I finished The Martian last night. It’s an amazing book. It’s sci-fi, but with enough realism in it to make is sound plausible. The stranded man is an engineer, so there are many detailed descriptions of how he fits things together to make new things he needs.
Read this last week, only took a few hours as it pulled me right in. Fantastic book, excited for the movie; though I’m a bit weirded out that Dr. Mann is going to be stranded on Mars..
I’m excited to start it; it’s next on my (ever-growing) list after I finish Infinite Jest.
How is the writing itself? I’ve heard great things about the realism in the sci-fi, but not much about the story or prose outside of the technical details.
There’s for sure sections of the book that read like a really interesting spreadsheet…but it doesn’t fall into that pit of genre fiction where they spend too much time on genre and not enough time on solid writing. It’s good.
I finished The Martian last night. It’s an amazing book. It’s sci-fi, but with enough realism in it to make is sound plausible. The stranded man is an engineer, so there are many detailed descriptions of how he fits things together to make new things he needs.
Read this last week, only took a few hours as it pulled me right in. Fantastic book, excited for the movie; though I’m a bit weirded out that Dr. Mann is going to be stranded on Mars..
I’m excited to start it; it’s next on my (ever-growing) list after I finish Infinite Jest.
How is the writing itself? I’ve heard great things about the realism in the sci-fi, but not much about the story or prose outside of the technical details.
The writing is good. It’s compelling. The author explains things clearly and pretty much every chapter ends on a cliffhanger.
There’s for sure sections of the book that read like a really interesting spreadsheet…but it doesn’t fall into that pit of genre fiction where they spend too much time on genre and not enough time on solid writing. It’s good.
I’d recommend Rocket Girls for something vaguely similar. Also the nonfiction Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth.