Andy Weir's The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir is a newly published novel that has recently been adapted into a movie. I was introduced to this novel through Audible. It was one of my suggested reads and it sounded interesting. I’m really into science fiction and technology, which brought me to reading this book. The Martian takes place a majority of the time on Mars. The fourth planet from the sun doesn’t provide great hospitality as we see in this novel. Mark Watney, a botanist on a mission on Mars, is lost and left behind in a dust storm on the planet. The other crewmates have escaped the deadly storm, but Watney did not. He now has to survive the long time it will take to get another mission to Mars to rescue him. With his own feces and being a botanist, he creates food on an otherwise desolate planet. He also uses leftover equipment on Mars to build a sustainable environment and accurately attempt survival. I really enjoyed the way Andy Weir used actual evidence and science to make this story as true to life as he could. Mark Watney did not have a special device that magically created plants on the dry planet. No, he used his own waste and water that he extracted from hydrogen to grow the potatoes. With the rationing and extensive botanist ways that Watney expresses he attempts to prevent starvation. His Hab, where he stays, implodes and a lot of the things he has accomplished fail. When it comes to communicating with NASA, it’s a whole other story.