This is perhaps the most famous line in Andy Weir’s 369-page novel about an astronaut getting stranded alone on Mars and having to figure out how he was going to survive and get rescued. And when he says science, he is very much talking about hard sciences like botany, chemistry and physics, and not any of those silly soft sciences like psychology.
Teddy swiveled his chair and looked out the window to the sky beyond. Night was edging in. “What must it be like?” he pondered. “He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?”
He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 61
How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.
Oh, and pop culture references. He’s going to “science the shit” out of those, too.
This is one of those cases where I saw the movie before reading the book. And I remember while watching Matt Damon’s performance, who the hell is this guy? This guy who is stranded on Mars and whose name I can never remember? And consistently, again and again, the movie refused to tell me. He’s an astronaut. He’s stranded on Mars. He’s going to science the shit out it. What else do you need to know? After the movie was over, I decided that the inner life of Mark Watney was something that the film producers had to leave on the cutting room floor in order to bring their project in on budget and at under three hours.
And then I read the book.
Anyway, at this rate it’ll take four more sols of (boring-ass) work to finish the drilling.
I’ve actually exhausted Lewis’s supply of shitty seventies TV. And I’ve read all of Johanssen’s mystery books.
I’ve already rifled through other crewmates’ stuff to find entertainment. But all of Vogel’s stuff is in German, Beck brought nothing but medical journals, and Martinez didn’t bring anything.
I got really bored, so I decided to pick a theme song!
Something appropriate. And naturally, it should be something from Lewis’s godawful seventies collection. It wouldn’t be right any other way.
There are plenty of great candidates: “Life on Mars?” by David Bowie, “Rocket Man” by Elton John, “Alone Again (Naturally)” by Gilbert O’Sullivan.
But I settled on “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees.
I’ve got a better suggestion. Mark Watney is the ultimate “Nowhere Man.” This is about the fiftieth reference to the media entertainment that the other astronauts -- the ones who inadvertently left him behind on Mars when the mission went wrong -- brought along with them. And never, not once, do we hear what Watney himself brought. We know he hates Lewis’s shitty seventies TV and music, but what does he like? What did he bring with him?
Nothing. Because he is not a real person in any sense of the word. In more ways than one, he is “the Martian.”
Vogel:
Being your backup has backfired.
I guess NASA figured botany and chemistry are similar because they both end in “Y.” One way or another, I ended up being your backup chemist.
Remember when they made you spend a day explaining your experiment to me? I was in the middle of intense mission prep. You may have forgotten.
You started my training by buying me a beer. For breakfast. Germans are awesome.
Anyway, now that I have time to kill, NASA gave me a pile of work. And all your chemistry crap is on the list. So now I have to do boring-ass experiments with test tubes and soil and pH levels and Zzzzzzzzzz….
My life is now a desperate struggle for survival … with occasional titration.
Frankly, I suspect you’re a super-villain. You’re a chemist, you have a German accent, you had a base on Mars … what more can there be?
This is one of the personal messages that Watney writes to his other crew members -- something the flight psychologist asked him to do, once he and they figured out how to pass communications between Mars, Earth, and the spaceship accelerating in-between. And it was about this time in the novel when I started wondering if Watney was simply an asshole, or if he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome.
But more than that, I think it is symptomatic of the novel’s neglect of the psychological in favor of the hard scientific. There is only one time when the enormity of his situation seems to intrude on Watney’s knee-jerk bravado.
I’m no stranger to Mars. I’ve been here a long time. But I’ve never been out of sight of the Hab before today. You wouldn’t think that would make a difference, but it does.
As I made my way toward the RTG’s burial site, it hit me: Mars is a barren wasteland and I am completely alone here. I already knew that, of course. But there’s a difference between knowing it and really experiencing it. All around me there was nothing but dust, rocks, and endless empty desert in all directions. The planet’s famous red color is from iron oxide coating everything. So it’s not just a desert. It’s a desert so old it’s literally rusting.
The Hab is my only hint of civilization, and seeing it disappear made me way more uncomfortable than I like to admit.
In this moment, and apparently this moment only, Watney is no longer the titular Martian; the alien creature, ready to science the shit out of his surroundings. Here, and only here, he is a simple human being: weak, vulnerable, and afraid.
And, to me at least, far more interesting.
I put those thoughts behind me by concentrating on what was in front of me. I found the RTG right where it was supposed to be, four kilometers due south of the Hab.
Oh well. Back to the “story”.
+ + +
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment