The Martian

In an alternate present-day reality where NASA has all sorts of funding and competence, the third manned mission to Mars is cut short by a bad sandstorm. Mark Watney, one of the six astronauts is impaled by a flying antenna while the crew scrambles toward the ascent vehicle for an emergency evacuation. His spacesuit breached, he is left for dead.

Except, Mark's not dead. He fell in such a way where the tear in his suit folded underneath his body, and after a few minutes he regains consciousness and jury-rigs his suit back into a decent enough condition for him to walk back to the pressurized habitat the crew was meant to live in for the next month. So he's safe for the moment, but his outlook is still pretty bleak. He has no way of communicating with the outside world. He has a few months' worth of food. His only hope of escaping from Mars consists of making it some 3200 kilometers away to the proposed landing site for the next NASA mission, which won't even land for another three years - a mission he knows may end up getting canceled in the wake of his "death" anyway.

So what this ends up being is a sci-fi twist on the survivor genre. It's Cast Away in space, where in addition to being plagued by loneliness and potential starvation, our hero is always just a catastrophic system failure away from death. Mark is able to MacGyver his way out of so many different hopeless situations, what with his dual background as a botanist and engineer, but he still faces pretty insurmountable odds. Fortunately, an attentive mid-level NASA employee makes a few keen observations on some Martian satellite pictures, and before long the whole world is watching Mark's every move and NASA's sole priority is getting this man back home alive.

The book was pretty entertaining. Nothing special, and a little bit predictable and formulaic, but still enjoyable and imaginative. The real treat here, potentially, is the upcoming film adaptation. Ridley Scott is directing it, Matt Damon stars, and the cast is just loaded. Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Donald Glover, Kristen Wiig - all playing astronauts and NASA nerds and what have you. It comes out in November of this year, so you know the studio believes in it. It's going to be a great movie. Like, Apollo 13 with better special effects and no requirement to stay true to historical events. Get pumped!