Andy Weir, The Martian (2014)

This foresquare piece of Hard SF competent-man-in-astro-peril novel proved one of the 'event' genre titles of 2014 (Ridley Scott's movie, starring Matt Damon as the title character, is set for an Autumn 2015 release). Self-pubbed in 2012 it got the mainstream press treatment last year, but I didn't get round to reviewing it. Ian Sales wondered why this was so on Twitter. I already knew he disliked the book.

@arrroberts I thought it was pretty shit. Should have been called The Potato Man in the Very Cold Place
— Ian Sales (@ian_sales) December 31, 2014

His reaction was the more: shun. I wasn't quite so negative. As I replied:

@ian_sales I quite liked the way it stuck straightforwardly at its task, like its protagonist.
— Adam Roberts (@arrroberts) December 31, 2014

Still, it's a metaphorically and in places literally pedestrian work, and the rapture with which it has been greeted in some circles is a tad puzzling. Mark Watney is the NASA astronaut marooned on the Red Planet (I've a 'Watney's Red Barrel' joke in reserve, back here, in case it's needed) who has to keep himself alive by growing potatoes, patching up his kit, and hiking from place to place to avoid dust storms. He's eventually rescued, or else he eventually dies on Mars. I mean, obviously you know without reading the book it's going to be one of those two endings. More, you can easily guess (without reading the book) which ending Weir goes with.

So why did I like this book so much more than Ian 'Chuckles' Sales? It may be because The Potato Man in the Very Cold Place strikes me as an genuinely excellent title for a SF tale (so much so that I may steal it). Contemporary SF, I'd say, could do with little less explosive pow!-pow!-pow! heat, and rather more emphasis on the potatoes side of things. I'm reminded of the Steve Baxter novel (Titan, I think it is) where the whole deep-space exploration plot hinges on the carrots one of the two astronauts grows on board. Baxter is a much better writer of Hard SF than Weir, mind you; and Ridley Scott would do better optioning one of his novels for the blockbuster treatment. But you can't have everything.