The opening throws the reader right into the action, beginning with dying astronaut Mark Watney stranded on the surface of Mars-a piece of antenna piercing his suit and his oxygen running out. It was the most exciting first-person Mars experience I’d ever read. The book and its surprisingly faithful cinematic adaptation, courtesy of screenwriter Drew Goddard and director Ridley Scott.īetter late than never, I finally grabbed a paperback copy of “The Martian” while visiting a Barnes and Noble in June of 2015 (four months before the film was due in theaters), and I could not put it down.
As I’ve heard Weir say on various convention panels, he was still working in an “Office Space”-style cubicle when he got the call that “The Martian” was being considered as a big budget Hollywood movie!
Artemis a novel software#
Note: Weir had a long career as an IT software engineer for various companies before the success of “The Martian” launched his full-time writing career.
Artemis a novel movie#
“The Martian” went to print in 2011, and the faithful movie adaptation, by screenwriter Drew Goddard, would follow four years later. Weir’s book began as a serialized online blog that became so popular he was soon offered a near-simultaneous publishing and movie deal. From what I was hearing, Weir’s book sounded like a granted wish. Despite my affection for the movie, I’ve always felt it could’ve used an updating, given the vast sum of knowledge of Mars acquired since Mariner 4’s fleeting flyby in 1965. Personally, I think it belongs on the same shelf as other survival epics, such “Cast Away” (2000), despite its admittedly goofy title ( the Criterion release Blu-Ray agrees with me). When I was a kid, one of my favorite B-movies was a little undiscovered gem called “Robinson Crusoe On Mars” (1964), which was hopelessly outdated in its science, but had a genuine earnestness in its tale of an astronaut’s survival on the red planet. Well, a book that embraced real-life science and involved survival on Mars definitely perked my ears up. ******SPOILERS AHEAD!!****** Andy Weir appears as a guest judge on “Project Runway: Outer Space Edition.” “The Martian” was written by a newly minted author named Andy Weir, and it was being made into a movie, which was set to debut that fall. Then in early 2015, I got wind of a very popular book that somehow (?) escaped this lifelong Mars lover’s radar. In later years, I came to appreciate authors like Kim Stanley Robinson, Stephen Baxter and Ted Chiang. Clarke and Ursula Le Guin- all giants of the genre.
Wells, Frank Herbert, Octavia Butler, Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Much of the early literary sci-fi I’ve read in my life came from greats like Ray Bradbury (my all-time favorite author), H.G. As a lifelong fan of science fiction, I’m not embarrassed to admit that sometimes the genre can fall a bit short in a couple of areas humor and actual science.
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