[HN Gopher] A martian's review of The Martian (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
A martian's review of The Martian (2015)
Author : Tomte
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-06-07 12:24 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ryanbanderson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ryanbanderson.com)
| Asraelite wrote:
| > It's just not realistic to have someone drive halfway around
| the planet. I get that he's in a giant rover, and so can traverse
| across obstacles much larger than the robotic rovers could. But
| he certainly wouldn't be doing that at 25 kph.
|
| I'm interested to know why exactly this is the case. Would the
| vehicle tip over too often? Would the tires wear out? Would the
| engine break down? And if these problems exist, will they always
| necessarily be there or would it be possible to develop a rover
| that could indeed traverse half the planet?
| Clewza313 wrote:
| The circumference of Mars is over 21,000 km/6,500 mi, with
| obviously no roads or any sort of support infrastructure.
| Travelling in the Australian outback or Siberian tundra for
| even a few hundred km requires painstaking preparation and
| contingency planning, with the first rule being "never travel
| alone". Expecting to traverse distances 100x longer solo, in
| literally uncharted territory, when a crack in the windshield
| can kill you is just not realistic.
| Asraelite wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not doubting the author's claim, I fully
| believe that it's an infeasible task.
|
| I'm just curious what the specific problems that would arise
| would be. I don't know anything about off-road driving.
| aequitas wrote:
| I think this could maybe be answered better by a Dakar rally
| driver, as driving through a desert without roads with minimal
| waypoints or detailed maps and only field of vision would be a
| similar experience I guess.
| SamBam wrote:
| I had the same thought. The author talks about 25cm resolution
| cameras, and still being surprised by obstacles, but they are
| driving a rover that is more than 10x smaller than the vehicle
| driven in the Martian.
|
| This article claims that the Dhofar desert in Oman is one of
| the closest analogs to Mars. If I tried to control one of the
| Mars rovers through it, I'm sure I'd hit some nasty obstacles,
| but I wouldn't worry much about rocks when planning to traverse
| in a Jeep.
|
| 1. https://apnews.com/article/deserts-oman-yemen-ap-top-news-
| ma...
| Strilanc wrote:
| The author is also probably used to driving with tens of
| minutes of latency. I would guess the current Mars driving
| experience is more of a planning experience, where an
| unexpected obstacle ruins the plan and creates an hour of
| delay from replanning and recommunicating. Whereas a human
| driver on site would have just steered slightly to the left
| and not thought twice about it.
| Strilanc wrote:
| > _you end up with lots of scenes where one character has to come
| across as clueless so that the other character can explain things
| to them (and to the reader)_
|
| The movie made this much worse. In particular, the scene where
| Donald Glover suggests a strategy for getting the returning ship
| back to mars sooner [1].
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4OJoFlWVyY
| dylan604 wrote:
| The audience reading the book is already filtered (probably) to
| people that would make this unnecessary, but for the joey
| beercans of the world that would never read a book (let alone
| this one) but watch the movie might actually find Glover's
| explanation still hard to understand.
|
| That scene always made me laugh but more for the Project Elrond
| bit. Seeing as Boromir has to explain the meaning.
| j_wtf_all_taken wrote:
| > _So you end up with lots of scenes where one character has to
| come across as clueless so that the other character can explain
| things to them (and to the reader). This is not how normal
| conversations between people at mission control would go.
| Realistic conversations would be nearly incomprehensible to
| someone who is not an expert, thanks to all the shorthand. People
| wouldn't be explaining things in great detail, instead other
| people would be cutting them off mid-thought, already seeing
| where they are going and jumping to the next logical conclusion._
|
| Sounds a little like "everyone at NASA is a genius". Well,
| probably not. Routine stuff in mission control - ok. But when
| there's off-nominal stuff, there will definitely be people that
| have no idea what's going on and need extra explanations. People
| at mission control are highly specialized, I guess, so why should
| someone doing X instantly know what's going wrong with Y?
|
| Also, there's administration, and some of those scenes are about
| convincing administrative people. They surely have technical
| understanding, but there would still be some explaining going on.
|
| > _In reality, upon being stranded, an astronaut would probably
| sit down and figure out in a few hours and a few pages of
| calculations what it takes Watney weeks, and lots of trial and
| error, to sort out._
|
| No. Also astronauts are no all-knowing geniuses. They
| specifically are not looking for people that are incredibly
| awesome in certain areas and know everything about that topic,
| they are looking for people that do not underperform in any
| field. They don't need geniuses, they need workers who do a job
| that is pretty much pre-determined. And yes they need to be quick
| thinkers and stuff, need to be able to draw logical conclusions
| etc. But they definitely do not need to have all knowledge about
| any probably relevant topic in their head (as far as I remember
| Watney didn't have a dump of Wikipedia with him. Why the f ever
| they wouldn't send a copy with them. That'd be the first thing
| I'd put on a rocket to Mars).
| morelisp wrote:
| For a more realistic depiction, along both Weir's suggestions
| (opaque explanations) and yours ("workers who do a job that is
| pretty much pre-determined"), I'd suggest Ian Sales's _Adrift
| on the Sea of Rains_ which features a fictional commander
| stranded on a late-Cold-War moon base. Lots of jargon, no
| infodumps, no context for the reader (towards good literary
| effect).
|
| _In the grey gunpowder dust, he stands in the pose so familiar
| from televised missions. He leans forward to counterbalance the
| weight of the PLSS on his back; the A7LB's inflated bladder
| pushes his arms out from his sides. And he stares up at that
| grey-white marble fixed mockingly above the horizon. He listens
| to the whirr of the pumps, his own breath an amniotic susurrus
| within the confines of his helmet. The noises reassure him--
| sound itself he finds comforting in this magnificent
| desolation.
|
| If he turns about--blurring bootprints which might otherwise
| last for millennia--he sees the blanket-like folds of
| mountains, grey upon grey, and a plain of the same lack of
| colour, all painted with scalpel-edged shadows. Over there, to
| his right, the scattered descent stages of LM Trucks and
| Augmented LMs fill the mare; and one, just one, still with its
| ascent stage. Another, he knows, is nearly twenty years old, a
| piece of abandoned history; but he does not know which one.
|
| A click from his radio reminds Peterson where he is. The voice
| of Major Philip Scott, USMC, his XO, follows: We're about ready
| to make another evolution.
|
| Peterson glances at the Omega strapped about his spacesuited
| forearm and sees that he's been out for half an hour. The PLSS
| is good for a seven-hour EVA. He says, I'll watch it from out
| here._
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I think the martian reviewer is also a poorly developed
| character. He tells us almost nothing about the actual conditions
| on Mars.
| amacbride wrote:
| "Why doesn't he seem to be fazed by more than a year of absolute
| isolation?"
|
| This line from the review reads much differently in 2021 than it
| would have in 2015.
| lubujackson wrote:
| Worth mentioning that, at a minimum, he is an astronaut
| specifically chosen and psychologically trained and prepared
| for a multi-year to mission to Mars. He shouldn't have normal
| human reactions and given that his situation never turns truly
| hopeless, he has been trained to keep working the mission as
| well as he can.
|
| Also, though he is isolated, he knows everything he does and
| discovers will be eventually found, analyzed and made useful by
| NASA and future space travellers. All of this can provide a
| sense of greater social connection that can keep him motivated
| to keep going.
| meowster wrote:
| Some people are just built that way. I imagine many people here
| on HN could cope with isolation pretty well (I know I can). I
| imagine that's something NASA would have screened for too in
| its Mars mission selection.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| There's isolation and absolute isolation. Most people haven't
| gone full hermit and cut themselves off from the outside world.
| Between phones (calling, texting), chat apps (discord, slack),
| video chat (zoom, FaceTime, Google whateveritscalledthisweek)
| few people today experiences _absolute_ isolation in the way
| the character does in the book (for a very extended period).
|
| Physical isolation is one thing, and may be intolerable to
| many, but _social_ isolation is another. Not even having
| another person to speak to, let alone text with, for weeks
| /months at a time is very different than what most people
| experienced through the various shutdowns and social distancing
| efforts.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Social isolation was great. No distractions
| hervature wrote:
| You're on a social media website. You were not socially
| isolated. That is the entire point of the parent's comment.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| By that definition Mark was not socially isolated, since
| he had earth communication. He was even effectively live
| twitch streaming his life.
| hervature wrote:
| Are you really equivocating being on a planet with high
| latency and low bandwidth download and essentially zero
| upload to being inside with your
| family/pets/Slack/email/iDevice? You are again totally
| missing the point that you were not isolated from other
| people for a year.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Yep. I didn't talk to anyone for months. Was on solo
| backpacking trip. It was great.
|
| Also the initial point was about total isolation, he was
| not totally isolated, he had better bandwidth and latency
| than 1800s mail.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The entire latter half of the book he is completely
| isolated and cannot receive communications from Earth. He
| could _send_ messages via Morse code, but that was it.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Mark had no communication for some extended period at the
| start of the novel. And it wasn't even voluntary
| isolation (like you might have here on Earth assuming
| you're not in prison or stuck on a remote island) where
| he opts not to use the communication tools. He flat out
| didn't have access to it and was _absolutely_ isolated in
| a way that 99.99999% of modern humans have not
| experienced.
| pfarrell wrote:
| True. I got it in my head to try to walk the Appalachian
| Trail after college (decided to wait until later in life).
| One of the things recommended to me in training was to camp
| in isolation for 4 or 5 days. By the last day, I was a little
| edgy and started imagining someone was in my campsite late at
| night. And that's with the safety net knowing I could just
| walk a couple miles out of the woods back to my car and
| civilization.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Did you end up doing it? I've found that thru-hiking is
| actually one of the most social endeavors one can
| undertake.
| tgb wrote:
| I disagree with the complaint about Mark Whatney's lack of
| character depth. It's true that there's little character depth,
| but I don't think that's why Andy Weir choose not to do the deep,
| solemn scenes. There's moments where it's clear he's chosen not
| just to avoid those, but to intentionally choose the opposite
| (like the scene where someone on Earth wonders what he could be
| thinking, trapped alone on a planet, and then it switches to
| Whatney's viewpoint and we learn he is pondering Aquaman's
| abilities or something). Andy Weir didn't do that because it's
| been done a lot before. The book is deliberately _not_ Castaway
| or any number of other solemn stories about isolated men
| contemplating human existence. It 's fresh and new and was new
| precisely because it _didn 't_ do all that other, well-trodden
| introspective stuff. Starry Night doesn't have any character
| development - it's just not a requirement for all works to have.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, he did take a different tack on Project Hail Mary. No
| spoilers here other than the protagonist figures out the
| darkest, most reflective aspects as he goes along, which is a
| great counterpoint to the escalation in the story and evens
| things out a great deal.
| meowster wrote:
| I recently heard Project Hail Mary mentioned. I didn't know
| Andy Weir wrote a third book until that moment. It's a great
| novel on par with The Martian, and after the success of The
| Martian, I'm surprised I didn't hear about Project Hail Mary
| sooner.
|
| I use an adblocker and don't watch TV comercials. Does anyone
| know if Project Hail Mary was advertised? I guess that's one
| downside of not seeing ads.
| fassssst wrote:
| I learned about it via an ad on my Kindle lock screen. One
| of the only ads I can remember that led me to a purchase.
| Great book!
| bbarnett wrote:
| I wish I could somehow obscure your comment from everyone
| at Amazon.
|
| I use an e-ink tablet, Android stock, due to eye strain.
| The kindle app is such a bloated pile of ad laden junk,
| it is barely usable.
|
| Not only that, but it won't let me get rid of
| whitespacing around the text, and more, eating tonnes of
| real estate.
|
| Meanwhile, every other app, eg moon reader, etc, is fast
| and slick.
|
| Impressive, Amazon!
|
| I buy what I can elsewhere, due to this, but sometimes
| have no choice... and I imagine losing a few sales is
| offset by more buy in due to the horrid ads?
| developer93 wrote:
| Why do you have to use the kindle app? Because of books
| in azw format? If you use calibre you can convert it to
| other formats.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Newer kindle formats require all sorts of work, and
| constantly change. I also need to keep a window vm
| around, it is as annoying as the kindle app.
|
| Thanks for the mention though, and I know calibre is
| quite convenient for some.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| I usually get my list of "to read" from either; Goodreads
| (yes, I know... Amazon data capture) or John Scalzi's
| "Whatever" blog - but, I have never seen TV commercials for
| books, even before I went streaming platform only.
| snarkyturtle wrote:
| At the same time, you could tell that he deliberately didn't
| include those moments in The Martian because he's not
| comfortable writing from that standpoint. In Project Hail
| Mary, those moments seem shoehorned in and the voice turns
| back into being aloof and impassionate in the next sentence.
| Even the end of the book presented two options and he took
| the less emotional one.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think the less emotional ending was pretty much a given.
| The whole book also hinted at that as it was a redemption
| for the character's earlier behaviour. Having him choose
| the other option would have been really dark especially
| because of the consequences for the 'other team'
| (obfuscated a bit because of the lack of spoiler tags here)
| timdiggerm wrote:
| In his second book, Artemis, Weir manages to build a somewhat
| more complex character...but with the exact same voice as
| Watney. It's disappointing.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Actually the movie failed to portray Mark as the unwavering
| optimist he is in the books. And besides some impressive
| visuals, the movie is rather dull, while the book is very
| entertaining.
| agallant wrote:
| I also found the balance of the book refreshing, and took the
| lack of "character development" as instead a sign of his
| intense focus on the problems at hand. It actually made it more
| plausible to me that he survived - sure, if he'd spent many
| sleepless martian nights agonizing and introspecting it could
| have made for more drama, but his optimism and ingenuity would
| have been less believable, and ultimately had he survived it
| would feel more fantastic than earned.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Weir himself has discussed the varying characterisations in the
| Martian, Artemis and PHM. In an interview at [0], he says:
|
| _Well, my previous two books, The Martian and Artemis (which
| are also available for sale!) feature characters whose
| personalities are based on aspects of my own real personality,
| Mark Watney [from The Martian] has a lot of my own personality
| traits and Jazz Bashara [from Artemis] who is a Saudi woman
| living on the moon, believe it or not, her personality is based
| on largely the way I was when I was her age._
|
| _I wanted to grow as a writer this time, so I made Rylan
| Grace's personality not [be] based on my own. I created a new
| character out of whole cloth, not just using aspects of my own
| persona. So one thing I decided is that he's conflict-averse
| and likes to stay in a safe environment (or something he
| considers safe) and being a middle school teacher is a safe
| environment. He doesn't get a lot of adversity from the
| students. They look up to him because they're not teenagers
| yet. He's also a goody-two-shoes, so it makes sense that he
| would work with children._
|
| In a separate interview (that I can't find now) Weir states
| that PHM was an attempt to write a character that evolves,
| unlike Watney, who in effect retains the same character (wise-
| cracking optimist) throughout the book.
|
| [0] https://www.scifinow.co.uk/books/space-man-an-interview-
| with...
| leokennis wrote:
| Agreed with this. In all three of Weirs books, the
| tone/atmosphere is almost continually lighthearted. You can
| interpret that as a lack of emotional depth, but for me it also
| shows Weirs laser like focus on stuff he is good at writing:
| resourceful application of "basic" but real science to solve
| problems.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm also imagining that the bulk of his personality and self-
| identity are wrapped around science, engineering and space
| exploration. As much as he misses all the creature comforts of
| Earth, the actual challenges of surviving on Mars make him feel
| like a pig in slop. He's being asked to flex every mental
| muscle he's spent his lifetime building up, honed even sharped
| by fear of oblivion. If it were me, I'd probably have the same
| attitude.
|
| The thing I think Weir missed is that as soon as he's embraced
| by his crew on their ship, I'd expect to him (and me) to
| absolutely break down in sobbing tears after a year of pent up
| tension.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah Weir is clearly a geek like us. Preferring to write
| about the depth of technical challenges and using them to
| avoid facing the emotional darkness of the situation. To me
| this feels like very typical behaviour. I think it's showing
| a lot of genuine character depth from that point of view.
| People expect Watney to think like a normal person, not a
| geek.
| vl wrote:
| There is a bit more character development in new Weir's book -
| Project Hail Mary, but it still is a great book. Not as great
| as The Martian, but solid second.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-06-07 23:02 UTC)