On My Shelves: The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir almost managed to lose me in the first few pages.

Now, that's not so bad as it sounds. As an author who's written a hard-SF novel focused on Mars (Boundary), I came to The Martian with a terrible handicap: I know a lot more about this than probably 99.9% of readers. And one thing that I know very well – that is, in fact, made explicitly clear in one of the scenes of Boundary, in which our intrepid adventurers end up going through a Martian tornado/dust devil which happens to be going at about 180km/hr, faster than the peak wind Weir has for his opening scene -- is that instead of being a screaming vortex of doom, wind of that speed on Mars is going to have the pressure of a moderate breeze on Earth, about 16mph (or 26 kph). It's not going to tear antennas off structures and send them flying, not going to threaten to tip over multi-ton vehicles. It's going to throw around a lot of powdery sand and maybe cover your solar cells with grit that has to be tipped or swept off, and play merry hell with other equipment if it gets inside, but it isn't, as weather, dangerous.

Thus, the opening of the novel – an opening whose events are absolutely necessary to set up the subsequent thrill-ride of survival – is impossible as written.

On the other hand…

… as I said, 99.9+% of readers don't know that. It isn't immediately obvious to us (I had to think about it when writing to understand what was going on). And it is necessary to set up the situation – leaving astronaut Mark Watney stranded by himself on the surface of Mars – which is the very crux of the novel.

And aside from that single point (Martian winds being absolutely puny compared to Earth's), the scene's well-written, flows well, makes perfect sense, and explains everything needed for the reader.

The other important point… is that as an author in the same sub-subgenre, I've done the same exact thing: looked at something that was going to derail my plot, judged how important that aspect of versimilitude was to writing a good story, and – if the answer was "not very" and "hardly anyone will notice", gone right ahead and ignored physics, or at least waved my hands very fast and said "oh, look, Elvis!" to distract readers at the right moment.

So in the end, I just had to ask one basic question. The question, of course, is "does The Martian work as a good story?".

Yes. Yes, it does.

Once we get Watney stranded on Mars, the adventure of one man, stuck in an environment that makes Antarctica look inviting, trying to get home becomes intense and gripping, fast-moving as prose even when it should feel like it drags. I mean, really, here's a guy spending paragraphs describing how he's doing fiddly little engineering kludges, and we're reading them. With intense fascination and bated breath, even, because Mark Watney's quick, sarcastic, yet very earnest style of writing his entries brings us there, invests us with some of his desperation and urgency in solving the almost unending sets of problems that face him.

The Martian winds aside, most of Weir's challenges and solutions for Mark Watney stay pretty well within the bounds of realism – necessary for this kind of story. There are some areas where, again, there's some handwaving (most especially in the whole issue of his solar cells, their stated power production, and growing crops in the area he describes), but this is done well, and is offset by the precision in other areas that Weir clearly spent a LOT of time researching (getting creaky old Mars probes to become usable radios, for instance).

Part of what makes the novel work is that he shows both how even an extremely intelligent, capable man like Watney can end up making things worse through not understanding details of his situation, or through factors out of his control setting him up for failure. Watney, however, perseveres even through disasters such as a complete blowout of his habitat lock, demonstrating not just intelligence but a sheer tenacity, patience, and self-control that are staggering to behold. Forget all the technical awesomeness he has to get away with; I'm not sure I would have the mental fortitude to put up with all the isolation, the reversals of fortune, and privations ranging from "no real showers or baths for months" to "eating nothing but potatoes" and "having just fried my only connection with Earth by my own mistake".

We do get to see people besides Watney at work – many of those in the space program back home, and his crewmates in the Mars mission (currently on their way back to Earth), all desperately working to find a way to get him home on time. But this is, primarily, Mark Watney's story, and even the activities of others primarily work within the context of his actions, achievements, and occasional setbacks.

The most tense sequence, for me, was Mark's trek across Mars towards his one hope of escape, the pre-landed module for the next Mars expedition, and how a huge dust storm was approaching – threatening to kill the power to his rover's solar cells. The manner in which he first recognizes what's happening, and figures out – in absence of any support from Earth, no satellite pictures, nothing except his own devices and intelligence – how he can tell where the storm is, which way it's going, and how to evade it – is absolutely brilliant. (I'm not entirely convinced it would have worked quite as smoothly as it did, but I don't really care; it was a great sequence).

Overall, The Martian really does deserve the praise heaped upon it; it's a better Mars story than I wrote, possibly the best hard-SF Mars story ever written, and certainly captivating, well-written, and fun! Highly recommended!