I definitely enjoyed all of the readings for this module. Of the short stories, “The Cold Equations” was my favorite; I thought it was much better than the other two. And I preferred The Martian over all of the short stories. In fact, I would go out on a limb and say that The Martian is one of the best books I have ever read.
I did see one major connection between all of the readings for this module. The authors of these short stories and novel were making observations on society at large.
The two short stories “It’s Great To Be Back” and “Down and Out On Ellfive Prime” both display a pessimistic view of society. Both of these stories featured an elitist group of people who are clearly separate members of society. In “It’s Great To Be Back,” everyone is jealous of this elitist group of people who travel to the Moon, and they are more than prejudicial towards them. In “Down and Out On Ellfive Prime,” the elitist colonists distance themselves socially from the lower class workers, and the elite treat them as if they were some sort of indentured servants. Both of these stories feature a pessimistic view of society.
On the other hand, “The Cold Equations” and The Martian both display an optimistic view of society. In “The Cold Equations,” everyone in the story tries to do whatever they can to help Marilyn. The fact of the matter is simple: as soon as the pilot discovered Marilyn as a stowaway, he should have jettisoned her out into space. But instead of doing that right then and there, he tried to do anything that was possible to keep her alive. And when he realized that he couldn’t, he made sure that she stayed alive as long as possible. It would certainly have been easier to jettison her on the spot, but he did everything he could to keep her alive as long as possible, so this story displays an optimistic view of mankind. Obviously, The Martian also conveys an optimistic viewpoint of mankind. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. The Martian is not a book about a man trapped on Mars; rather, it is a book about man’s will to survive and human beings’ basic instinct to help each other. Weir pretty much sums all of this up through Watney’s final monologue (for lack of a better word).
And lastly, I would just like to say why I felt The Martian was so fantastic. Aside from being the best story out of all the stories we read (and the best written too, in my opinion), this book was so incredibly nerdy, which made it 100 times better than it would have been otherwise. One of the quotes from Entertainment Weekly on the back of the book called it “an impressively geeky debut.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. My favorite part of the whole book was when NASA first finds out Mark’s alive and they are wondering what he’s going through and what he’s thinking, and then we see his log where he’s wondering why Aquaman can control whales since they’re mammals. That was so perfect. I also loved the part when he was trying to make water and almost blew up the hab and said “Damn it Jim, I’m a botanist, not a chemist.” Even the not so traditionally nerdy stuff, like when he devotes a few pages to explaining why he’s a space pirate or when he responds to Houston with a ‘that’s what she said,’ is all so geeky in its execution that it makes the book so much more enjoyable.
