History Literature / TheMartian

TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Mark Watney is an astronaut who is part of the third manned mission to Mars. Soon after they land, the Martian weather gets too rough and the mission has to be abandoned. In the escape, Watney is struck down by a piece of debris and presumed dead, and left on the planet. However, he survives. With no obvious way to communicate with mission control, he has to use the limited resources on hand to survive until the next mission -- which is years away. In other words, a {{Robinsonade}} [[RecycledInSpace In SPAAAAACE]].

** The movie changes the circumstances a bit: the airlock [[spoiler: still explodes]], but he manages to patch things up quickly and get to safety without any commentary or special problem-solving required. But when he gets into the Rover and goes to type a message to Houston, he ''absolutely rages'' in frustration at the circumstances.

* "Lost Sols", A email was sent to Venkat Kapoor notifying the recovery of corrupt data logs from Mark's laptop during his time on Mars. The newly-recovered logs depicts an event between Sol 488 and 491 where Mark drove into a ravine and how he got out.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Teddy Sanders. He prevents satellite imagery being taken of the Ares 3 site for months (to avoid bad publicity), keeps the Ares 3 crew from finding out that Mark's alive, and then vetoes Rich Purnell's rescue plan. He regards all these choices as justifiable: there was no reason to presume Mark was still alive, the Ares 3 crew needed to focus on their own survival and the Purnell plan would mean risking five to save one.

** When NASA re-establishes radio communication with Mark, the technician manning the radio link takes a moment to explain the nature of the light-speed response delay to Venkat. When it's pointed out to him that Venkat -- the head of the Mars program -- knows this kind of thing already, the technician replies that in his experience you can never be sure with people in management positions.

* ''Lost Sols'', A email was sent to Venkat Kapoor notifying the recovery of corrupt data logs from Mark's laptop during his time on Mars. The newly-recovered logs depicts an event between Sol 488 and 491 where Mark drove into a ravine and how he got out.

* ''Lost Sols'', A email was sent to Venkat Kapoor notifying the recovery of corrupt data logs from Mark's laptop during his time on Mars. The newly-recovered logs depicts an event between Sol 488 and 491 where Mark drove into a ravine.

* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: Referenced by Mark. With Mark stating that his greatest wish was for "the green-skinned yet beautiful Queen of Mars to rescue [him]... so she can learn more about this Earth thing called [[BoldlyComing 'lovemaking.']]".

** The oxygen alarm in his EVA suit -- warning of too high oxygen levels -- is what wakes up Mark after his impalement by the Hab's antenna. A long technical explanation is given, starting with the suit backfilling with nitrogen after its breach and ending up filling up with pure oxygen after depleting its [=CO2=] filters. Mark greatly overstates the danger, claiming this pure oxygen at 1 atmosphere could damage his "nervous system, eyes, and lungs," when in fact oxygen at this partial pressure will at most cause irritation of the lungs and breathing passages, even then only after 12 hours or so of continuous exposure. Nerve damage (with rapid and possibly fatal effect) wouldn't be an issue unless the suit had both 100% oxygen and increased its pressure to over 1.6 atmospheres -- something that only comes up with hyperbaric chambers and deep-sea diving. (Were this not the case, patients on therapeutic oxygen on Earth would drop dead left and right.)

** NASA knows that [[spoiler:the second dust storm]] is coming long before Mark works it out. And with ''Pathfinder'' dead, they have no way to warn him.

* RealityTV: Creator/{{CNN}} sets up a regular news show to cover the story -- a half hour per day (at least initially), which would seem to vastly overestimate the amount of actual Mark-related news being generated in the typical day. But during one genuinely busy period, "''The Watney Report'' has been the number one show in its time slot for the past two weeks."

** When trying to get the [[spoiler:''Pathfinder'''s rover]] working.

*** Martian soil contains fairly high amounts of perchlorate salt, which would make farming considerably more difficult if not impossible. However, [[ScienceMarchesOn at the time the book was written this was not yet known]] -- and some experiments undertaken since have shown potatoes to have a higher perchlorate tolerance than previously thought. Weir has suggested that you could also just wash the perchlorates out of the soil.[[note]] In an interview Weir said that while percholrate is bad for you, it's bad for you like smoking is and not like cyanide is. Meaning, you shouldn't get too much of it in your system and there are likely negative long term impacts, but it is survivable at the doses likely involved. At any rate, there are perchlorate reducing bacteria which produce ''oxygen'' as a waste product and there are even those who propose [[https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2016/pdf/2946.pdf such bacteria]] might be able to survive and even thrive on Mars. It's not out of the question a future Mars mission might even ''use'' the perchlorate to produce oxygen, as oxygen tends to be quite useful for all sorts of things humans wish to do on Mars and the perchlorate ion - four oxygen atoms to one chlorine, and fairly loosely bound at that - is roughly two thirds oxygen by mass.[[/note]]

*** Martian soil contains fairly high amounts of perchlorate salt, which would make farming considerably more difficult if not impossible. However, [[ScienceMarchesOn at the time the book was written this was not yet known]] -- and some experiments undertaken since have shown potatoes to have a higher perchlorate tolerance than previously thought. Weir has suggested that you could also just wash the perchlorates out of the soil.[[note]] In an interview Weir said that while percholrate is bad for you, it's bad for you like smoking is and not like cyanide is. Meaning, you shouldn't get too much of it in your system and there are likely negative long term impacts, but it is survivable at the doses likely involved. At any rate, there are perchlorate reducing bacteria which produce ''oxygen'' as a waste product and there are even those who propose [[https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2016/pdf/2946.pdf such bacteria]] might be able to survive and even thrive on Mars. It's not out of the question a future Mars mission might even ''use'' the perchlorate to produce oxygen, as oxygen tends to be quite useful for all sorts of things humans wish to do on Mars.[[/note]]

See also: ''Literature/{{Artemis}}''.

** In a rare bit of DramaticIrony ''not'' used for suspense, NASA believes Mark's "bedroom" is a workshop for field testing. It's actually just so he has somewhere to go that isn't the Rover, and to help with the Main/CabinFever. He mostly just watches TV in there.

* NeatFreak: When Teddy Sanders, the head of NASA, appears in a scene, there's always mention of his immaculate suits, or his adjusting items on a table to align them geometrically with the edges, bordering on SuperOCD. This contrasts with the massive amounts of messy improvisation Mark and the rest of NASA engages in to make the eventual rescue work.

* HotScientist: Beth Johanssen, one of Mark's crew mates. The poster with her image on it sold more than all the other crew members' combined. Mark teasingly calls her "a hot chick who went to Mars" in a letter he writes to her, but also calls her a "nerd" and says he intends to give her a wedgie when they meet again. But Lewis had specifically warned all the male members of the crew that they would be taken off the mission if they hit on her. [[spoiler:Johanssen and Beck ''do'' end up becoming romantically involved, but by that point the mission has gone so far off-script that she lets them be, as long as the relationship doesn't interfere with their duties.]]

** While travelling to the Ares 4 site, Mark uses the pop tent as a bedroom. NASA has no idea what he uses it for, so they speculate that it is a workshop. Averted in that while he does contemplate using it as a workshop during the MAV refitting, he ultimately decides against it because it would be too much hassle.

* ApocalypticLog: A couple of Mark's mission log entries are recorded at a time when there's a high probability they'll become this trope. In fact, his entire reason for recording the log in the first place is so that ''something'' of his story would survive if he did not, and it became a habit.

* AbsentAliens: Despite being titled "The Martian" there are no traditional LittleGreenMen or the like -- it is the ''human stuck on Mars'' who is the eponymous "Martian". Mark is GenreSavvy that he's stuck on Mars and stories about Mars have featured Martians, so he mentions Martians now and then, but it's only for the RuleOfFunny. Mark doesn't believe in, nor does he meet any "Martians".

* TheAllegedCar: "Car Trouble" has Watney marooned in the middle of the desert when his car breaks down in western Texas. Also, he forgot his phone charger, forcing him to jury-rig a solution using his car's wiring. He looks forward to not needing to do that sort of thing while he travels to Mars with the best-engineered equipment made by mankind.

* If you look closely, you can see a copy of ''VideoGame/LeatherGoddessesOfPhobos'' among Johannsen's personal effects.