Books. I actually ended up buying the Kindle version with Audible narration so my husband could listen to it. Amazon links are affiliate links.