Book #15–The Martian

Recommended by a friend, I grabbed The Martian, but didn’t start it right away. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, but once I did on a recent trip, I was hooked.

It’s incredible. The third mission to Mars has 6 people abort when a storm hits. The book opens as the journal of Mark Watney, the man left behind. He’s hit by an antenna, his suit punctured and damaged as the group heads to the lander that will take them back up to their orbiting ship. His vitals go flat, the crew can’t find him and they have to leave before the storm blows their ship over.

A sol is a Martian day and we get diary entries as Mark wakes up, realized his suit sealed itself, but he’s in trouble. He makes his way to the canvas habitat (The Hab) and cleans and stitches himself up. He then realizes that not only was he left behind, but he has no way to communicate with the ship or the Earth. However the 4th mission to Mars is planned. The problem is he needs to survive for 1500+ days until it arrives. An issue when the mission was supposed to be for a month.

We watch his diary as he overcomes challenge after challenge, thinking of ways to find enough food and plan his trip across Mars to the next landing site. The book evolves as it goes back to the time before the storm and the view from the other crew members on their way to Earth, as well as the NASA groups on Earth who realize he’s alive.

It’s a wild journey, one that lasts 900 days, though we don’t get 900 entries. However we get a lot and it’s like Gravity, but with more realism. I loved this one.