I never realized how interesting potato farming could be until I read The Martian; once I did pick it up, however, I found myself unable to put it down. It’s hard to nail down exactly why it captured me the way it did — while I overall found Mark to be a sympathetic character, there were plenty of times when I felt that he was unfunny or unrelatable. I was less interested in the math of how he survived and more interested in his feelings, which I thought could have been explored further. He was facing one of the most isolating and potentially scarring experiences imaginable, and while I know that humor can be a coping mechanism, it rarely felt like he really processed or was affected by the gravity of his situation. It was hard not to feel that I was being sold the idea that this guy was so funny that he could come out of that experience unscathed physiologically. Maybe a person needs more time to process that trauma, but his seeming lack of self-reflection or fear didn’t sit quite right with me. That being said, I still really liked Mark and the other characters in this story. I think that it was a good exploration of humans resilience in even the most unthinkably tragic circumstances and, as the book points out, a testament to the inherent goodness of humanity. I’m not sure that I view humanity quite so optimistically (especially in the face of recent events)  but I do think that there is something to be said about our capacity (even if it is not always realized) to care about and sacrifice for others.

The reasons that I enjoyed The Cold Equations fall completely on the opposite side of the spectrum. I feel that too often, logic and reality are pushed aside in the interest of creating stories that are supposed to make us feel good. We don’t want to read about things that are sad, but I find that when stories are too optimistic, I feel disconnected from the plot. The Cold  Equations defies that script — from the beginning, you are told that the only option is for Marilyn to die, and by the end, you realize that holding out hope for her survival was illogical. I like that this story made me reflect on myself, my expectations, and my emotional responses. Call me morbid, but I also tend to read tragic endings as an author’s refusal to cop out in order to make others more comfortable (whether or not that is actually true).

 Down and Out On Ellfive Prime, I connected with much less. I think part of this was honestly just that I couldn’t imagine what the spacecraft looked like, which made it feels like a bunch of disjointed plot points in my head. I didn’t like that I didn’t understand the backstory (which I know is sometimes necessary due to the constraints of writing short stories) and I just felt really lost. That being said, the last page of the story did a lot to redeem it in my mind. Almquist’s calculated move to make Zen return to the underground was so unexpected and made him such an interesting character in my opinion.

Finally, there was Night’s Slow Poison. While I really enjoyed the writing style and think that there is a very interesting story here, I think I need help understanding it. I didn’t really know if Awt was Ghem Echend’s grandson or somehow else related to her and, if so, how old that would make Kels. The ending moved really quickly, and I also don’t really understand what it was that Kels wanted to tell Awt. I do think that this will probably be my favorite of these stories once we discuss it and I understand it a bit more.