Where Mars Almost Wins

The Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is just about as good as a book can be. All the stars.

This is a funny, realistic, exciting adventure, and it's a great example of hard science fiction being made accessible and appealing to wide audiences. Sure, he could have written this without getting all of the chemistry and physics and biology right, and it could have still been a fun, entertaining read, but he wasn't satisfied with just telling a good story--he got the science right. (Or if he got it wrong, he did it so brilliantly that it seemed right. I am not the one to catch him in an error.) Some people who can write well don't know enough science to do this. Some who know enough science can't write. It's a pretty select group of writers who can tell a good science fiction story that also is right on the science. Even fewer can make it appealing to those outside the relatively small group of hard science fiction readers. Andy Weir is in a pretty elite group.

Like some of the best science fiction right now, he also got the tone right, making this a very funny, very engaging book. Mark Watney is hilarious, IMO, and he's also a complete, round character. Some of the other characters are somewhat fleshed out, enough for the purposes of the book, but really only Mark is fully made real. And that's fine; it works.

The pacing is great. The lulls were few, and generally that's when we got a different POV character for a few pages. It's very well done. (How well?) My judgment is partly based on a kind of Marie Condo moment. When I look at the six or seven books I'm reading out of, and I asked myself which one I wanted to pick up and read right then, this was the one bringing me joy. Every time. And I'm reading some other really good books that are lots of fun. This one was just the best.

It struck me as I read how very similar the book and movie were. In terms of tone, pacing, humor, quality, overall fun, they come out just about tied by my count. Usually I feel like there are more differences between a book and the movie based on it, and I generally like one more than the other. (By way of contrast, four episodes in, I'm finding the video version or Murderbot much less entertaining and much less satisfying than the books. I hope it picks up a lot.)

(The other direction? People may come for me after saying this, but even though I rather like Mansfield Park the book, I like the Frances O'Connor 1999 movie more. Her version of Fanny is much more appealing and empathetic than the book version of her. In my opinion, I hasten to add.)

Back to The Martian. I knew this was good from the reviews, so it was goofy to put off reading it. I guess I sometimes doubt the reading world's consensus opinions. This one they got right. Highly recommended.

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