I loved The Martian by Andy Weir from the first page to the last.
The Martian is Competent Man fiction. This is the good kind of competent man fiction, too; the competent man takes his competence for granted. His moments of brilliance give him just the right amount of thrill to show us that they happen pretty regularly and his screw-ups are realistic and upset him just the right amount. There’s no undertone of defensiveness in this competent man. When he tells us just how he’s doing something it’s because he wants to record how it works or because he’s thrilled/disgusted with the results, not because he wants us to be impressed with him.
Mixed into this base is just enough of all the other required ingredients for a feel-good SF adventure story. To wit:
Nerd humor
Rebellion against The Man(sometimes puerile)
Loyalty to comrades
Good people working together
Batshit crazy engineering decisions
Big bad weather
Abrasive but brilliant engineers
Potatoes
And then a lot of stuff that goes against the expected tropes:
The public cares, and aren’t presented as ignoramuses
The press do their jobs without becoming villains
Other countries help out
The PR people and administrators are on the right side
Folks in the government agency are helpful
In short, it’s a novel about the world we want to live in – at least, the world I want to live in. Everybody means well, everybody’s Competent and everybody’s honestly doing their best. Anyone who likes Nevil Shute will love it, because it’s the same universe. I’d go further and suggest that almost anybody will love it, period. Go forth and buy.
