Martian Reader's Guide Questions

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Martian Reader's Guide Questions
and my answers in response.

Not too many novels have a reader's guide or homework in them, so I'm supposing there are students who are going to have The Martian as required reading. I find that sad actually. Except for the profanity, this is the best hard science fiction novel I've ever read. Making something required tends to steal away any possibility of enjoyment, so that's why I'd find it sad for this book to be made required reading. At least it's nothing so pessimistic as Niel Asher's book The Departure or annoying weird like Kim Robinson's Red Mars. Seeing as I'm not a student at the moment, it might be odd to want to do the homework. However, having copious amounts of boredom and spare time since my wife abandoned me and I can't find work again yet, I need to spend my time doing something and there's only so many times I can watch every season of Star Trek TNG, DS9, ENT, TOS, & VOY while hopelessly waiting for my wife to speak with me again and return home from "babysitting" for her brother. Also, I can somewhat relate to Mark Watney.

Q1: "How did The Martian challenge your expectations of what the novel would be? What did you find most surprising about it?"

After having read Red Mars and The Departure, and having read the back cover, I was expecting death. It even sounded in parts like the movie Armeggedon, in which John MacLane sacrifices himself to make sure an astroid doesn't turn the Earth into silly putty and everything breaks down at a rate of approximately one gogol per femptosecond. Instead nobody dies, unless you count bacteria and potatoes. Things do break down, but in ways that aren't absurd but actually make sense. When I first read the back cover, while my wife was still with me and we were browse shopping at Half Price Books, I had then decided against buying it because it sounded like another "it's impossible to live on Mars" story and at that point I didn't want to read anymore stuff like that. I hope for the day when humans really do set foot on Mars as per the ideas of Robert Zubrin, and after attempting to read junk like Red Mars by Robinson and the depressing Malthusian novel Departure by Asher, along with the back cover sounding bleak like the movies Armeggedon, Red Planet, Last Days on Mars (which had zombies, yay), or, the cream of the crap, that one Mission to Mars movie with the dumb-tush aliens who had the stupidest and most overkill automated security system in the universe. After such bad films and books otherwise, I misjudged The Martian and for that I am truly sorry. Heck though, if my wife hadn't left me I might not have been able to fully appreciate this book. Thank you Jackie, wonderful lady who said she'd "never leave me for anything ever" for having left me. Due to you, I can really relate to Mark Watney's character more than I'd want to ever. Seriously though, remove the profanity and this is the best book about what living on Mars under non-ideal circumstances might be like. After reading books on writing novels, the most surprising thing to me was the extensive use of the first person singular subjective pronoun, "I", whereas supposedly that's generally a "no-no". Having it written, mostly, in the form of a journal was a good way the author bypassed that "rule" and he did it well. I hate arbitrary rules, especially where creativity should rule instead, so I say, "well done."

Q2: "What makes us root for a character to live in a survival story? In what ways do you identify with Mark Watney? How does the author get you to care about Mark?"

Most people aren't heartless from birth. The author's answer at the book's end is valid. You see someone in need, you want to help them. Only after being tricked and fooled by swindlers or trained by parents/television/ex-friends to be mistrusting of others is that compulsion to help others outweighed by the desire not to get hurt again. Still though, if you see someone in need most will, at least, want to help them. As stated before, in my whining, my now ex-wife has helped me plenty to identify with Mark Watney. As for how the author makes the readers to care about the character: he doesn't. It's normal to think in terms of abstraction and thinking in terms of what others are going through, most humans do this with whatever best available data they have and the probability of truth values they subconsciously assign to each datum. The author provides the data, and in a work of fiction the truth values are absolute (within the story, although since it's fiction the real life truth values are nil). To some extent, the author must make a character who doesn't deserve to die and place them in dire situations. In this book, nobody dies. However, it could have easily been made into an Outer Limits type tragedy. I was half expecting at least one of the characters to die, Beck most likely, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book had a happy ending. Oh, by the way, this has spoilers. Sorry everyone.

Q3: "Do you believe the crew made the right choice in abandoning the search for Mark? Was there an alternative choice?"

Given the time limits, and all data indicating Mark was dead, yes they made the right snap decision. If they had stayed longer the Mars Ascent Vehicle would have started to fall over again and they used up all the fuel they could in righting it the first time. If they had started adding tension wires and braces to the MAV at the first sign of the storm, then perhaps it wouldn't have been necessary. It is the only taxi off the planet within 3235 kilometers though and you probably wouldn't want to have to remove extra crap from the hull right when you need to launch though. Everyone could have been stuck rather than just Mark, and then they'd be the Donner party on Mars after Sol 32 onward. Not a pretty picture. Only one person being there though did allow the supplies to last quite a bit more. I think that the author did a reasonably good setup for how the Ares 3 crew accidentally marooned a crew member, though their skills being repairs/construction and farming did seem mightly lucky.

Q4: "Did you find the science and technology of Mark's problem solving accessible? How did that information add to the realism of the story?"

It was entirely understandable, though from watching the movie Europa Report I got the impression that Hydrazine is not something you'd want to have around in the air you're going to breath. Without knowing exactly how toxic that stuff is, I can only conclude that either Europa Report overplayed its toxicity or The Martian underplayed it. Europa Report sucked worse than the vacuum of space, so I hope The Martian has it right. I wouldn't want to find out personally, but The Martian is a far better story and good authors earn the right to a "vacuum shout out" occasionally (reference to a novel of Steven Kent's Clone Republic series, in which Wayson Harris used a loudspeaker in a decompressed portion of a ship. That author has never fully heard the end of that grief, but really it doesn't matter compared to how well the rest of what he writes is written. There is other bathwater of course, but not of the type Sheldon Cooper would complain about.) Yes though, having the technical explainations of plausible methods of problem solving written in an understandable manner does increase the realism, even better than mere technobabble does. Jargon itself does provide a sense of realism, with people talking as they would for their jobs in the Delta Quadrant as they defeat the Borg with transphasic super quantum hamster defecation of doom, but making a real solution for a physically possible problem and explaining it in an understandable manner is greatly superior to saying merely technical sounding gibberish. Andrew Weir even does a good job with making such explainations interesting. Still though, I wish there were less profanity. I myself, unfortunately, do occasionally have a tendency to swear after working a few hundred days in a row, not being able to sleep for nearly a week or more at a time whenever I have to work third shift, or when dealing with customers who accuse me of being a racist if I ask for their ID or wont give them a discount. I don't like it that I sometimes let stress and fatigue get to me that way, but I don't causually swear like Mark Watney or any of the other characters. The way the swearing happens isn't gross like in Tom Clancy's later novels, but kinda just goofy and unnecessary in my opinion. It does also add a sense of realism, given that most adults nowadays talk like the middle schoolers of the early to mid '90s, but to the extent that it discourages me from wanting to recommend the book I don't like the profanity. The realistic problem solving was great though and better than merely having words that only sound like they might mean something as an explanation.

Q5: "What are some of the ways the author established his credibility with scientific detail? Which of Mark's solutions did you find most amazing, yet believable?"

You know that cloudy feeling you get when you're asked to summarize a whole bunch of data? I have that now. Let's see though, the part about using a thermocouple generator as a heater made a fair bit of sense. The Seabeck effect is very inefficient, but it made sense to use the 100 Watt electric output nuclear battery for its 1500 Watts of heat that's wasted otherwise. Later submersing it in water along with the air tubes for heating the air from one of the life support machines, the one that processes carbon dioxide I think it was, was a pretty cool idea. I think a cooler idea would be to just make a pressure cooker like assembly with the RTG, bring the water up to whatever pressure needed to spin a turbine that could be connected to an electric motor from the second rover, and then heat sink it with another system of thermocouples while the steam is being condensed and sent back to the pressure cooker through some type of valve system (probably would require a pump to work against the internal pressure while still allowing a difference in pressure so the turbine would work.) IDK might be too much work and not really safe. I do like the work done on the rovers though, that was funny - "I used a sophisticated method to remove sections of plastic (hammer), then carefully removed the solid foam insulation (hammer again)." The humor is great.

Q6: "What is your visual picture of Mars, based on descriptions in the book? Have you seen photographs of the planet?"

Who hasn't seen photographs of Mars and why would they read this book? My visual picture of the milieu is rather Mars-like as far as I can know.

Q7: "Who knew potatoes, duct tape, and 70s' reruns were the key to space survival? How do each of these represent aspects of Mark's character that enable him to survive?"
The Irish, Red Green, and Jack Harper. His skills, resourcefulness, and ability to distract himself from despair via boring television while subsisting on minimal rations.

Q8: "How is Mark's sense of humor as much of a survival skill as botany? Do you have a favorite funny line of his?"
In times when life absolutely sucks, like mine has since my dad died, with a brief intermission when Jackie and I fell in love until when she bit a child on the butt, cost me a fortune for legal crap and My Little Pony Crap, and then abandoned me, one needs the ability to laugh at everything - however inappropriately it may seem to yuppies while they eat salty fish eggs with silver spoons. If you have nothing but seriousness surrounding you, that's the material you have to work with. If you can't laugh and, somehow or another, you're not a vulcan nor an android, then you'll just cry and not stop crying until you take the easy way out. Laughing in the face of adversity is far preferable to suicide. It's like the proverb, "a merry heart does good like a medicine, but a downcast spirit dies up the bones." As for a favorite line... the thing about favorites is it asks too much. It's selecting a brick of gold from a heap of gold bricks and arbitrarily saying, "this one is the best because I say so... and ... reasons!" But if I had to pick, I'll say, I can't. Some I'd have to edit, but most of it's good. Some requires context, like the director expressing in a serious fashion in a meeting wondering what Mark was thinking right then followed immediately by a journal entry of his thoughts on a cartoon not making sense. That juxtapositioning made those paragraphs humorous. Otherwise, declaring that he must be a space pirate was funny. In general, making the most humor out of a seriously crappy situation was great. I tend to be more like the first Robinson Crusoe -- I'm far too serious. I wish I could find the humor in everything more like the character Mark Watney, because otherwise everything is just too depressing to be bearable. Humor is necessary to live, especially when everything is crazy -- which normally everything is crazy, just by varying degrees of "well that was silly" to "what the heck was that?"

Q9: "To what extent does Marks log serve as his companion? Do you think it's implicit in the narrative that maintaining a journal keeps him sane?"

To the extent that talking to oneself in recorded format can provide a hope that someone will eventually hear what you've said, it's a companion. A one-way communication street, like how most customers treat cashiers and service clerks in general, like a therapist. Except the log can't write opinions on what he "really means" or just draw stuff while getting paid to pretend to listen. I don't believe it keeps him sane, since he'd have to be sane to began with and if I can relate to his character... need I say more? Serious though, you have an outlet for thoughts and a means to distract yourself from the though of being so far away from everyone you care about.

Q10: "The author provides almost no backstory regarding Mark's life on Earth. Why do you think he made this choice? What do you imagine Mark's past life was like?"

Two reason from the books I've read about writing novels: (1) you're suppose to write "in media res", i.e. in the middle of everything, and (2) he probably wanted to keep Mark relatable one way to do that is by not specifying everything about him. Some data is given though, he had gone to the university of Chicago and his parents live there. He makes jokes about his second rover having looked like he parked it in the wrong part of town, indicating possibly having experienced such theft and vandalism. If there ever is a manned mission to Mars it will probably be forever and three decades from tomorrow of next year, and populatins grow exponentially, so Chicago would be orders of magnitude more overcrowded than it already is - perhaps another reason why he is able to cope with having an entire planet to himself for 543 Martian days/Sols (549 Sols total on Mars, but 6 days he had the rest of the crew with him, so via maths 543 and to Jackie 115). IDK, in one of the things he mentioned a shocking experience as having come home to find two wine glasses in the sink, so possibly he was married and his wife betrayed him. He mentions how slowly his father used to drive on Thanksgiving, so he must have spent at least some holidays with family while growing up. He seems to be watching those television shows for the first time, so he must not have watched much television for most of his life, or at least the channels available for him to watch didn't have those shows shown. Apart from that, I can't tell much else.

Q11: "There's no mention of Mark having a romantic relationship on Earth. Do you think that makes it easier or harder to endure his isolation? How would the story be different if he were in love with someone back home?"
I suppose the clue about the wine glasses would only indicate a relationship that probably ended, and the word "having" is in present tense. Apart from that clue that he might have had a romantic relationship, he wasn't thinking of anyone constantly like I am about my wife Jackie who abandoned me. I suppose it would make it easier for him on Mars, especially since everyone thought he was dead for a couple of months and his girlfriend/"widow" would probably latch onto someone else by then. Also, a couple months of not being paid would mean a couple months of her not being able to spend his money on junk from garage sales and My Little Pony merchandise. Without being in communication two ways, she couldn't ask him how her hair looks and then dismiss his responding that it's nice as "you always say that, so you must be lying". Worst of all, being 50 million miles from home, there'd be nobody to clean dishes or do housework, so when Mark got back home he'd have an Olympus Mons sized pile of crap to deal with while his wife complains that he never does everything perfectly and she can't find where on the floor she left her dirty underwear.

Q12: "Were there points in the novel where you became convince Mark couldn't survive? What were they, and what made those situations seem so dire?"
Well, being skewered by the antenna at the beginning would be a dead ringer, except it's the beginning so the story has to move past there -- otherwise that would be a short story comparable to the life and times of most of the nameless mercenary henchmen of James Bond's villians. "I've been skewered by an antenna on a world with no air! Argh, I'm dead! The End." The tumbling of the rovers seemed fairly dire. Being trapped in the airlock with a broken EVA suit and no heater sounded mighty nearly impossible to me. I sure know I wouldn't have liked that. At least he didn't have to worry about meteor storms, giant ant lions, or raising a baby Drac.

Q13: "The first time the narrative switched from Mark's log entries to third person authorial narrative back on Earth, were you surprised? How does alternating between Mark's POV and the situation back on Earth enhance the story?"

I was surprised a little, because the book so far had been a journal and then it had the usual writing style. It works out okay, after the first switch it's easy to switch modes between styles. It helps enhance the story by allowing the cavalry show up without them suddenly arriving at the very last moment like cavalry do. If it were only from Mark's perspective, it could still be good, but seeing how the bureaucrats interacted and how the crew of the Hermes responded really did make it a richer story.

Q14: "Did you believe the commitment of those on Earth to rescuing one astronaut? What convinced you most?"

I never thought to question whether they wanted to rescue Watney or not. It seemed more a question of "could" rather than "would" even for the ones who withheld communications between Watney and his crewmates. It would have been a far more dire situation if people actually wanted him to die alone, but what kind of a person would want that for another? Even if they were so sick, the bureacrats are still politicians of a sort and would be under scrunity. I don't know what convinced me most of their commitment really, but perhaps snatching the booster from the Cassini like mission and, when that launch failed, the Chinese space agency offering to give up the booster for their solar satellite in order to launch another food drop.

Q15: "To what extent do you think guilt played a role in the crew's decision to return to Mark? To what extent loyalty? How would you explain the difference?"

How in the French Toast Of Insanity would anyone be able to confuse the emotion of guilt with the character trait of loyalty? Guilt is an emotion. Loyalty is character. At minimum, loyalty is a choice to stand with another through thick and thin. It's independent of emotions for or against choosing to remain loyal. It's bizarre that anyone would need to explain the difference, but I suppose perhaps such is why the divorce rates are a coin flip. Anyway, I'd say the crew chose to return more out of loyalty than out of guilt. I have no idea how to calculate that precisely though, so you might need to ask the folks of the Second Foundation on Trantor.

Q16: "How does the author handle passage of time? Does he transition smoothly from a day-by-day account to a span of one and a half years? How does he use to passage of time to build suspense?"

By going from event to event mostly. I'm not sure how it would build suspense to change the rate of time passage, to me it seems like when someone is about to do something stupid or dangerous inherently the suspense remains until there is resolution no matter how much time passes. This probably just means I'll never be a good writer.

Q17: "Unlike other castaways, Mark can predict the approximate timing of his potential rescue. How does that knowledge help him? How could it work against him?"

It would help to know that there is a schedule, but it sucks to have deadlines. Especially literal ones.

Q18: "When Mark leaves the Hab and ventures out in the rover, did you feel a loss of security for him? How does the author use distance to build suspense?"

When he left the Habitat for the last time, yeah it did seem a bit sad. Driving in the rover sounded like an adventure though. Distance to the rocket that he'd leave the planet on built suspense with decreasing distance because it's the location of the next major event.

Q19: "Where would you place The Martian in the canon of classic space exploration flims such as 2001, Apollo 13, and Gravity? What does it have in common with these stories? How is it different?"

Well, since new films like Gravity are being called "classic" I'm going to add a few other space themed movies to the list. It order of descending awesomeness or increasing crapness: Star Wars V, The Angry Red Planet, Star Wars IV, Forbidden Planet, Aliens, Predator, The Martian, Apollo 13, Red Planet, Star Wars VI, Close Encounters, Battlestar Galactica, Event Horizon, Last Days On Mars, Predator 2, Sunshine, 2010, Predators, 2001, AVP, Gravity, Alien 3, AVP2, Alien 4, Mission To Mars, Europa Report, Apollo 17, Star Wars III, Star Wars II. The list could go on, but meh. Anyhow of the three new classics the question lists, they all have stuff going wrong. It's most like Apollo 13 of the lot really: nobody dies. This book is pretty darn good and I hope the movie will be two. You know, perhaps as a back story for Mark Watney, he could have originally been William Hunting and recently retired from being Jason Bourne. After being rouge agent being hunted by a rouge agency, I'd think a few hundred quiet days on Mars where only the elements and stuff breaking down are trying to kill me would be a good change of pace. Maybe he'll find a way to grow apples and when he's reunited with the crew he'll ask them, "how da ya like them apples?!"

Q19: "A survival story has to resonate on a universal level to be effective, whether it's set on a desert island or another planet. How important are challenges in keeping life vital? To what extent are our everyday lives about problem solving and maintaining hope?"

It would be nicer if there were fewer challenges, if people were honest to your face rather than behind your back, if people were paid for the work they did rather than for who they are a friend/relative of, if cars and bikes didn't break down all the time, if spouses kept there vows, if real friends were to really exist in this universe of pain, if life didn't suck more than the vacuum of space it would be nice. However, everything falls apart, so a story has to at least have stuff breaking down just to comply with physics/statistics/experience. Problem solving is a constant, unless the only viable solution is to just stop caring because there is no hope. If there is hope though, apart from imaginary hope, it would sure be nice to know about. Having everything break down and having plenty of tools a resources to fix them is awesome, but if you have nothing, then what is there to do? In any castaway story, you always have some way to do things. If it's just one person in the middle of nowhere with nothing, they'll just die. But they always have stuff to work with, otherwise it's a very short tragedy: I'm here alone with nothing, watch me die. I'm dying. I died. I'm dead now. Now I'm a rotting corpse, yay. Now I'm soil. Oh look a plant. The ad infinitum end. It could be worse. Somehow. Hope sucks if it's based on nothing. Only when you know there's a chance that everything will be okay does hope mean a thing, otherwise all anyone can do is distract themselves from the painful reality of this truly cruel world full of liars and theives. Oh sorry, was that depressing? Well, life's better than eating the blue plate special in Spaceballs at least.