Book Review - Andy Weir - The Martian

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2013 – Del Rey Press – Spoiler alerts I have purposely avoided watching the movie version of this story until I had read the novel, which is great. It tells of an astronaut, Mark Watney, surviving alone on Mars when his crew abandon him there (assuming with some justification that he has died). The story looks realistically at what he can do with the space mission hardware left at his disposal, and as a botanist, his skills in generating food and oxygen are stretched to their absolute limit. The tech described is all feasible and the procedures Watney follows are often textbook, but it can seem like watching an episode of Mcguyver at times. Watney’s diary of his times on the Red Planet are mixed with the increasingly desperate rescue plan as NASA see evidence of his survival and work out how to reach him. Not the first book or film to deal with a marooned astronaut on Mars, but certainly one of the most authentic and thoroughly meticulously researched. This will probably be required reading for the pioneers who really do make the trip. Arthur Chappell