I like hard science fiction, so I was really looking forward to this story of an astronaut stranded alone on Mars when his mission is aborted and all the crew make it off the planet but him. Unfortunately, the book has a couple of major flaws that ultimately kept me from finishing it. The first is that the narrator has almost no personality; the log entries read like a series of grocery lists and math problems as he works out how much air, food, and water he has and how long it will last. That kind of stuff is the bread-and-butter of hard sci-fi, but it needs to be part of a story that either has characters or plot to pull us in. The narrator gives us little idea of who he is, what he likes and doesn't like, what he feels when he discovers he's survived and is alone. And the threat to his survival is too distant to provide much narrative tension: he figures out how he can have food and water to last until about a hundred days before the next mission arrives on Mars, but this deadline is three years away, and since the narrator takes a "cross that bridge when I get to it" attitude, it's hard for the reader to get too worked up.
The other flaw is that the writing is tiresome. The narrator's log reads like a not-very-well-written blog. It's sometimes frustrating in a first-person narration when the writing is too "writerly," but here we have the opposite problem: the writing isn't writerly enough. The narrator writes like a high-schooler ("I am so fucked!") and peppers sentences in nearly every paragraph with parenthetical asides that chop up the flow of writing. And since he isn't introspective--he never reflects on his emotional state, he doesn't ruminate on Mars exploration and whether it's worth it, he doesn't tell stories of the trip to the planet or of the history of the Mars program--reading about his days as he calculates how many calories he has available and how many he can therefore allow himself per day and how many square feet the habitat is and how he can gradually increase the amount of soil he has by mixing a small amount brought from earth with a mix of martian soil and his own poop... Well, it ends up reading like the very detailed log of someone playing one of those farming video games.
Such a disappointment. I was ready to love this book.
Updated: I gave The Martian a second try last week. Here's what I had to say about it on Facebook:
I tried reading The Martian a couple months ago. It's about an astronaut who is stranded on Mars. Should have been exciting, but I gave up after 50 tedious pages. People I respect have been raving about it, so I decided to give it another try. On page 161. Still tedious. The writing is amateurish and the characters have no distinguishing characteristics, emotions, or inner lives. It's the kind of book that reads like a detailed plot synopsis of a much better, longer book. I understand it's being made into a movie starring Sebastian Stan. It will make a much better movie than book, in the hands of a decent scriptwriter. It will have cool visuals, and the need for dialogue could lead to characters who aren't just wireframe outlines being moved by plot necessity. It's an exciting story if it had any emotional resonance at all, so here's hoping.
***
Not quite two hundred pages in, it occurs to me to wonder if the author of The Martian is on the autism spectrum. It might account for why none of the characters have any emotions or inner life, but anytime the protagonist needs to do math it's spelled out in excruciating detail. He's stranded on Mars, remember, and is trying to figure out how to make his air, water, and food last, so he does a lot of math. A lot of math.
10 pages later, the most authentic-feeling conversation of the entire book takes place between a scientist and an administrator who have just met. The admin gets cranky and the scientist says, "Oh, sorry, am I being difficult? I'm not good with people. Sometimes I'm difficult. I wish people would just tell me." He then outlines the brilliant plan he's come up with for saving our stranded astronaut, and they have this conversation:
Admin: Are you sure about this?
Scientist: Absolutely!
Ad: Have you told anyone else?
Sc: Who would I tell?
Ad: I don't know. Friends.
Sc: I don't have any of those.
Ad: OK, keep it under your hat.
Sc: I don't wear a hat.
Ad: It's just an expression.
Sc: Really? It's a stupid expression.
Ad: Rich, you're being difficult.
Sc: Ah. Thanks.
I have had variations on that conversation with several people on the spectrum.
So, I add, "Can only do realistic conversation when one participant is autistic" to my evidence.
It's gonna make a great movie, as long as they don't decide to fit all the math in via voiceover.
***
Finished The Martian. Boy howdy, does that writer love to do math and describe procedures! I essentially got through it by imagining, as I read, what a humdinger of a movie it will make. November 2015, baby.
Sadly, I learn that Matt Damon is playing the protagonist. Not a big Matt Damon fan.
Drew Goddard, who worked on Buffy and Angel, and wrote The Cabin in the Woods, is doing the screenplay. This seems promising. Ridley Scott is directing it.
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Not sure how I'd rate the book now. Its flaws make it a tiresome read. Usually even if I don't like a book, I can see why someone else might, but I simply can't make sense of the person I follow on Twitter who loved it so much he can't wait to re-read it. I find myself wishing the author had skipped the book and gone straight to the screenplay.
