14 KiB
[HSF][RT][D] The Martian by Andy Weir. An amazing novel that's been plugged before, but barely discussed.
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Author: u/Prezombie *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2y00vh/hsfrtd_the_martian_by_andy_weir_an_amazing_novel/
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Score: 32
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Created: 2015-03-05T07:06:03
Post:
First, a quick blurb. Mark Watney was the 18th person on Mars, the sixth crew member of the third Ares mission by NASA to explore the red planet. Six Sols into the thirty Sol mission, an unexpected storm forces the crew to abandon the surface. Mark was left behind, and he is now the first person to be on a world by himself.
I recently re-listened to The Martian in audiobook, and was amazingly surprised to see that Audible uploaded a revised edition. They corrected the Narrator's pronunciation of ASCII (He originally pronounced it Ay-Ess-See-Two. Epic Facepalm), as well as a revised version of the ending which, IMO, is much better than the original. Supposedly other miscellaneous errors in pronunciation, mathematics, and science were included.
I have a few discussion questions I'd like to pose to the groupmind, and I hope others would like to offer their own questions.
Firstly, did Mark forget anything major that could've improved his situation, which he could be reasonably expected to know?
Secondly, at one point, he reestablishes contact with NASA. They instruct him to lay out rocks in Morse Code if their communication channel fails. I always saw that as rather one-sided, especially considering they already had him on camera with every satellite they could. Besides obvious messages, there's few things that he could tell them to improve his odds of success. They discarded the possibility of broadcasting radio directly to him (main dish on the habitat broken, satellites too weak to broadcast to an antenna), but what about alternate forms of communication? What alternatives to radio could they have explored to try and bridge the gap?
Thirdly, the tragedy the Chinese Space Agency suffered hurt me far more than feels rational. I understand that the entire point of it was that sacrifices had to be made, but why didn't the CSA push for NASA to build the replacement, instead of simply paying the cost of the rocket to bureaucrats who would just pocket the money?
Comments:
u/Zephyr1011 [+5] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (18 minutes later)
Seconding this recommendation. Someone mentioned it here a while ago and convinced me to read it, and it was excellent.
What was the change to the ending that you mentioned? I have no idea which version I had
u/Prezombie [+3] (an hour later)
u/Tenoke [+2] Even the fuckin' trees walked in those movies (5 hours later)
I wish the version I've read had the old ending then. :(
u/Prezombie [+5] (5 hours later)
I dug up an old copy of the self-published version, which explicitly allows non-profit redistribution. Here's the part that was cut from the hardcover version, and from the remastered audiobook.
u/WilliamKiely [+1] (4 months later)
This original ending (of The Martian) seems more genuine to me. I just finished the remastered audiobook and when he began talking about the huge cost of rescuing him, my thought was "Was it really worth it? Probably not." And then he mentioned how it's basically just human nature to want to rescue people, and so the implication is that intentionally not rescuing him despite have a good chance to succeed if they throw enough resources at the problem would just seem like a bad idea to most people. Yet in reality, I think that tough choice would probably be the right one in real life.
Although actually, by the sounds of it I don't think the original ending implies this other view, so perhaps the new feel-good ending is better than the original.
u/stringless [+3] Rebel Alliance (4 hours later)
It really is an excellent read. Originally an Internet serial, now a novel (and apparently a movie is on the way).
u/Prezombie [+2] (4 hours later)
Yup, the movie is scheduled to come out in november, and I'm cautiously optimistic. It feels like it won't be very faithful to the source though, considering the main character's being played by Matt Damon. Hardly the first choice for a botanist-engineer with a wonderful sense of self-deprecating humor.
Between his sense of humor, creativity, determination in the face of pure diablos ex machina, and the scientific accuracy across the fields covered in the book, I fear that the movie will fail to convincingly capture one or more of the core elements that made the book a masterpiece.
u/stringless [+2] Rebel Alliance (4 hours later)
Definitely worried they'll skip a lot of the technical complications/wizardry to make it easier to understand.
u/BadGoyWithAGun [+2] (16 hours later)
Contact comes to mind. Who the fuck decided to rip out the entire explanation of the message encoding and replace it with a shitty, nonsensical 20 second 3d animation?
u/Prezombie [+2] (5 hours later)
For the puzzle of "Give NASA a backup way to communicate with Watney", let's make a few assumptions. Radio is totally a lost cause. the strongest receiver antenna he could make simply couldn't hear the strongest transmitter in orbit. The only ship between Earth and Mars is the Ares ship.
How powerful would a visible light laser need to be to cross 18 light seconds and still be visible to the naked eye? A simple satellite in orbit around Earth might be easier, but I'm not an optical engineer, I don't know the right equations to calculate the strength needed to make Earth visibly change in brightness from mars.
My other idea was to use the Ares and the manuevering jets to slowly turn a dark/light side towards Mars. Considering how heavy Ares was, this plan would likely have a very small data cap.
But really, those solutions are extremely silly, when I have one that requires foresight, but would offer the most bits available to communicate to Mark. There are Satellites in orbit around Mars. Some of these would be visible to Mark. When in high bandwidth mode, the entire orbital situation should've been uploaded to Mark's computer, and kept updated. If high bandwidth is lost, the satellites visible to the naked eye are logged and watched. If Mark wants information from NASA, he writes out in rocks his question, and the designation of two satellites visible the next night, marking one as yes, the other as no. NASA then moves the right satellite so it's no longer on a course in sync with the record. With this, he reliably has as many bits of data possible.
That could've made the later half more interesting, knowing he could literally and accurately divined the sky like the Nazca lines. It would've been intersting to see how he'd spend, say, 7 last bits of data (or more accurately, 7 bit flips. If the question was simple and low-risk, he could ask the same question every night, and have the system return 0 (no change) instead, like "Do I need to pack up and move ASAP?"
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (6 hours later)
I have not read the book, but changing satellite orbits or shifting space vessels around takes fuel, and if this book is realistic to current propulsion methods, fuel really isn't there to be wasted. If they are using remote fuel methods, there might be fuel available, but we haven't started using remote fuel methods outside Earth orbit yet.
u/TildeAleph [+3] (12 hours later)
True, changing orbits would be unrealistic, but changing the satellites attitude so that solar arrays did or did not reflect sunlight at Mark is possible. He most certainly would have a very sensitive camera and telephoto lens that he use to check the apparent brightness of the sats.
I actually think is could be a pretty reasonable back up communication method.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (14 hours later)
Careful use of gyroscopes powered by solar arrays might allow for adjustments of satellite profile without fuel, true. I could see that.
u/Prezombie [+2] (12 hours later)
Yeah, it does take fuel, but it's an extension of actions they already took. Mark was literally NASA's top priority, and they modified the orbit of multiple satellites to have multiple pictures of his base every hour.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (7 hours later)
I will N(st|nd|rd|th) the recommendation on this. One of the best books I've read this decade.
u/leplen [+2] (10 hours later)
Did anyone else feel like the interior life of the character was about as spartan as his surroundings? The people I've discussed this book with felt like by the end it turned into good thing, good thing, bad thing.
Thirdly, the tragedy the Chinese Space Agency suffered hurt me >far more than feels rational. I understand that the entire point of it >was that sacrifices had to be made, but why didn't the CSA push >for NASA to build the replacement, instead of simply paying the >cost of the rocket to bureaucrats who would just pocket the >money?
Because the Chinese politicians don't care about the science, they care about the national pride and prestige associated with completing the mission. Having NASA do the mission instead is entirely antithetical to those goals.
u/Prezombie [+1] (16 hours later)
His character did feel weaker in the last arc of the story, but honestly I didn't mind too much. Most of his big problems were solved, and the last few obstacles that Mark dealt with were relatively minor compared to past events. It's understandable though, they were the likeliest problems to arise, and the story was very strong about making plausible problems for the character.
It's reasonable that Mark's strength of character was weaker in the final arc, extended isolation hurts the psyche. The author made a good decision when he used that arc to mainly focus on filling in the last details of the initial disaster as well as the characters of the other people.
u/duffmancd [+1] (3 days later)
I also really enjoyed this book.
On an almost unrelated note, while reading it I was reminded of Farsky, an indie game with a similar theme. Basically you're stuck under the sea rather than on Mars. While the game is much less realistic and not 'rational' it captures the atmosphere very well I feel. So if you want to relive a similar adventure yourself I'd highly recommend Farsky! It's not too long either, my first playthrough was just a few hours.
u/Prezombie [+1] (3 days later)
I nearly got Farsky when it was in a humble bundle, but after researching it I fled. Poor dev behavior coupled with stopping updates without even implimenting the promised multiplayer isn't something I'm willing to support.
The devs of Natural Selection 2 are making a similar game, Subnautica, and they've got a much better reputation, So that game's on my watchlist.
u/duffmancd [+1] (3 days later)
I wasn't aware of anything surrounding the game when I bought it. I got it as part of a humble bundle which I bought for the other games. I can understand where you're coming from and I'll have to look into Subnautica.
That said, it's a complete (short) game that I still think is worth the price of a movie. But, yeah not much replay value once you've finished and I did leave wanting more. Keep this in mind if anyone wants to buy it.
u/actually_just_idiot [+1] (3 days later)
Who knows how far south the storm goes? Well, NASA probably knows. And the news stations back on earth are probably showing it. And there's probably a website like www.watch-mark-watney-die.com. So there's probably a hundred million people who know exactly how far south the storm goes. But I'm not one of them.
One of my favorite quotes.
u/Prezombie [+1] (3 days later)
I was kinda disappointed that there wasn't a nice little mockup of a "live feed" page showing his current location and the storm at that point in the story. It would've made the joke even better.