Week Nine: Space Opera

For this week, I read The Martian. I managed to be one of the few people living under a rock who neither read the book before this point nor saw the movie. I was fond of the survivalist approach to the book. It was a work of Science Fiction, fitting clearly within the science fiction genre but with elements of slight satire (His constant cursing and sidetones) and thriller. Unlike many works of science fiction, this piece was written as a tragedy versus a high-adventure through the cosmos. We have a man whom is trapped in a broken habitat on an alien world, struggling to survive until help arrives. Even though the events themselves are fictional, they feel real in their chronological order. It even is told in the form of a documentary through emails between the characters. It had the high emotional impacts of a thriller through the various snippets of news from earth as he would reach milestones. Unlike the movie for this week, Forbidden Planet, the book itself at times is narrated like a documentary, and features triumphic emotional highs and devastating lows. A good example of a bad low was when the habitat popped and damaged his helmet. Not only is he knocked out and helmet busted, but his habitat is damaged and the spuds are now damaged goods. A similar progression is witnessed in the film Apollo 13, which features the use of a Central control to help troubleshoot ways to survive.