Hardcover, 369 pages

English language

Published Feb. 11, 2014 by Crown.

ISBN:
978-0-8041-3902-1
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
932376129

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (65 reviews)

A mission to Mars.

A freak accident.

One man's struggle to survive.

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 and forces his crew to evacuate the planet while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded on Mars' surface, completely alone. with no way to signal Earth that he's alive. And even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone years before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, Mark 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's not ready to quit. Armed with nothing but his ingenuity and his engineering skills—and a gallows sense of humor that proves to be his greatest …

58 editions

Review of 'The Martian' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Good - engaging, pacy plot, plausible scientific detail and interesting characters. Audiobook narration largely very good.

Bad - False, jokey modesty of the hero who is clearly a genius. Too much geeky indulgence in explanations of the science. Felt like a textbook sometimes. Note for the narrator, whose German pronunciation was occasionally off the mark: it's "ge-fair-lich", not "ge-FAR -lich". And the Germans I know don't say "und"; they say "and", pronounced "end"!

Not disappointed by the lack of aliens.

Review of 'The Martian' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I don't think it's ever taken me more than two days to read this book, and I've read it several times now. It's just that gripping. You get to the point where you stop lying to yourself about "just one more chapter," and decide you'll live with the sleep deprivation. Watney is the kind of guy the whole internet wants to be, in a situation that nobody wants to be in. Yet the bottom-line struggle—things keep going wrong and nothing is cutting him any slack on Mars—is totally relatable and understanding.

What an impressive book. If Weir's timeline is right, the first astronauts to go to Mars are in high school right now. I hope they read this book. And then I hope they push past the new fears and complexes this book will give them and go to Mars anyway.

Review of 'The Martian' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Writing style was very informal and blog-like, but it helped make this book a fast read. The material was interesting -- it was a series of realistic challenges and realistic solutions. However, this is less a novel and more a diary from the future with an Earth-perspective novella interwoven among some entries to stave off readers' waning interest, rather than to serve as a plot device or provide symbolism.

Despite the artless writing, it's a good book. If it weren't for the language, I would recommend that every highschool student read this to catch the contagious confidence that being an engineer gives.

Review of 'The Martian' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

The only - ONLY - complaint I have about this story is the neatness with which Watney's problems occur at his absolute apogee - i.e., something catastrophic happens ONLY when things are going exactly according to plan. It makes it a little too predictable the third time around, but it's a small complaint. Everything else about this book, I love.

Review of 'The Martian' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A fun read, though perhaps I just happen to fall into the geeky demographic the book is aimed at. I am impressed by the many ways the author dreamed up to make his protagonist suffer to the point of dying, along with the clever ways he had Watney extricate himself from each setback. It doesn't read as a cinematic treatment at all, with all the raw details of the technology (worked out by Weir using computer simulations he wrote) set out on the page, the number of potatoes the man had to keep from starving, the path of the ground loop that nearly destroyed his chances for coming home, facts and figures that might make another reader's eyes glaze over but which seemed to cement the realism for me. So if it's true that Hollywood is putting together a blockbuster project filming this, you might want to read the original …

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Subjects

  • Astronauts--Fiction.
  • Survival--Fiction.
  • Mars (Planet)--Fiction.