|Space Opera| - Andy Weir's "The Martian" - Book Review

_{I’ve never felt dumber in my life.}

_{If it wasn’t for Weir’s amazing job at writing (along with his impeccable humor), I would’ve stopped reading this book almost immediately. No wonder it made it to the NY Times Best Seller List! He makes science fun.}

_{He made me Google videos about Mars afterwards to learn more about how this could’ve of happen. (I still haven’t been able to watch the film, BUT NOW I WILL)}

_{Mark is literally stuck in another planet and even then he keeps his cool and his positivity. What an amazing, suspenseful, yet hilarious story this is. This is a great example of how to do an astronaut story right. And I can’t believe there was even a big message on teamwork and “never leaving a man behind”.}

_{I’ve never been so stressed with a book in my life, and having the story be kept mostly as log entries made me questions if he was going to make it or not. Is it going to end dramatically and the epilogue is going to be about how other astronauts found his log entries? I did have some moments where I didn’t even know what was happening (Was NASA going to get help from China or not? Oh, no… Oh wait!) I felt dumber than ever and it reminded about how Science was never going to be a good career choice but this was great.}

_{I enjoyed every single thing of it, from Mark’s optimism to his ability to actually grow food on Mars, out of all things. (I would’ve died the moment I was hit by that gust of wind, damn) Also, the fact that we as readers also get to experience the perspective of other characters such as NASA and even the rest of the Hermes crew. I was glad to see such hardworking effort to actually get back to Mark. I don’t know why it doesn’t seem realistic to me for many people to work and sacrifice so much for the life of one man on Mars, but I’m they did. I’m glad they didn’t leave him to die there. I’m glad that this fictional tale can give out a bigger message on the humanity and the loyalty of the human instinct to help those in need.}

_{And with that, I leave a quote that I thought was from the book. But nope, it’s from the movie. Still as moving as the last, literary log entry, though:}  

“When I was up there, stranded by myself, did I think I was going to die? Yes. Absolutely, and that’s what you need to know going in because it’s going to happen to you. This is space. It does not cooperate. At some point everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south and you’re going to say 'This is it. This is how I end.' Now you can either accept that or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math, you solve one problem. Then you solve the next one, and then the next and if you solve enough problems you get to come home.”                 –Matt Damon as Mark in 2014’s The Martian.