Week 9: The Martian

The Martian was a very amusing read to me because it was my first time reading a full work of science fiction. It was definitely an outlier to the other reading options this week because, in theory, it does not contain elements of a Space Opera genre like we discussed in class. It is much more of a pure science-fiction novel, whereas a normal space opera work, to me, relies heavily on elements of fantasy to define characters and help build their world. 

The first difference from Fantasy I can notice in The Martian is that the world in which the story takes place is something we are very familiar with. Centering the plot on a NASA mission to Mars gone wrong is a rather realistic take on what our future could look like. Like we mentioned in class, it is more like a futuristic take on Robinson Crusoé, just replacing the island with the Red Planet. The way in which the book is written is very interesting to me, and it works in favor of the science-fiction genre. Andy Weir manages to make all the science in this novel rather believable through the voice-log-based narration format that gives us a much closer interaction with Mark, the protagonist, and makes it so that his incredibly detailed descriptions of his journey (and the "science" behind it) are more friendly, even if at times they are not very easy to understand. I was actually impressed with how legitimate all of the science elements in the story felt, it was clear that Weir did a lot of research to make this experience of being stranded on Mars as realistic as possible with as much existent technology available for us today, and I think this is one of my favorite aspects of The Martian. Definitely one of my favorite reads for this class.