Like a band with a great rhythm section but a bad singer, this novel has a great tech nerd pulse that throbs throughout but much of the rest is just unpleasant noise. The plot of an astronaut stranded on Mars grabs you right away. The first person narrative of that astronaut from his daily journal, playful and sarcastic in the face of possible oblivion, keeps you involved between the juicy chunks of science. But it is the science that is that star of THE MARTIAN. The main character must “science the hell” out of his situation in order to survive: from growing crops where there is no soil to creating water to keep those crops and himself alive. The science is presented in such a manner that this reader almost believed he could follow the instructions and survive on Mars. That is quite an achievement as my survival skills are tested every time I lose visual contact with the refrigerator. Famously this book benefitted from a long gestation period during which the author received a lot of input regarding the technical aspects of his plot. Unfortunately, he did not get the same help developing his characters as he did developing his science. Almost every character speaks in the same sarcastic voice—the only way you can recall who is who is by how quickly they get annoyed or how quickly they annoy someone else. I understand that these folks are under tremendous pressure but frankly, most of them come off like a bunch of pricks. And posing the question as to whether billions should be spent to save one guy beyond a paragraph or two would have been nice. The money spent on his rescue could have saved a million lives on earth—yet the global outcry seems only on the side of the lost astronaut. All that being said, the science and plotting compelled me to keep reading with little regret even if I occasionally was tempted to tear out sections of the book and toss them in the trash—conveniently located near the refrigerator.