A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much-some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir. When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive.
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