The Martian Review

My first response to The Martian was curiosity. My later response was an argument with the way it handles cooperation. Astronaut Mark Watney is stranded on Mars and uses engineering, botany, mathematics, and humor to survive until rescue becomes possible. I did not need another twist before the practical problem-solving entered the setup. I needed the people affected by survival around the practical problem-solving to feel specific, and mostly they did.

The people gave survival its real pressure through the practical problem-solving. Mark's competence remains entertaining because every solution creates the conditions for another problem. The person on the page is allowed to be inconsistent about survival, which made the choices easier to trust. I was most attentive during the practical problem-solving, mission teamwork, science explanations, and balance of danger with comedy. The attention paid to the practical problem-solving gives the larger question of survival a human scale.

For me, the real argument concerns survival and cooperation. The plot matters because it forces survival and cooperation into practical choices, where a clean belief becomes harder to maintain.

I did lose confidence when Mark's emotional life is less developed than his technical voice, and some humor repeats. A little more patience would have made the material around survival easier to believe.

I found myself rereading the section around the practical problem-solving, because it changes the emotional meaning of survival without announcing the change.

I also noticed how often survival appears through routine while cooperation remains unspoken.

The book does not close every question around cooperation. That unfinished pressure around cooperation is more memorable than a cleaner answer would have been.