The Martian

The Martian is the science-fiction debut of the American writer Andy Weir, originally published in English as The Martian. The book unfolds as a first-person log: the astronaut Mark Watney lands on Mars with the Ares 3 mission and becomes one of the first people to walk on the Martian surface. On the sixth day of the mission, a sudden dust storm forces the crew to evacuate; during the evacuation Watney meets with an accident and loses contact with his crewmates, who believe him dead and can only lift off and return home according to procedure, leaving him alone on the red wasteland. What he has left is a habitat, limited supplies, and a rescue he can hardly expect to come in time. With a background in both botany and mechanical engineering, Watney does not wait to die; treating the Mars base as a desert island, he stays alive through calculation, experiment, and makeshift improvisation: solving the problems of water, oxygen, food, and heating, and repairing communications equipment to try to reach Earth. Meanwhile, people on Earth gradually discover he is alive, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, and related institutions begin a multinational effort for an almost impossible rescue, while his crewmates, far away on the journey home, face a hard choice. The novel is known for its solid aerospace detail, light, humorous grumbling, and tense step-by-step problem solving, and many call it a Martian Robinson Crusoe. The episodes of growing potatoes, making water, and modifying equipment are widely known, and the author even wrote programs to calculate orbits and travel times so that the plot would hold up as far as possible. After the 2015 film of the same name, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, was released, the book became known to more readers and reached the bestseller lists.