**"Having been rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website. At the request of fans, he made an Amazon Kindle version available at 99 cents (the minimum he could set the price). The Kindle edition rose to the top of Amazon’s list of best-selling science-fiction titles, where it sold 35,000 copies in three months, more than had been previously downloaded free. This garnered the attention of publishers: Podium Publishing, an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013. Weir sold the print rights to Crown in March 2013 for over a hundred thousand dollars.
“The book debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list on March 2, 2014 in the hardcover fiction category at twelfth position.”**
Johanssen had a bunch of Beatles music and Lewis had seventies TV shows and disco. I don’t seem to remember any of the other three crew members having any music or videos in their personal effects. Or, for that matter, Watney. Why didn’t he bring any entertainment of his own?
I am reminded of a backpacking trip many years back. I’m a voracious reader so I packed three paperbacks for the trip. My buddy who didn’t pack any then had the nerve to criticize my meager selection. “I’m not a library, Rick!”
One scene I wished that they would have kept because it would have been awesome…
THE MAV waited in southwestern Schiaparelli. It stood an impressive twenty-seven meters tall, its conical body gleaming in the midday sun.
The rover crested a nearby dune with the trailer in tow. It slowed for a few moments, then continued toward the ship at top speed. It came to a stop twenty meters away.
There it remained for ten minutes while the astronaut inside suited up.
He stumbled excitedly out of the airlock, falling to the ground then scrambling to his feet. Beholding the MAV, he gestured to it with both arms, as if in disbelief.
He leaped into the air several times, arms held high with fists clenched. Then he knelt on one knee and fist-pumped repeatedly.
Running to the spacecraft, he hugged Landing Strut B. After a few moments, he broke off the embrace to perform another round of leaping celebrations.
Now fatigued, the astronaut stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the sleek lines of the engineering marvel before him.
Climbing the ladder on the landing stage, he reached the ascent stage and entered the airlock. He sealed the door behind him.
Thanks for the cite. I couldn’t remember if the book had gone into more detail, or whether the explanation was one of Watney’s theories or not. Arguably, since the movie isn’t the book, any of those could still be true :).
Here’s a great little interactive site which shows Watney’s travel path from the book, utilizing NASA Mars maps. It’s very cool to dig around in. If you click on Mission control on the bottom left you can find a link to a great hour-long interview with Andy Wier (Adam Savage is the interviewer and there’s definitely a bromance here). In the interview Andy describes being given a “gift” by a designer at NASA, and this map sounds very much like what he was describing. Microsoft Azure App Service - Welcome
For my birthday, my fiancé’s son got in touch with Andy just as he was getting ready to leave for the London premiere, and arranged to have a book signed for me (Andy seems to be just about the most unpretentious and approachable guy on earth). His message reads:
I was speechless at this ridiculously awesome gift (I mean, really, how can my fiancé ever top this?). I’ve been in love with this story ever since it was released as an audiobook (which if you haven’t listened to already, you must do. R.C. Bray is a genius voice actor and gives the story and characters an uncommon intensity and depth). I wish that “Venkat” had made it into the movie, although I did really love ‘Vincent’.
I thought the movie was absolutely stunning. I had a little bit of a gripe with the Hollywood-ized climax and ending (I think that for the magnitude of predicament, danger, and shit that went wrong, the book ending would’ve been perfectly suitable, although I guess I need to keep in mind that a lot of the “shit that went wrong” was not in the movie, so maybe I need to rethink my problem with the ending).
Also, Annie Montrose (Kristin Wiig in the movie) has a foul mouth in the book that is absolutely hysterical. I was sad that she had to be tamed down for this movie, but I know the PG-13 rating was important. There was a lot of hilarious colorful language that I guess I’ll just have to enjoy as part of the book, including what Watney instructed Kapoor to tell the NASA incident investigators when he found out they were going to start asking questions, and also his description of what he smelled like after so long without bathing. There were just some really colorful gems in that book that I belly-laughed at. What can I say, I’m a mental eight-year-old!
Overall I give the movie a solid A (only because I would have reserved the A+ for a 10-hour movie that followed the book explicitly).
I really enjoyed it. (though had to see in 3D for scheduling reasons and confirmed once again that I hate 3D).
Surely it doesn’t make sense that the one astronaut in charge of doing things on the outside of the spaceship doesn’t use a tether but just blithely uses handrails and casual floats from one part to another.
When the commander goes out to get Watney and hooks into a tether I was like "they DO have a tether! " (also instead of getting into visually striking tether snarl they could have just had casual-float-around-astronaut reel them in)
but that’s just nit picking, very entertaining movie!
I was cringing at the astronaut doing EVAs completely untethered. So, yes, it was a little odd.
BTW what was the consequence of the airlock they blew? Did that render part of the craft (Hermes, right?) unusable? (Also, I assume the Hermes just stayed in orbit between manned Mars missions, and was reused repeatedly.)
And at the end, Watney mentioned to the prospective astronauts that he ate potatoes he grew in his own shit. I missed that, but he was careful to only use his, right? Presumably other people’s might have made him ill.
I think blowing out the outer-door of the airlock only rendered that particular airlock unusable – they could just close the inner door and repressurize the ship afterwards.
As far as using shit for fertilizer, I’m pretty sure he used all of the shit, not just his.
Okay, back from seeing the movie. Great stuff. Andy Weir may not have written the screenplay, but the story came from him, and he should be proud of how the film came out. This breaks that old truism that says movies about Mars always fail.
The ending’s a bit different from the book. I mean the part about the final rescue in space. But it made for better drama.
When I read the book, I imagined Rich Purnell as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory.
I don’t know if he used everyone’s shit or not. But the movie was careful about showing him digging out a packet with his name on it.
He was only shown using his, and at that time, he was the only source for the fresh shit.
OTH, where the hell did he get all that Oxygen, the water and food is explained, but he is on Planet for what? 18 months? And he spends a lot of it in the Rover, which would not have had enough to last him.
Multiple mentions were made of an oxygenator, which is a device that makes oxygen from carbon dioxide. As long as that kept working, he’d never run out of oxygen.
Does anyone know if that’s a real device or just science fiction?
I was very happy while watching the movie (thinking, “great nerdy fun”) and am still happy the next day. And I’m considering rewatching the movie; there are others in the theater that I haven’t seen but I might enjoy watching this a second time more. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie in the theaters twice.
Okay, scratch that. He did use everyone’s shit, because now I remember he was complaining about the particular stinkiness of Johanssen’s output. That’s when he was wearing the nose stoppers.
The shit was all packaged, so maybe that protected it? And labeled with each astronaut’s name – were they going to take it back to Earth and run tests on it? I read the book just recently, and the only reference ever made to shit that I recall was Watney using his own fresh stuff. There was nothing about him retrieving any from a packaging system like that.