Week 9: Lovable Space "Pirate" (reading: The Martian and Arthur C. Carke shorts)

For this week I read The Martian by Andy Weir and two stories by Arthur C. Carke: The Nine Billion Names of God and The Star.

I found the religious themes in Arthur’s writing fascinating. Religion has played a roll in many stories I’ve written. I generally try to even avoid this as I have some fear that it will turn the audience or my piers off of the story. I don’t feel that the subject really reflects where I am currently in my life but religion was such a huge part of my upbringing that if I’m pulling from what I know to create stories it’s often featured.

All of that to say, I think C. Carke does a masterful job of incorporating religion in such a captivating way that even adamantly unreligious readers could find the stories intriguing. The stories aren’t used to sell religion. They simply feature religious aspects to enhance the story and as foundational narrative devices.

The author is best at endings. I had a sense of where The Nine Billion Names of God was going. But on reading the last paragraph I got chills. I’m not sure if I could exactly pinpoint what it was about it. But the choice of how the ending was described. The way it ended was (slight spoiler) more horrific than anything I had devised as an ending in my head. Not that I didn’t get the sense that the story would end that way, but the way that it was captured and how the end began.

The Star also built up to an impactful ending. After reading the second story by him I realized just how much Arthur’s stories are built with the sole purpose of setting up a dramatic ending. I still really enjoyed this story and was absolutely shocked by the ending. But I was so totally captivated by his other story that I don’t think many other stories could compare. After I read The Nine Billion Names of God I wanted everyone I know to read it. I want to be able to talk to anyone/ everyone and hear about their experiences when reading it. And it’s such a short story it’s more than worth it.

Both stories also presented philosophical questions that inspected religion and the questions that are brought up through it and towards the very idea of its existence. This added a richness to the stories.

The Novel that I read this week was The Martian. I honestly didn’t have time to read all of it in the week. But I really couldn’t leave it unread so I’ve continued reading it into a second week and maybe even neglected some other work that should have been finished by now.

I don’t think my love of this book is exactly technically motivated. It’s just something that connected with me in a way that I didn’t want to stop reading it. I really genuinely enjoyed it, probably more than a lot of films and TV shows that I generally fill my spare time with.

Mark Watney’s character is so perfectly sarcastic. His continuously dry humor was brilliant and entertaining. I also found it amusing how blunt he often was.

Part of what made Watney seem real to me was his need to take breaks and his very human behavior of rewarding himself. If he accomplished a lot and made progress, he would reward himself with more food.

Part of what made the comedic side of the story so effective was the timing. Things would jump from looking up to catastrophe in an instant. The way that these moments were narrated by Mark fully created this.

“I have a chance to live after all!

LOG ENTRY: SOL 37

I am fucked and I’m gonna die!”

The novel was also a lot easier to read than many of the others I’ve read for this course. I think the shifting between what was happening on Mars, Hermes, and NASA was handled in a way that was easy to follow even with the constant shifting. Part of what assisted this was the shift between first and third person.

I also appreciated the amount of science that went into the story. I’m not exactly a brilliant scientist that could tell you if all of the details in the story hold a hounded percent to reality, I can at least say that it felt very real to me. Both the science and the characters that were built.

I’m glad that the story did also add in the narratives of the crew on Hermes. I think this added a lot of the emotional background to really make the audience care about Watney and his survival. I also enjoyed most of the NASA sections but felt that this was where I struggled the most to remain involved and interested as a reader.

However, one of my favorite moments was when Mitch got sassy with Teddy while (slight spoiler alert) hiding the fact that he had sent the plans for the Rich Purnell maneuver. One of the crowning sass moments of the entire book.

I became so invested in the story. It’s fascinating how an author can create someone that isn’t real but that you care about regardless. I really wanted Mark to survive. I even got so frustrated when Iris went wrong that I had to take a break from reading. That was a real emotion over something very fictitious. But I’m honestly so glad I have petty “Space Pirates” that send text boobs to NASA out of spite and many other characters to read about and care about.

Update: I really wanted to watch the film adaptation of The Martian but I couldn't find it in the school's library and haven't gotten around to purchasing it to be able to watch it. What I did find was Interstellar and so I decided "it's about space too, I'll probably like it!" But unfortunatly that wasn't exactly true.
I've recreated a shot from the film by making a minature in a project for production design. I always felt bad that I had imitated something from a film I've never seen before. Well, now I have.
I honestly didn't get a lot from the film other than being able to say I have seen it. I felt portions of it were timed poorly and it often draged a lot making it hard to stay invested. It's interesting thinking about the idea of time happening at a different rate on earth and seeing a father faced with watching his daughter age to be much older than him - even if the science doesn't work for it to have made that much of an effect.
What made the diffence between The Martian and Interstellar was that I was so invested in Watney, I don't even remember the guy in Interstellar's name. I was devistated to the point that I had to take a break from reading one of the times that the plan to save Whitney fell through. He was funny and a likeable person and someone that I feel a lot of people can relate to. I didn't really connect with the guy from Interstellar. I realized that things that happened to him were sad. But I didn't care so deeply even when I realized those things.
Another thing that affected my enjoyment of the film was it's sound. The sound sometimes made things feel too close or generally threw me off with spacing of the characters. I also had a really hard time understnading what the robot character was saying. I'm not sure what it was about his voice but it made it difficult for me.