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[Monthly Book Club] November 2017 Book Discussion - The Martian & next month's book announcement
Post:
Because suggestions never "go bad", please suggest books for future book clubs here:
######Perpetual Book Suggestions Thread
(You can suggest as many books as you like as often as you like, so don't be shy!
This month we read The Martian, a gripping science fiction story about Mark Watney, an astronaut trapped on Mars with only his engineering and SPACE BOTANY to rely on. He befalls a lot of disasters but using his wit and knowledge he comes out ahead.
Posting Guidelines: We're trying to figure this out as we go, but here's my thoughts to start: if you just want to give your overall feelings, make a post. If you have "discussion questions" that you want to discuss in more depth (anything from philosophical discussions, writing tip requests, things that bugged you, etc), try making a dedicated subthread? We'll see how we like it!
Feedback: I'll make a [meta thread] in here that is intended for you to give me feedback for how I can do this better, or for what you particularly liked and want to make sure I don't change.
NEXT MONTH'S BOOK:
Title: Gulf, Robert Heinlein
Ebook cost: Free, http://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781451637854B/9781451637854B___2.htm
Word count: 26k
Genre: Speculative fiction
Synopsis: Interesting take on writing smart characters. Doesn't check all the boxes, but does put some thought into it.
Why /r/rational would like it: Gruesome murder of NPC (writing is not heavy on the grue though).
No content warnings.
Next month's discussion will start on or about the 14th of December. These dates vary slightly based on my own personal schedule and I also try not to post them on the same day as a weekly thread.
Comments:
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u/MagicWeasel:
This book started as a web serial and ultimately ended up as a big-budget film. What lessons about writing did you learn from it?-
u/alexanderwales:
I think first and foremost, people are willing to deal with a lot more exposition than they're usually given credit for, even when that exposition is delivered *as* exposition and without much in the way of framing. The other big thing I took from it is that if you're writing a "survival" story, the tension has a tendency to get lower over time. In the beginning, you're dealing with the things that can kill you in a few hours, then the things that will kill you in a few days, and eventually the things that will kill you in weeks or even months, or which won't kill you *at all*. Up until the hab explodes, that's the general trajectory of *The Martian*; things get less and less urgent with every problem that gets solved. I would actually argue that from a Doyalist perspective, that's *why* the hab explodes, because without that, there's just not enough drama in the story. Something needed to happen to shake things up, and the explosion was that thing. Generally speaking, I would consider that one of the challenges of this variety of Man vs Nature story, and by extension, a few other types of stories as well, where there's a natural decrease in the tension that needs to be addressed with some counteracting force within the story.-
u/MagicWeasel:
I think *The Hatchet* does that well in a way, because in a sequel, he ends up having to face winter with its own new set of challenges. It raises the tension without feeling like an asspull because we all know that winter is a thing that happens. The rover capsizing is another example of that, I guess: it all seems hunky dory and we need more tension. Not that any of the issues that arise in the story feel like asspulls, of course. Just that there's an asspull scale, and "winter happens" is lower than "it turns out HAB canvas isn't perfect". -
u/None:
> the tension has a tendency to get lower over time one way the martian deals with that quite well is by changing the objectives over time to increasingly difficult ones. Day 1 its get air to breathe, then its growing food... then at the end its hijacking a rocket and making a space interception. At each point there is a threat to his life but its distinct from the earlier ones
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u/MagicWeasel:
I asked this question because it's the first time I read The Martian (I think I've read it 5 times now) since I started writing my probably-never-to-see-the-light-of-day same-sex supernatural romance novel. And I can see the nuts and bolts of the story more: like, I always worried about transitioning between different scenes, that it would be jarring or something, but this book and no doubt countless others do the exact same thing and as long as the reader doesn't feel there was anything else to say in the scene then they're good. Also, the book has some "weird" departures: before the HAB explodes there's a weirdly detached piece of writing from the point of view of part of the HAB canvas as it goes through manufacture and testing. Rather than being "weird" in a bad way, it's weird in a good way. My own story has a weird departure in it that I hope will also be weird in a good way if anyone ever reads it. (My husband actually said he really enjoyed it and said it was similar to something that happened in Homestuck, and gave me pointers on ways to make it feel *more* different to the rest of the story for emphasis). Anyway it made me feel better about my writing, is about all I'm trying to say here :)
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u/daydev:
On a reread I noticed a seemingly gaping plot hole, and I think it's too big, I must be missing something. I tried googling for it, but in a few places where it's mentioned responses are missing the point or offer handwaves that don't explain anything. I'm hoping /r/rational can point out what I'm missing. So you remember when Mark was making water from hydrazine there was the hidden build up of hydrogen. And the story made a big dial how it could have exploded from the smallest spark or even too much static. But during the sols the buildup was happening Mark had an *open flame* going inside the Hub doing the controlled burn. How come it didn't explode as soon as it reached the critical concentration? What do you think?-
u/tomcatfever:
Read the afterward. The author addresses this and many other inconsistencies around explosions in the story. Basically it boils down to “I wanted to torture the main character in unexpected ways with believable solutions. Explosion are fun.” I’m paraphrasing but that is the gist of it.- u/daydev:
Where is this afterward that talks about explosions? I have this passage in *An Essay from Andy Weir: How Science Made Me a Writer* at the end of the book: > Even though my plan was to torture Mark, I knew from the very beginning that I didn’t want my hero to suffer one unlikely, disastrous coincidence after the next. I decided that each problem Mark faced had to be a plausible consequence of his situation—or, better yet, an unintended consequence of his solution to a previous problem. He could suffer an equipment failure in machinery stretched beyond its intended use, but he couldn’t be struck by lightning and then have a meteor crash on him.
- u/daydev:
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