The same storm that forced the crew of Ares 3 to abort their mission six days after landing hurled him away from his companions, knocking him unconscious and breaching his suit. And now he is alone on Mars, with no way of alerting Earth to his presence and four years before Ares 4 touches down in Schiaparelli crater 3200km away.
Sure he has the Hab, which will provide him with air, warmth and shelter for the duration, but even at the most optimistic his food supply will last only a year.
But he has 12 raw potatoes (originally destined for Thanksgiving dinner), a window box full of soil from his botanical experiments and a No 8 wire mentality that would put Barry Crump to shame. Within weeks he has a plan that should, all things going well, see him at the Ares 4 landing site in time to greet the new arrivals to his world.
But if it were that simple there would be no story, so as the world watches helplessly and the best minds at Nasa scramble to come up with a rescue plan, one thing after another goes wrong.
It is testament to the thoroughness of author Andy Weir's research that the hardest thing to believe was that the head of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is called Bruce. Both the problems and the solutions that the ever-inventive hero comes up with seem perfectly plausible, although I did find myself a little bogged down here and there. The main irritant for me was the foreshadowing of each disaster by a shift in perspective from the first person into an omniscient voice-over describing what is happening at a molecular detail. This got tedious, as did some of the detailed technical explanations.
Despite these flaws, most of the novel is presented through Watney's personal log entries and he is a character so engaging and personable. I was thoroughly captured by his story. Recommended for hard sci-fi fans and anybody who wonders how MacGyver would cope in space.
- Cushla McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
