Potato Farmer in the Sky

This week it’s about the popular book, movie, or TV show that fell flat like a bad cake.

Please. No hating on me for my likes and dislikes. As the last literary agent said in her rejection letter, personal preference is subjective.

Ho boy. No doubt this will irritate someone.

The Martian by Andy Weir. Mark Watney is one of the crewmembers of the Ares 3 mission on Mars. He’s a botanist slash mechanical engineer, the Mr. Fix-It for the crew, a valued talent. None more so than when he is left behind on Mars. Left for dead by the rest of the crew.

Alone.

His McGyver-esque decisions involve how to survive until the next mission can pick him up. But first, he needs to let them know he is still alive.

The current box-office phenom is the adaptation of The Martian starring Matt Damon. I haven't seen it but I assure you I am most interested. Mainly because *sigh* I didn't care for the book and I want to experience what others felt.

So why didn’t I love it? I liked Robert Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky, a similar book about the colonization of Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede. The intense play-by-play of how to cope in a hostile environment should have been very interesting. But it didn’t click with me.

I think it was the potatoes. Just too much micro-informative. I got tired of all the minutiae and began skipping...sentences, paragraphs, pages. And then to the end.

So many enthusiastic fans. But I didn’t discover what they found. 

My loss. And believe me, I grieve for that loss.