The Martian: A Review

So, there's a new Ridley Scott movie coming out starring Matt Damon. In fact, it comes out today. What a crazy random happenstance! Sadly it's not being shown anywhere near me so I can't do a release day review like I was hoping to...buuuuuuuuuuuuut I did, in my excitement about the movie, buy the original book by Andy Weir and devour it in 48 hours. For that reason and absolutely nothing to do with getting Google pings for The Martian, the new Ridley Scott movie with Matt Damon in it, I thought I'd let you know how the book is before you go off to see the movie adaptation with Matt Damon what was directed by Ridley Scott.

I hear there's this film based on this book...

OK, enough tomfoolery; to the review! I actually first heard about The Martian, book or otherwise, from our good old friend Randall Munroe, who writes xkcd:

This is the second most informative site I read.

Naturally I looked up the trailer and lo, it was awesome. Then I promptly forgot about the whole thing until the beginning of the month when I finally decided to buy the book before the film came out, cause I'm that asshole who likes going to a movie and whispering to my neighbour "actually, in the book, they did this..." in every scene. I go to the cinema on my own a lot now, no idea why...

The story is very simple: Mark Watney, a botanist and engineer on the third manned mission to Mars, ends up stranded on the planet and presumed dead after an evacuation during a sandstorm goes wrong. That's...it really. The book follows his, wait for it, desperate battle for survival (aw yeah, I'm a super original journalist) against the harsh Martian environment armed only with spare parts and lots of duct tape. Think of either the bit in Apollo 13 that the comic mentioned or that part in Castaway when he opens all the FedEx parcels to make tools, then spread it over 300 pages. It's awesome. Really, in retrospect, Watney's part was made for Tom Hanks, not Matt Damon, but y'know.

There's even loads of occasions for him to pee on screen again. 

Now, the premise of a scientist tinkering with pipes and machinery for a whole book either sounds like the best thing ever or your worst nightmare; but have no fear, Little Miss I-Hate-Cool-Things, cause Andy Weir has your back. In the hands of many writers, describing constant problem solving, no matter how life-or-death-high the stakes may be, would eventually stagnate into a tedious "he did this, then that happened" rhythm. Weir manages to counteract this, firstly, with a splendidly witty yet realistic character: Mark Watney is quite simply the most charming young man ever to get stranded in space. He can be rattling off back-of-the-napkin calculations about how soon his food is going to run out while simultaneously pondering the mammal-wrangling capabilities of Aquaman and how silly Dukes of Hazzard is. Weir has managed to create a character with all the background and knowledge he'd need to survive his ordeal while making sure he's as relatable as possible to the audience.

The long and short of it is he's wonderful; and I have a feeling a lot of that comes from Weir himself, who is the nerdiest human alive (a computer programmer born to a particle physicist and an electrical engineer, with a love of role-playing games) and simply adorable. Lookit him!

He looks like Stephen King got fused with a 19th century chimney sweep.

Watney makes all the big science jumbo digestible for us plebs, but even so a whole book of one guy tinkering might tire after a while. Weir has countered this by chopping up the big long sections of sciencing with what's going on back home on Earth. And what's going on is everyone is losing their collective shits, that's what. Imagine that reaction when someone realises they've left their pram at the supermarket, but exponentially larger.

"MY BABY!!!"

You might recognise this extract from the movie's trailer:

"If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do."

Every story has a moral to it, and The Martian's is certainly that when it really comes down to it, people can put aside their differences to help someone who is really in need. Yes, it's a bit hokey and sentimental, but... Yeah, it's just plain hokey. Even so, it's nice to see someone having a bit of optimism in their writing, and the parts of the book showing Earth knuckling down together to get Mark home are some of the most satisfying parts of the novel. We're all too bloody cynical and it's about time we enjoyed a bit of gultless pie-in-the-sky idealism; I take back the hokey thing. I'm sorry, Andy.

"S'alright, guv."

What about the meat of the book though? The science in a hard sci-fi novel has to be good; and golly, it is splendid in The Martian. I mentioned a minute ago that Watney acts as a bit of a filter for the audience to help understand everything that's going on, but that's really just a round-a-bout way of saying that Andy Weir should get a job as a lecturer. He's a wizard when it comes to explaining the complexities of biology, engineering, space flight, programming, and god knows what else. You'll finish the novel feeling like you could apply for a job at NASA (note: maybe don't) with the way he manages to gradually lay more and more complex information on you like a delicious knowledge sandwich.

"Mmm, science."

Right, I think I should stop there. This book is fun, interesting, and even surprisingly touching at points. The science is understandable but meaty, and Andy Weir is wonderful. That is all.

Man Crates' Horror Survival Challenge

MAN. CRATE. OPEN. RRRRRRRRR.

Today is a big day for me, dear readers. I have been asked very nicely by the people of at Man Crates, specialists in spectacularly extravagant, testosterone-fuelled gifts for men (or women/snake beasts, let's not be discriminatory here) who like unvarnished wood and sharp things, to partake in a little challenge. They have asked me, in my infinite mind-bending wisdom, to come up with my choice for the perfect horror movie survival crate full of the shit any zombie-bursting, serial-killer-thwarting badass might need to make it out the other end of the night. They maaaay have asked me to do this in time for Halloween, but I didn't notice their email until this week; I'm kind of shitty like that.

Now obviously this is a publicity thing for them, but it's all in good fun and I assure you that you're getting the same old me without any external influence/editing; I'm just handing out a free name-drop seeing as they asked nicely and gave me an idea for a post. So with that little disclaimer out of the way, let's fill our crate.

"Doo-do-do-dooo-do-do-doo-do-do-dooo!" - Me when packing anything.

Hold on. Crates? Crowbars? Undiluted manliness? Where do I know of these things...?

Thaaaat's the ticket.

Many of the other blogs who have taken part in this challenge have noted that there are myriad horror movie scenarios that could play out, and have thus chosen one or a range of them to attempt to narrow down their means of survival. The only choice, however, is to make a crate that would help with getting through the invasion of Earth by an army of inter-dimensional hell-beings. It's what Gordon would want. So without further ado, here's what you'll need to survive Half-Life:

A Pickelhaube 

My lovely assistant Bismarck modelling the latest in
modern headcrab-proofing.

The main danger in a world ravaged by nightmarish aliens is, unsurprisingly, the nightmarish aliens, getting up in your grill and trying to slurp on your precious brain juice and stuff. As such, you'll need something to protect your squishy head bits from what happens when you mix a facehugger with Christmas dinner. 

Friends knew! They tried to warn us!

The Pickelhaube is not only dashingly fashionable in our polite modern society but also acts as an automatic headcrab skewer, making your epic quest across a warn-torn radioactive wasteland that little bit easier. If you've got a weird shaped head or are worried about losing your helmet when a Prussian antiques store isn't handy to get replacements, you could always opt for a more permanent solution: the Hellraiser puzzle box!

Light and easy to use, all you need to do is solve the box and ask the consent-friendly sadomasochistic demigods very nicely if they'll drive hundreds of nails through your skull. Voilà! Instant protection from any face hungry creatures that you might encounter. Plus, if you end up travelling through a wormhole to visit your alien invaders, you can finally answer the age-old question: what happens if you summon murderous inter-dimensional creatures while in the homeworld of other murderous inter-dimensional creatures?

"There is no way this could not be a good idea!"

Suitable Shoes

The world is big, real big, and you're going to need to traverse pretty much all of it via an unnecessarily convoluted route if you're to save the human race. As such, a sturdy pair of hiking boots will make the long, hard slog a little easier on your wee tootsies. However, big, heavy boots are a tad stompy and won't do for those moments when sneakiness is paramount. You don't want to be shuffling through a dark corridor and have your steel toecaps clanging off handrails or be trying to pick your way lightly across a beach only to have your flat-footedness attract swathes of giant, blind bug monsters from deep underground.

Antlions gave me nightmares.

For these occasions, might I suggest a pair of heavy duty water shoes? Not only are they lightweight and hug your feet to make for easier climbing, but they're also great for those times when you've got to get your wade one and want to keep those boots dry for later. Wet shoes equals blisters, remember. Oh, and on that note, spare socks too. They can even double as makeshift mittens if it gets cold or to store antlion grubs (they have surprisingly efficacious natural healing properties) for later use.

If you're feeling cheap, just get a pair of slippers and carpet-shuffle your way to victory.

A Garden Gnome

Take it everywhere you go and don't ask questions.

Water Sterilisation

It's common knowledge that any invasion of the Earth by alien life-forms will inevitably result in lots of unexplained leakage of radioactive material in places where radioactive material would otherwise not have any reason to be. This means huge amounts of our drinking water is likely to be contaminated by the effects of radiation and human/alien corpses; very soon that'll make safe, clean water a commodity of great value.

Bottle caps as currency is soooo 2277.

If you've got yourself a means of producing clean water, you've got a lot of leverage when it comes to trading. To do that, though, you're going to have to find a means of distillation, ion exchange, or reverse osmosis; all three of which are useful ways of removing bad stuff from water, although they have varying effectiveness depending on what the radioactive isotope is. You can get portable distillers and reverse osmosis systems that are a reasonable size whereas ion exchange is somewhat chunkier, so the former is a better shout. Once you get you system working with a plentiful source of water nearby, you could curtail your world-saving activities in lieu of a career selling water to the masses for a sickeningly high price. Hey, gotta make the most of it, right?

Three cheers for creating a capitalist dystopia!

Books

Mankind is in ruins, society completely broken down. All anyone can spare the time to think about is how to stay alive for another day. Once worldly possessions have become fuel, a means for survival; and as a result, much of our history is lost. That doesn't sound great... How about helping keep humanity's rich heritage alive (and maybe preventing past mistakes being repeated) by bringing along a few good books. Some classic literature, engineering manuals, philosophy; anything you like that might be useful or entertaining. A war-torn future can be a depressing and occasionally boring place to be, particularly when you've got your feet up and pickelhaube/slippers on manning your water shop all day, so crack out some good reads to make the time fly by while you wait for events to hurry up and conclude themselves already!

They're also great for stacking on stuff to solve annoyingly obtuse physics puzzles.

That's my crate all filled up! Please let me know in the comments what you might add to your own survival crate and be sure to have a look at these other blogs who joined me in taking up the survival crate challenge.