I loved reading The Martian online even in the inherently somewhat annoying written in realtime form; so much I showed up to get a signed copy when it was released.
In general I'm a sucker for hard scifi, but much of the state of the art in that space is often inaccessible to those of my friends that aren't deeply versed in the literature. The Martian is both accessible (at least to an audience which is generally okay with science and technology) and compelling story telling as well.
I can thoroughly recommend the audiobook - http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Martian-Audiobo... - R.C. Bray's narration nails both the inner-monologue/diary and also the rest of the supporting cast. The 12,000+ ratings on Audible are also a good testament.
that's how I consumed it. Bray's accents and intonations really were impressive, considering he was able to make a cast of a dozen or so people all have a unique and easily recognized voice.
Andy Weir gave a fun talk at Google about his experiences writing the book/some of the software he used to help him in his planning. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMfuLtjgzA8
> The publisher said, well, the setting that you’ve made for this is really cool, but the story that you came up with to take place in the setting is just not that interesting. So they rejected it! So getting your book on The New York Times’ best-seller list doesn’t mean you get a rubber stamp on your next book!
Publishers fucking suck. Why is he stuck with a publisher when he has a sucessful self-published book already?
Just because you could self publish doesn't mean that you want: it is a lot of work, and the money is not that great as some people want you to believe.
This book was recommended to me as extremely detail-oriented, and extremely detail-oriented it was!
Fun, engrossing and really entertaining, specially if you are a KSP fan like myself. I have added it to my list of books to inspire my kids. So if they ever come to me and say, "Dad, what is chemistry good for?" I can just give them The Martian and say, "read this and you'll know", they will be calculating limiting reagents as if their lives depended on it!
Hmm... I liked The Martian a lot, but hated The Europa Report. They don't really seem comparable: The Europa Report has silly martians and little hard science... it's more like "Blair Witch Project in Space" IMHO.
Stranded fellas go from absolute zero to civilized dwelling using nothing but natural island resources and some good old chemical and mechanical engineering. Includes complete walk-throughs for making the gunpowder and nitroglycerin from scratch :)
This was a great book, I couldn't put it down. Looking forward to seeing the movie adaption and also genuinely excited to see what Weir puts out next. I don't read as often as I used to so it was wonderful to be so enthused about a book and author again.
Note that the book is no longer $0.99, as stated in the article. It's currently $8.39 (vs $9.00 for the paperback). I always get disappointed to see such a small difference in price between Kindle and paperback.
Yeah, it throws me into a calculus of tradeoffs. Am I willing to bet 61 cents that this book will be good enough that I will want to lend it to a friend? What are the odds that the used bookstore will pay something for it? If I do decide to keep the physical copy, which book on my already-full shelves will get removed in favor of it?
Given that it costs them more than 61 cents to print and distribute the physical version, which I interpret them as gouging on the electronic version, there's also a fuck-me-no-fuck-you urge to buy the physical copy.
That's definitely progress. But what I really want is an ability to upgrade. I buy the Kindle version, and if it is awesome, they let me buy the print version for the difference (possibly plus a nominal amount like $0.99). Then I can defer the physical-or-virtual question until later.
Wow the cast & production for crew for this is insane. Same director & cinematographer from Prometheus too, at the very least it's going to be a pretty movie
This is on my list to read after being recommended to me directly twice.
As a fellow writer of fiction (The Dread Space Pirate Richard, a sci-fi comedy adventure faerie tale for adults) I was also encouraged to learn that this was another case of an "overnight success" that was years in the making. In an interview with Weir he said that before he started posting his orig blog serialization of The Martian, he already had been writing publically for 10 years and had built up a fanbase of about 1500 subscribers or regular visitors to his blog. So, he had had a big channel of eyeballs ready to go on day one. Even then the serialization didn't explode over night, was a slow grow thing. But a good case can be made that he might never have reached the necessary critical mass of attention for The Martian if he didn't start with that built-in fan channel. Or, it probably would have taken much longer.
Note to self: "I have N years to go. I have N years to go..."
Just to offer a counter-point: I got about halfway through the book and lost interest.
I'm really happy for the author's success, and I don't at all think it's a bad book. But I found it to be basically pure "survival porn". I like MacGyver too, but I don't think I could watch a four hour episode of it, and that's what the book felt like to me.
The characters and writing are solid, but the constant peril and clever solutions just got tedious after a while.
If you "How is he going to get himself out of this?" is enough to keep you going for an entire book, you'll probably love it. But if you need a bit more than that, it may lose your interest.
OTOH, if you're TOTALLY into a four-hour MacGyver movie, you may be interested in this book by Raymond Malewitz where he breaks down a recurring theme of "object misuse" in contemporary literature that he calls "Rugged Consumerism." The book looks at things like Apollo 13, MacGuyver, Fight Club, the Whole Earth Catalog, Sam Shepard, etc.
Well, true enough, it is pretty much MacGyver on Mars.
But I found it riveting. A neighbor gifted me a copy and forced my first book all-nighter in quite awhile.
Part of its variance in reader appeal may have to do with reader empathy, or perhaps susceptibility having one's mind rooted by an author. On first pass, I simply could not read page by sequential page. I had to skip ahead to make sure he made it through the crisis of the moment, then I'd go back to read how he did it. Too stressful to not find the answer by looking in the back of the book.
I think this happened for me because Weir's portrayal of the engineering and science underlying the plot was so realistic and accurate. I could (and in fact, was forced to) imagine myself in Watney's predicament - WTF would I do? And Weir dragged me into the story that way.
I recommend it. If it's not to your taste, pass it on. It's likely we all know someone who would enjoy it.
> If you "How is he going to get himself out of this?" is enough to keep you going for an entire book, you'll probably love it. But if you need a bit more than that, it may lose your interest.
Yep. there's little or no character development. Mark Watney is basically the same person at the end as he is at the start. He's an engaging person, and he refuses to dwell on philosophical matters. But if you're interested in character development, there's almost nothing there for you.
I can't remember exactly where halfway through the book was, but the book certainly broadens its scope throughout, although it does certainly focus on the title character trying to survive. I thought the book was a roller coaster ride, and easily short enough to not get worn out.
I had a similar reaction. Maybe because I've been reading for 35+ years and read stuff which is prob much better than The Martian. I see its attractions and his skill, no doubt, but felt lately there's a bit of a hype train going on where the actual material is nowhere near as good as the hype.
Its not as bad as the hype-to-reality gap for Fifty Shades though: that's a book where I couldn't go more than a page or so, every time I've sampled it (partly out of curiousity, partly to study its secrets), without groaning or laughing aloud at how bad it is.
The Martian is much much better than that, but his formula shows its bones quickly.
Granted it's rather simplistic story, spoiled by the fact that you know that there is a happy end (otherwise book wouldn't have a point), but it's still solid and entertaining. It's like Gravity done well and right.
Importantly, it's distinct from other kind of entertaining books - I still read Da Vinci Code, but while it was entertaining, it's both terrible writing and story. Martian is different - yes, you know what's going to happen, but journey is the point.
It also must have helped putting the Kindle edition on sale for 99 cents around last April. I saw it recommended here on HN, went to look and yeah, 99 cents? No-brainer! And it lived up to all the recommendations too.
I loved reading The Martian online even in the inherently somewhat annoying written in realtime form; so much I showed up to get a signed copy when it was released.
In general I'm a sucker for hard scifi, but much of the state of the art in that space is often inaccessible to those of my friends that aren't deeply versed in the literature. The Martian is both accessible (at least to an audience which is generally okay with science and technology) and compelling story telling as well.