Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Brief Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

The MartianThe Martian by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The beautifully told story of Mark Watney, NASA astronaut. The Martian addresses science like nothing I've ever read before. I could not stop reading this book. I would think about getting home from work to read. I would feel like I was wasting precious Martian time whenever the TV was on.

The Martian gave me a new outlook on the term hard Sci-Fi and is easily the best thing I have read from that (admittedly underexplored) genre. The amount of raw data crunching that author Andy Weir must have done for this book is astonishing. I'd be really interested in learning how accurate the math and looney-tunes ideas for surviving really were.

On top of that, not only were all the pages from Mark's journal terrific, but the ever changing looks at what was going on in the outside world were fantastic too. While we only ever saw the world through Mark's eyes via his journal, the other narration (whether it was the NASA chiefs, the crew of the mission, or even the plastic made to provide shelter and protection on Mars) kept me guessing. I never knew how Weir was going to approach a section, but I was never disappointed.

A standout in a sea of good reads for me lately.

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Amazon Link: The Martian

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