The Martian

Chapter 1

LOG ENTRY: SOL 6

I m pretty much fucked.

That s my considered opinion.

Fucked.

Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it s turned into a nightmare.

I don t even know who ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now.

For the record . . . I didn t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can t blame them. Maybe there ll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say, Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.

And it ll be right, probably. Cause I ll surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did.

Let s see . . . where do I begin?

The Ares Program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back heroes. They got the parades and fame and love of the world.

Ares 2 did the same thing, in a different location on Mars. They got a firm handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home.

Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be in command of the mission if I were the only remaining person.

What do you know? I m in command.

I wonder if this log will be recovered before the rest of the crew die of old age. I presume they got back to Earth all right. Guys, if you re reading this: It wasn t your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have done the same thing. I don t blame you, and I m glad you survived.



I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for any layman who may be reading this. We got to Earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes. All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. It s really big and cost a lot so NASA built only

Andy Weir built a career as a software engineer until the success of his first published novel, The Martian, allowed him to live out his dream of writing fulltime. He is a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. He also mixes a mean cocktail. He lives in California.

Brilliant a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years Utterly compelling. --Wall Street Journal

Terrific stuff, a crackling good read that devotees of space travel will devour like candy succeeds on several levels and for a variety of reasons, not least of which is its surprising plausibility. USA Today  

An impressively geeky debut the technical details keep the story relentlessly precise and the suspense ramped up. And really, how can anyone not root for a regular dude to prove the U-S-A still has the Right Stuff? --Entertainment Weekly

Gripping [features] a hero who can solve almost every problem while still being hilarious. It s hard not to be swept up in [Weir s] vision and root for every one of these characters. Grade: A. AVClub.com 

Andy Weir delivers with The Martian...a story for readers who enjoy thrillers, science fiction, non-fiction, or flat-out adventure [and] an authentic portrayal of the future of space travel. --Associated Press

"A gripping tale of survival in space [that] harkens back to the early days of science fiction by masters such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke."--San Jose Mercury News

One of the best thrillers I ve read in a long time. It feels so real it could almost be nonfiction, and yet it has the narrative drive and power of a rocket launch. This is Apollo 13 times ten.
--Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Impact and Blasphemy
 
A book I just couldn t put down! It has the very rare combination of a good, original story, interestingly real characters and fascinating technical accuracy reads like MacGyver meets Mysterious Island.