The Martian

 I was at lunch with a friend last weekend and we were discussing something and all of a sudden a joke from a movie popped into my head and my friend's husband knew what I was talking about.

It had to do with The Martian by Andy Weir. I’d seen the movie but hadn’t read the book. Luckily we are the sort of nerds that go to bookstores often, and I found a copy of the book.

I mentioned in an early post that the story of how The Martian was published was kind of amazing and very inspiring to me. He was a computer programmer for twenty-five years but always wanted to be a writer. So, he wrote a book as a hobby and people liked it. The liked it so much that it got the attention of an agent and a publisher. It's a modern day Cinderella story.

It’s a fun book to read. When I first started reading the book, I intended to review the first few chapters, but I read over 120 pages in one sitting.

The thing that strikes me most about this book is that I don’t want to leave the universe that Andy Weir created and I love the voice of the main character. To me, that’s what makes this such a compelling story.

I could care less about the science or if it could happen. I’m most certainly not a huge fan of science fiction and under normal circumstances wouldn’t have given this book a chance.

I think that’s a lesson I need to take to heart when creating my characters. It’s not the story, because I won’t be the first writer to write a coming of age story, but if people can root for my protagonist, then I have something.

Also, I found some of his earlier writing online. He’s written Doctor Who Fan Fiction and some other stuff. It was like his training ground.

Currently, there’s some fan fiction about The Martian. I wonder how that feels as an author: for someone who wrote fan fiction to now have fan fiction written about the characters they created.