The Martian

The latest book I've been reading is The Martian: A Novel. Here's the Booklist blurb from the Amazon page ...

Remember Man Plus, Frederik Pohl’s award-winning 1976 novel about a cyborg astronaut who’s sent, alone, to Mars? Imagine, instead, that the astronaut was just a regular guy, part of a team sent to the red planet, and that, through a series of tragic events, he’s left behind, stranded and facing certain death. That’s the premise of this gripping and (given its subject matter) startlingly plausible novel. The story is told mostly through the log entries of astronaut Mark Watney, chronicling his efforts to survive: making the prefab habitat livable and finding a way to grow food, make water, and get himself off the planet. Interspersed among the log entries are sections told from the point of view of the NASA specialists, back on Earth, who discover that Watney is not dead (as everyone assumed) and scramble together a rescue plan. There are some inevitable similarities between the book and the 1964 movie Robinson Crusoe on Mars, but where the movie was a broad sci-fi adventure, the novel is a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man’s ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Riveting. --David Pitt

You can probably get a good idea of the book from the customer reviews - there are more than 14,000 of them! I learned of the book when I saw a trailer for the Ridley Scott movie that's been made from the book ...



I'm just a bit into the book so far but I already know more about growing potatoes than anybody has a right to ;) Here's a review of the book from the Wall Street Journal - Book Review: 'The Martian' by Andy Weir | 'Red Rising' by Pierce Brown ... An unheralded author has written the best pure sci-fi novel in years.