I’m happy to report that this is indeed the case, with a few reservations. When it was announced that 20th Century Fox had bought the movie rights and that Ridley Scott had signed on as director, expectations were high among the book’s avid fans that the movie retain the book’s scientific realism. As a novelist, he could, and did, choose not to depict in detail the futuristic equipment that the astronauts take to Mars. Weir’s father was a particle physicist and it’s also clear that Weir diligently researched the book’s details. To some degree, its scientific accuracy shouldn’t surprise us. Although the author concedes a couple of scientific flaws in the foreword, on the whole, the book was surprisingly accurate and enjoyable. In effect, Weir’s novel figures out how an astronaut could survive under these conditions and get himself rescued. He has limited supplies and resources and, initially, no way to contact Earth. The book is written mostly from the point of view of American astronaut Mark Watney, who is accidentally left for dead on the Martian surface. It was a thought experiment that led software engineer Weir to write his 2011 novel, also titled The Martian.
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