For those unfamiliar with the story, we are in the future and have just engaged on the first Mars mission with the plan to have a group of astronauts spend a few months on the red planet conducting experiments and basically living on Mars. Unfortunately, just a few days into the mission, a huge Martian sandstorm rolls in and the decision is made to scrap the mission. The crew races for the escape launcher. As they hustle to escape, the storm breaks up the satellite dish and poles from the communications system. The pole slams into Mark Watney and sends him flying off into the dust. The captain searches for him, but time is short and based on remote life support monitors, it appears that Mark Watney is dead, so the rest of the crew escapes back to the long range transport ship and begin the return trip home. Shortly thereafter, Watney wakes inside his damaged spacesuit with alarms blaring and spends the next 500 pages trying to figure out a way to survive and hopefully return to Earth.
I haven’t read many “man versus nature” books since reading Jack London and other similar stories back in my High School days. The Martian takes the man versus nature idea and turns it on its head with a wild new set of criteria for survival. The entire concept sounded very compelling and I was thrilled to dive in. Even before cracking the cover, I was hoping to recommend the book to my 12 year old, space/astronomy loving son.
Sadly, upon reading the first sentences, I decided this book is NOT a book for kids. The book is mostly written as a first person series of journal entries by our stranded astronaut. His situation is understandably dire and as a result, many of his journal entries are smattered with cursing. The first entry begins by dropping the F-bomb…twice. The swearing continues through the book. And while it feels more “realistic” especially given the situation, neither myself or my family and friends swear and I am not a fan. The “realism” factor of the swearing in the journals felt slightly strained for me knowing that these journal entries are technically “mission logs” and while it seems logical that Watney might have cursed like that verbally, it seemed less likely that he would swear like that in “formal” professional reports, even if he expected to be dead by the time anybody read them. So...the swearing was the first knock against the book in my estimation.