Log Entry: Sol 6



“I’m pretty much fucked.”



Six days after I finished this book, and I still can’t get my shit together.



Let’s see… where do I begin?



I read great things about this from GR friends – with the odd dissenter (very odd – man, that Apatt keeps me amused!). I kept meaning to get a copy, but in the end, my husband was given it first. But before he could read it, I swiped it. You’ve gotta take opportunities when you can. "Hell yeah I’m a botanist GoodReader! Fear my botany GoodReading powers

botanist

botany

watching TV

[the HAB blowing, and the problem with the supply launch (hide spoiler)

“I’m pretty much fucked.”Six days after I finished this book, and I still can’t get my shit together.Let’s see… where do I begin?I read great things about this from GR friends – with the odd dissenter (very odd – man, that Apatt keeps me amused!). I kept meaning to get a copy, but in the end, my husband was given it first. But before he could read it, I swiped it. You’ve gotta take opportunities when you can. "Hell yeah I’m aGoodReader! Fear myGoodReading powers!"I know the routine: read the book, make notes, try to think laterally. It was all going great.Suddenly it starts to feel too familiar. Can I make it to the end without wanting to clobber Mark Watney to get him to quit the wisecracks?Just as I was getting annoyed by the self-consciously clever banter, Weir switched to Earth. Yay for variety.I’ve got to be organised if I’m going to make it through. So let’s count and measure things: words, tarp, pages, potatoes.As for my spare time, “I spend a lot of it sitting around on my lazy assreading. But so do you, so don’t judge.”“Things are finally going my way.”“I am fucked, and I’m gonna die.”“I came up with a brilliant plan that didn’t work.”“I guess you could call it a "failure", but I prefer the term "learning experience".”Let’s try the traditional approach to reviewing…The sit is clear from the start: Mark Watney is a US astronaut, left alone on Mars, presumed dead, when the crew make an emergency evacuation: “I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m in a Hab designed to last 31 days. If the Oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the Water Reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.”Of course, he’s made of the famous “Right Stuff”, so, despite impossible odds, he goes all out for survival. He’s a botanist (and inexplicably, also an engineer), but it requires vast ingenuity, as well as physical and mental strength.Robinson Crusoe meets Apollo 13, with a dose of Silent Running, Big Brother/reality TV - and many others. And that’s the problem and the power: it feels like write-by-numbers, but it was also hugely engaging and tremendously exciting. Despite all the maths that Watney does, the maths of my reaction to the book doesn’t add up.An unoriginal hybrid plot; an annoyingly excitable narrator who isn’t as funny as he thinks he is; more technical detail than some readers want or can follow; more ups and downs than a ping-pong ball on a roller-coaster; blatant Chekov’s gun ; poor characterisation; a degree of self-awareness of these faults (“If this were a movie…”, mentions of Apollo 13, and telling someone “you know you’re a stereotype, right?”); ghastly platitudes at the end.Whenever things are going well, you KNOW it won’t last long. And it doesn’t.Just for good measure, you can also spot the butterfly effect (twice); a dash of geopolitical intrigue (which is significant, but then never mentioned again); an Asperger’s stereotype to the rescue; a Trolley dilemma ; a secret message; a long and difficult journey; the prospect of a “million-mile-high-club”; the valiant little guy disobeying orders; an explosion; the triumph of low tech over high; a bomb; angst-ridden family back home; a (dust)storm… Have I missed anything? I don’t think so, and nor did Andy Weir.I really enjoyed it.The fact I enjoyed it so much, despite its self-evident weaknesses does, if anything, make it an even more admirable achievement. I guess Andy Weir is made of The Right Stuff as well.For a while, he’s the only character, and even when we meet the crew who abandoned him, along with people back on Earth, he’s the only three-dimensional character. But although he's rounded, he doesn't really develop - despite his prolonged and dramatic experiences. He is relentlessly upbeat the whole time. Astronauts need mental resilience, but this much?The style of his logs is VERY informal. That’s part of the fun and part of his character. Nevertheless, it might have been more plausible and shown more character development if he'd occasionally tried to write in the official style, especially the beginning.For all that he can be annoying, I found myself liking him. Very clever and ingenious – he really does think of everything – but a strong streak of cheeky rebel that I found oddly endearing, even when I didn’t always find it funny. “Independence was one of the qualities they looked for”, but he has more than NASA are comfortable with.Despite his intellect, he’s very adolescent. At one point, when he has communication with Earth – and TV, he’s told to mind his language, so he immediately sends a picture of boobs. He also enjoys bigging himself up (fair enough), reasoning that by taking control of a NASA vehicle without prior consent, he’s technically a Space Pirate, and that by electrolyzing his urine he can claim to be pissing rocket fuel. Less positively, he imagines a website called www.watchmarkwatneydie.com and writing an online review for a laptop: “Brought product to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10”.My only other encounter with Weir is his very short story, The Egg . It’s a philosophical piece really, so at first sight, this is very different. However, amid the relentless excitement, it does slip in more philosophical questions.One idea occurs in several different ways is the power – for good or ill – of knowledge. Should the grieving crew be told they abandoned a living crew-mate? How does Watney’s approach to survival change depending on whether he knows NASA knows he’s alive and whether he has one or two-way communication with them?Related to that is communication, and how to retain sanity when alone. Watney longs to tell NASA he’s alive and to communicate. But when there is some communication for a while, he’s quickly frustrated by NASA trying to micromanage, when he’s the expert on living on Mars, and has come to rely on his independence.Risk is at the heart of the story, both relative and absolute. “Coming to Mars was ‘needlessly dangerous’” so after that, is anything OK? Watney’s opinion of risk is very different from NASA’s: his instinct, as well as his experience, make him much more gung-ho than health-and-safety NASA. One time, they want him to do lots of fiddly and time-consuming diagnostics on something, despite his conviction it’s just a minor blockage. He defies orders, takes it apart, and clears the blockage.“I told NASA what I did. Our (paraphrased) conversation was:Me: “I took it apart, found the problem, and fixed it.”NASA: “Dick.”A point that nagged in my mind from early on, but is only addressed later, is the morality of how far one should go to save a single person: how much money, time – and other lives - can be used? There is no single answer: some aspects are decided by governments and some by the individual involved; all can be influenced by public discourse and media hype. Then the bubble is popped (for me), by the trite, and untrue, conclusion that “every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out”.I await my next encounter with interest…• “It was a ridiculous sequence of events that led to me almost dying, and an even more ridiculous sequence that led to my survival.”• “Everything went great right up to the explosion.”• “Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”• “Even NASA can’t improve on duct tape.”• “Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but I’m not dead, so it’s a win.”Andy Weir and his publishers/producers have missed a couple of tricks: www.watchmarkwatneydie.com is up for grabs, when it could be a microsite about the book.• They should get product placement money from the makers of duct tape, and if they can find a way to include WD40, that too.Having enjoyed the book, I was disappointed by the film.Yes, of course they had to cut a lot of detail, but they cut SO much, it all felt far too easy. Instead of the constant switching between certain death and possible life, there were only two real disasters after the initial one of being left for dead (view spoiler) . The great journey across Mars to the MAV was just dull; it didn't even need much in the way of prep.They didn't attempt to portray reduced gravity on Mars, and Hermes was unbelievably spacious. The number of name/logo checks for JPL was impressive, even given NASA's involvement in the film. On the other hand, The 3D was under, rather than overdone, which was good.Although they reduced the very minor romance angle (rare for Hollywood), they added a pointless slushy postscript, rather than retaining the smidgen of ambiguity the book has.On the other hand, it looked quite nice, and disco still had its place (and was used to good effect).["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>