About the book
Set in 2035, Andy Weir's debut novel strands astronaut Mark Watney alone on Mars. Six days into the Ares 3 mission, a storm forces his crew to evacuate the planet, and they leave believing he is dead. Watney, a botanist and engineer, has no means of telling Earth he survived, and his supplies would run out long before any rescue could arrive. He relies on ingenuity, engineering skill and a gallows sense of humor, using his botany training to grow food. Weir first released the story himself, as a serial on his blog, before Crown Publishing reissued it in 2014, and Ridley Scott adapted it as a film starring Matt Damon.
Andrej Karpathy described it as a castaway story set on Mars with cool science, and said he loved the film too. James Clear called it the best fiction he had read so far that year.
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This book has 4 recommendations
Craig Barrett (Former CEO/Intel)
This book didn’t really change my mind, but rather reinforced the concept of the power of the individual. At a time when we depend more and more on big institutions to solve our business and social problems the real solutions are crafted by individual actions and initiative. This is true in the business world, where ideas from individual researchers or entrepreneurs can create mega companies overnight, and in the social sector, where such actions as high performing charter schools run circles around a moribund K-12 education system. Best we all remember that the next meaningful advances will come from individual initiative rather than massive governmental programs. After all, Google, Facebook, Uber, microloans and countless other success stories were not products of big government.
Recommended by Fabrice Grinda (Serial Entrepreneur, Investor)
Source: Serial Entrepreneur & Investor Fabrice Grinda Reads Almost 100 Books Each Year
James Clear (Author)
Hot damn. This is my favorite fiction book that I’ve read this year. If you like space, read this book. If you like science, read this book.
Castaway but on Mars. Excellent story. Cool science. Highly entertaining. Total page turner. Loved it (and the movie, rare!) a lot, lower only because it is so popular.
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