You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
river_cooke 's review for:
The Martian
by Andy Weir
adventurous
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I think we as a society need to appreciate Matt Damon much more than we do. If nothing else, he succeeded (in the film adaptation of this book) in making the character of Mark Watney, whose logs frame most of this story’s narrative, bearable. It’s not a feat that the book itself can manage. Maybe this book caught me on a bad week, maybe some references have aged poorly, but the only takeaway I have about the stranded protagonist of this story is that we should have left him there.
His perspective, communicated to us diaristically, is insufferable. It is one thing to deal with stress by joking (Matt Damon’s take on the character does it well, giving the character a hint of weariness and exasperation that the book does not), but it is another thing to be acting almost as if this is a tourist venture, turning every detail into some indulgent show of sarcasm worthy of Reddit. It’s akin to Ryan Reynolds post-deadpool films where it doesn’t feel like he is actually in the jeopardy that the book tries to suggest. There’s a lot of the 2010’s internet style of humour by way of reference, the style which presumes the making of a half-obscure middlebrow reference is funny in and of itself. All it results in is the impression that the author is trying way to hard to be funny, and its result is that I cannot stand the main character.
The other issue with this epistolary storytelling, for as much potent as it has to communicate a true and profound isolation, is that the stream-of-consciousness logs do not lend themselves to any substantial descriptions or chance for the prose to stretch its legs. Every description is filtered through the ramblings of a millennial with a quickly-tired cultural palette, and even when it tries to do emotional depth the narrative voice can’t do it.
We know it can be better because there are scenes on earth written from the third person and in general they’re written quite well. It gets the point where I’m begging this story to follow anyone’s perspective but the main characters just to let the prose do its work of describing things rather than handing it off to someone who compulsively tries to make things as unserious as possible.
I’m not sure who’s to blame. The text does little weight, and I don’t know if any narrator could have carried this, but the use of Wil Wheaton here, though perhaps appropriate to who the character is, only doubles down on what I didn’t like about him. His line asking how the Cubs are doing is at least funnily delivered.
I will say, this isn’t an omnishambles. I enjoyed the film, and a lot that works in it is present here. In particular, I liked the sense of progressive problem solving and how satisfying it is to watch this situation be unraveled and resolved, how solutions are continually found in increasingly desperate situations. It’s an interesting thought experiment, a good technical exercise that is satisfying in the same way it’s satisfying watching someone solve a Rubix cube. However, it feels like there is so much emotional depth that could have been there that ultimately was missed.
As I mentioned, the cutaways to earth were my favourite parts, but they actually present their own problems within the framing of this story as Mark’s fight to survive on this alien work alone.
There’s an interesting YouTube video by CinemaStix on recutting the 2002 spy thriller The Bourne Identity (starring Matt Damon) to remove the scenes showing the CIA control room, arguing that it gives us too much information on the exact state of the peril and deflates the suspense. We no longer wonder who this Jason Bourne could be because we’ve just seen Chris Cooper and Brian Cox argue about it in the previous scene. In the same sense, in this book we are given breakaway chapters letting us see what’s going on with NASA far in advance of Mark reestablishing contact. Knowing that they know he’s alive and knowing that they are making plans deflates to me the sense that Mark is truly alone and struggling through the uncertainty of whether anyone even knows he’s alive. We know, because we just saw NASA scientists argue about him in a cutaway he doesn’t have. The isolation would be much more authentic (though we would be robbed of the nicer prose) if all of those scenes were held back until satellite contact is established, at which point we get a rush of chapters to catch us up with what we’ve missed down on Mars, alone. It’s such a waste.
Overall, I’m disappointed, as this should have been a layup to get right as a story, particularly where the science is as robust as this. Instead, I’m left wondering whether someone else like Lewis wouldn’t have been more interesting to follow through a Martian survival story.
I didn’t care for this book.
His perspective, communicated to us diaristically, is insufferable. It is one thing to deal with stress by joking (Matt Damon’s take on the character does it well, giving the character a hint of weariness and exasperation that the book does not), but it is another thing to be acting almost as if this is a tourist venture, turning every detail into some indulgent show of sarcasm worthy of Reddit. It’s akin to Ryan Reynolds post-deadpool films where it doesn’t feel like he is actually in the jeopardy that the book tries to suggest. There’s a lot of the 2010’s internet style of humour by way of reference, the style which presumes the making of a half-obscure middlebrow reference is funny in and of itself. All it results in is the impression that the author is trying way to hard to be funny, and its result is that I cannot stand the main character.
The other issue with this epistolary storytelling, for as much potent as it has to communicate a true and profound isolation, is that the stream-of-consciousness logs do not lend themselves to any substantial descriptions or chance for the prose to stretch its legs. Every description is filtered through the ramblings of a millennial with a quickly-tired cultural palette, and even when it tries to do emotional depth the narrative voice can’t do it.
We know it can be better because there are scenes on earth written from the third person and in general they’re written quite well. It gets the point where I’m begging this story to follow anyone’s perspective but the main characters just to let the prose do its work of describing things rather than handing it off to someone who compulsively tries to make things as unserious as possible.
I’m not sure who’s to blame. The text does little weight, and I don’t know if any narrator could have carried this, but the use of Wil Wheaton here, though perhaps appropriate to who the character is, only doubles down on what I didn’t like about him. His line asking how the Cubs are doing is at least funnily delivered.
I will say, this isn’t an omnishambles. I enjoyed the film, and a lot that works in it is present here. In particular, I liked the sense of progressive problem solving and how satisfying it is to watch this situation be unraveled and resolved, how solutions are continually found in increasingly desperate situations. It’s an interesting thought experiment, a good technical exercise that is satisfying in the same way it’s satisfying watching someone solve a Rubix cube. However, it feels like there is so much emotional depth that could have been there that ultimately was missed.
As I mentioned, the cutaways to earth were my favourite parts, but they actually present their own problems within the framing of this story as Mark’s fight to survive on this alien work alone.
There’s an interesting YouTube video by CinemaStix on recutting the 2002 spy thriller The Bourne Identity (starring Matt Damon) to remove the scenes showing the CIA control room, arguing that it gives us too much information on the exact state of the peril and deflates the suspense. We no longer wonder who this Jason Bourne could be because we’ve just seen Chris Cooper and Brian Cox argue about it in the previous scene. In the same sense, in this book we are given breakaway chapters letting us see what’s going on with NASA far in advance of Mark reestablishing contact. Knowing that they know he’s alive and knowing that they are making plans deflates to me the sense that Mark is truly alone and struggling through the uncertainty of whether anyone even knows he’s alive. We know, because we just saw NASA scientists argue about him in a cutaway he doesn’t have. The isolation would be much more authentic (though we would be robbed of the nicer prose) if all of those scenes were held back until satellite contact is established, at which point we get a rush of chapters to catch us up with what we’ve missed down on Mars, alone. It’s such a waste.
Overall, I’m disappointed, as this should have been a layup to get right as a story, particularly where the science is as robust as this. Instead, I’m left wondering whether someone else like Lewis wouldn’t have been more interesting to follow through a Martian survival story.
I didn’t care for this book.