Sunday, April 30, 2017

Week nine: Space Opera



For this week’s read I both read, and watched The Martian, by Andy Weir. I thought this was a fantastic and fresh take on the classic sci-fi adventure story, and was pretty disappointed by its movie adaption. Never before have I been so painfully aware of the cheap storytelling tricks used by Hollywood to turn really great stories into mediocre easily-digestible versions for the masses.  One of the aspects of the book that didn’t make it into the movie, was how visceral and real the story felt. Even though the story takes place in the future when we’re about to put a man on mars, the story feels like a contemporary one, as if it were written by some kid that grew up and became an astronaut, then had this crazy thing happen to and had to use all he knew to try and barely get out of it. Another aspect of the original story that was exaggerated by Hollywood was the drama and interactions happening at NASA. The book reads like your average work place drama, normal people doing normal things to try and get the job done. This subtlety of office relationships grounded the  story, and added emphasis to the particulars of individuals personalities, where as the Hollywood version over emphasized the drama, turning everyone into an over exaggerated character, dehumanizing them, and making the story feel more contrived. Over all I thought the book was really fantastic, it was refreshing to read something that was grounded in such accurate scientific detail, and made reading it all the more rewarding.

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