Space Opera & The Martian

I read The Martian, AKA The Misadventures of Mark Watney in Space. It's pretty witty, quick, and comical. The ironic humor is supplemented by the abundance of scientific facts that then provide a vehicle to facilitate the gags. There are some great sequences on Mars where Weir uses the diary format of Watney's recording to extend the ironic elements of the story. e.x.

• Sol 34- “Things are finally going my way. In fact, they’re going great! I have a chance to lie after all!”
• Sol 37 (immediately after)- “I am fucked, and I’m gonna die!”

And my favorite; “A steady, obnoxious beeping that eventually roused me from a deep and profound desire to just docking die.” Other than jokes about his livelihood, Mark makes a lot of jabs at bureaucratic policies and processes. Too bad I felt these jokes got boggled down by Weir's favor of hard science.

Weir, at many points, neglects to properly describe anything to form any helpful imagery to assist readers with the harder science aspects of the novel. Here are some thoughts I had while ready:

• I'm halfway through the book and still don't know the configuration of the goddamn HAB because it was so quickly and poorly described.
• And how the fuck do the rovers really look? I know what a rover looks like, but this one in the story is hard to understand. Like how big is it? What are its dimensions so I can understand how Mark is trying to fit an oxygenator in it?
• And what is Pathfinder?
• It's hard to keep track of what's been jerry-rigged with what.

I often felt like I had to play catch-up because I was always confused with the visual aspects of Watney's technical creations. Although the language used is pretty colloquial, it's a hard read because there's a lot of technical jargon and attitudes. Weir is clearly making fun of bureaucratical processes but I found I could read 2-6 pages and not recall what I've read. I read the book relatively quickly but it still felt like I was fighting an uphill battle. The simultaneous events on earth and on Mars are more confusing rather than enlightening. It's disappointing too because any event that is mildly suspenseful or gripping, is drawn out with science talk that is untranslatable and makes it anticlimactic. I guess just don't like Weir's writing but I felt he really sucked all the air out of the retrieval of Mark Watney to the point I didn't even care, I just wanted to finish the book.

However if I understood hard science I can imagine these gags would be enhanced by the in depth scientific lens in which they're displayed. Overall, the book wasn't for me or my audience. Additionally, it did teach great lessons on procedural thinking instead of brute force to process a problem. And Mark Watney ran into a lot of problems.