The Martian by Andy Weir

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him & forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded & completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - & even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills - & a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

This book won the Goodreads Choice Awards 2014 in the Science Fiction category and with good reason. To compare it with any other science fiction book I've read is impossible. Where those have generally been somewhat closer to fantasy and pure imagination, this book genuinely puts the science in science fiction. Mark Whatney is an astronaut stuck on Mars and I believed every second of it! Though Weir does a very good job explaining the basic science I didn't understand it all, but I got the gist - and I found it very plausible.

Besides Whatney's point of view we also get occasional pages of what's going on at NASA back on Earth and I really enjoyed these too. It perfectly balances the story and gives the readers some delicious insight when neither Mark on Mars or the guys on Earth knows what's going on with the other.

I was absolutely stunned when I found out that Weir released this book for free chapter by chapter on his website not believing anybody would really read it. This book is a brilliant début and so incredibly well written. The humour is on point and loosens up some very tense situations and of those, there are plenty. I was on the edge of my seat so terribly afraid of what might happen. Whatney makes it clear that Mars is dangerous and time and time again Mars proves just that. Mark meanwhile is hell bent on surviving and truly sciences the shit of it.

In short, this is definitely a book I'll be recommending far and wide - and to the Danish readers, I'm happy to let you know that the publishing house DreamLitt has picked up the rights for The Martian and will be releasing it around November 2015!

THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir ISBN13: 9780553418026 369 pages / Published in 2014

Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2015

By the way, Hollywood has gotten wind of this fantastic book too and it's being made into a film staring Matt Damon! You can see the trailer below, I think it looks pretty great!