The Martian by Andy Weir

“…every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out.  It 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.”   

--Mark Watney, The Martian (Andy Weir)

That quote is central to the theme of this novel.  It’s also a tagline on the upcoming movie poster and a voice over in the trailer that’s currently accompanying Jurassic World.  I saw said preview and nudged my husband that we would be going to see it come October.  That being said, I have a rule for my son and I: you have to read the book before you watch the movie!  And, so I did.

I am so glad I did!  This was a GREAT book.  I read it in one sitting while my son was at EcoCamp at the beach.  There is just enough science for the space geeks but not enough to make chem haters close the cover.  There’s math and real world (well, not really since we are on Mars…more on that in a sec) word problems.  There’s a whole lot of profanity and telling the government to go scratch.  It reads like a 100% true memoir, and if manned travel to Mars already existed, I’d really believe this to be an autobiographical account.  I laughed, I wanted to punch a character, and I cried.  That makes an awesome book right there.

As for the plot, the movie trailer does a pretty good summation and that was my hook into reading this.  Mark Watney is an American astronaut.  He’s part of a manned mission to Mars, the Ares 3.  A dust storm blows up in which Watney is injured and believed dead.  His crew takes off, not knowing he is very much alive.  He knows the next manned mission will not reach him for another 4 years, but he only has supplies for 1.  He deals with all sorts of renderings of Murphy’s Law the red planet tries to chuck at him (and there is some serious sarcastic wit; my kinda man!). 

When the Ares 3 crew members find out Watney is alive, they face a choice: leave him for NASA to deal with in a much safer manner (knowing they will not reach him until 15 days after he runs out of supplies) or make a daring, and ordered against by everyone up to the President, rescue mission that could kill them all. 

Definitely read this one!

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