Marooned on Mars

Book review, Title The Martian, Author Andy Weir, Rating 4.0,

The Martian Andy Weir Book review

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This 21st century Robinson Crusoe tale works because the lone marooned astronaut's effort at survival on Mars is framed around the question: how would a dogged, highly knowledgeable engineer solve the existential crises that cropped up and live yet another day?

This close accounting draws the reader in: at its best, it feels like you are working to find the solution to the next threatening problem yourself, employing every scrap of knowledge you had accumulated in your life and limited by the materials of what remains of your space equipment and what little is available from your immediate surroundings, the desert that is Mars.

The Martian was an excellent read, a science fiction outing that hewed closer to the possible than is typical.

I found this book much better than the movie, which I thought was well-executed, but lacking precisely because it could not in 2 hours fill the story with the detail that made it otherwise work.