That would have fixed my other big problem with the story:
The return craft for the each mission is dropped off years in advance so enough fuel and by catalyzed. But if we have a Mars with winds strong enough to knock over a ship, what happens if a crew is halfway on their way to Mars and their ship gets knocked over?
There’s no problem -
They orbit Mars for a few weeks instead of landing, then go home on the ship they were going to anyway. That’s how they did the trips in the first place - the Hermes was the reusable ship that went back and forth between Earth orbit and Mars orbit. It stayed in orbit while they were on Mars (remember, they were only supposed to stay for a month), then they took the return craft back up to it. So if they get to Mars and the pre-placed return craft isn’t usable, they just stay in orbit for the month and go home. Or leave earlier if the orbital mechanics work.
Personally the book gave a clearer view of how close Mark comes to killing himself through simple mistakes or oversights.
I agree with this in general. Obviously, it’s subjective, but cases where I’ve seen/read both, I tend to enjoy the movie more if I see it first and the book no less.
I thought reading the book kind of spoiled the movie for me. Still, if I saw the movie first, I may not have chosen to read the book. For me, it was an A- book, C+ movie.
I don’t know why people keep saying this when there are no just a few exceptions, but SO MANY examples to the contrary.
It may be simply that people are more empotionally invested in book they truly love.
I suspect it’s a selection effect. When a movie is made based on a good book, lots of people know and love the book, and so they say the book is better. When a movie is made based on a bad book, most people never even hear of the book, and so they don’t realize the movie’s better. Similarly, when a book is based on a movie, the movie is almost universally recognized as better, but movies based on books are more common than books based on movies.
Movies based on books have a legitimate chance to be better than their source. Books based on movies almost never do.
When a book is good enough to be made into a movie, it’s generally made with a major studio, an A-list cast, and a talented seasoned director. It’s released years or even decades later and that time is often put to good use to find the right way to tell the story.
When a movie is popular enough to be adapted into a book, it’s generally farmed out to a hack writer, based on an early version of the script, and is rushed through production so it’s on store shelves while the movie is fresh in people’s minds.
Whether you prefer the book to the movie may depend on how much of a science geek you are.
In the book the science behind every decision and event is laid out in detail, with a little of Watney’s wit thrown in to keep it from being too dry.
I imagine that a lot of the general public who enjoyed the movie as a humorous adventure/survival movie, would find themselves skimming through pages of “boring” science so then can get back to the action.
The largely positive reviews of the book in this thread, probably represent a straight dope selection bias.
XKCD agrees.
Really enjoyed the movie. Gave up on the book barely 10%/15% in. He glossed over exciting things like how he got stuck there in about a paragraph. Then went into excruciating detail on how to grow potatoes. It felt like the writer had done a ton of research on certain topic and wanted to put all that research into the book. After reading page after page on how to make water I put the book down.
Not everybody wants to watch an astronaut science the shit out of something.
They ought to want to!
FWIW, Mark does explain in detail later on the accident that made the rest of the crew think he was dead.
Actually, a good part of his time was spent sciencing the shit into something.
One thing that struck me after reading the book was the sheer extravagance of the Hab and its equipment in the movie. I rather imagine it was needed for visual impact and to keep the story moving, but Holy Frijoles, I shudder to contemplate the number of unmanned missions it must have taken to get all that stuff up there.
Well, it was mostly a tent, and a big tent doesn’t weigh much more than a small tent. So you might as well at least give the astronauts some room.