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The Martian Review
Jan. 24th, 2013 11:07 amHey,
So the promise of ebooks is that publishing is available to everyone and gifted writers can get their material published without going through the grind of a major publishing house. The reality is that ebooks let anyone publish anything. So while there are a ton of books for 99 cents, I usually steer clear because it's probably not going to be the best stuff in the world. True, lots of authors who get picked up by major publishing houses can turn out drivel too. But at least an editor probably looked it over at least once.
I'm happy to say that The Martian by Andy Weir is one of those self-publishing efforts that came out really well. I pretty much devoured this yesterday and I was surprised at how well it all worked.
The story revolves around Mark Watney, an astronaut on the Ares 3 mission to Mars. Shortly after arrival, the mission is aborted during a freak sandstorm. The rest of the team, believing Mark to be dead, takes off without him. So Mark is abandoned on Mars with only the basics for survival. He has his habitat and the rovers and whatever else he can scrounge up, but the next ship isn't due for a couple years and he needs to figure out how to extend a 3 month mission to 4 years -- and alert people back home that he's still alive.
The book uses log entries to record Mark's travails in securing the basics for survival, with occasional cuts to third-person scenes elsewhere. Essentially, bad stuff keeps happening to Mark and he has to figure out how to deal with it. Mark's log entries are entertaining and there's a lot of hard science going on. There are also quite a few accidents/mishaps/problems for him to work through which stretches credulity a bit, but it's all about the problem-solving.
So all-in-all a fun book to read.
later
Tom
So the promise of ebooks is that publishing is available to everyone and gifted writers can get their material published without going through the grind of a major publishing house. The reality is that ebooks let anyone publish anything. So while there are a ton of books for 99 cents, I usually steer clear because it's probably not going to be the best stuff in the world. True, lots of authors who get picked up by major publishing houses can turn out drivel too. But at least an editor probably looked it over at least once.
I'm happy to say that The Martian by Andy Weir is one of those self-publishing efforts that came out really well. I pretty much devoured this yesterday and I was surprised at how well it all worked.
The story revolves around Mark Watney, an astronaut on the Ares 3 mission to Mars. Shortly after arrival, the mission is aborted during a freak sandstorm. The rest of the team, believing Mark to be dead, takes off without him. So Mark is abandoned on Mars with only the basics for survival. He has his habitat and the rovers and whatever else he can scrounge up, but the next ship isn't due for a couple years and he needs to figure out how to extend a 3 month mission to 4 years -- and alert people back home that he's still alive.
The book uses log entries to record Mark's travails in securing the basics for survival, with occasional cuts to third-person scenes elsewhere. Essentially, bad stuff keeps happening to Mark and he has to figure out how to deal with it. Mark's log entries are entertaining and there's a lot of hard science going on. There are also quite a few accidents/mishaps/problems for him to work through which stretches credulity a bit, but it's all about the problem-solving.
So all-in-all a fun book to read.
later
Tom
