A book review - The Martian by Andy Weir

I was unable to put this book down until absolutely necessary for life in the SNAFU household to continue normally.
The basic plot is about a future manned (and womanned) mission to Mars. During the early days of the mission a powerful Martian dust storm builds up to unexpected wind levels and their return vehicle is in danger of being blown over. Soon it becomes necessary to abort their mission, get aboard and take off before their return module gets damaged and strands them all. During the short trip through hurricane force winds to get aboard, one of the crew is knocked down by flying debris, injured and left for dead. Fortunately, but unluckily for him, he is still alive and so starts the long story of how he manages to survive in a hostile environment using all his skills as a technician and a botanist. At first he cannot communicate because the thing that injured him was the communication dish which is their only contact with Earth. Slowly he is able to learn how to survive, make communication and report that he is alive. Soon he becomes a media event and the whole world is watching his fight for survival. Will he be able to stay alive for the next four years until a rescue mission can be sent? A really, really gripping story. However, this book is written for nerds and space junkies. It uses a lot of technical jargon which is fine for the initiated, but may be obscure to many muggles. The book is factual to a degree that I have not experienced in any other work of fiction that was not based on real events. All the science and technology is as accurate as I can ascertain and not only detailed, but essential to the story.

The book reminded me of another one I had read way, way back called No Man Friday by a writer named Rex Gordon. Same plot but different. No Man Friday was first released in 1956 and Mars was a very different place then, we knew much less about it in 1956, but much of the story line is familiar.

This time it is a British manned expedition to Mars and again only one survivor. In this book the rest of the crew die before they land due to an airlock failure whilst our hero is EVA (outside the ship). The sole survivor crash lands on Mars, not being a pilot, and then has to figure out how to survive. Like the Andy Weir’s Mark Watney, Rex Gordan’s Gordon Holder, (yes same name as the author) creates his own air plant and water recycling equipment. However, unlike the 2015 hero, our 1956 hero is on a Mars with plant life and so is able to cultivate that. The first part is almost the same as both protagonists, using their technical skills, devise sources of oxygen and water. This is where the two books diverge, because the 1956 Mars is populated by Martians who eventually help Rex Gordon’s hero stay alive for fifteen years until an American mission is able to find him and take him home. There are no native Martians on Andy Weir’s Mars, not even bacteria. The book, The Martian has been made into a movie and I have not as yet seen this and await in anticipation to see how well the director has turned it into a visual experience or, like so often happens, mangled the plot and changed the characters around to suit their own interpretation of what could have been a great movie. Ok so I am a cynic, but it happens over and over; my fault for reading so many books.
Mind you, having said all that, the trailer looks hopeful.

Some of my favourite reads No 3

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys

I first read Flowers for Algernon as a short story in 1960, about a year after it was originally published and it impressed me no end. A few years later I discovered that Daniel Keyes had expanded it into a novel, which I immediately bought and devoured. It did not put me off, knowing the overall plot, so I hope this review, which contains some minor spoilers, will not prevent you dear reader from reading this wonderful novel.

When I first read the novel I was not disappointed and to use a comparison, it was not like the stretching out of a half hour TV episode into a feather film, the story had been expanded in a masterful way. My original 1968 copy started showing the signs of a much loved book by getting rather dog eared and tatty but this book has never gone out of print for long to my knowledge, so I recently replaced it when it finally fell apart.

This fine book has had a number of TV, radio, stage and film spin-offs and even a musical, although none of them seem to have been a resounding hit. It is a difficult story to bring to life, since it is in the form of a diary and the changes in the writing are an important part of the plot, but it is the humanity in the story that makes it so recyclable. Poor Charlie Gordon, like Mephistopheles, has looked upon the face of God but can never achieve heaven.

Charlie is mentally sub normal. Innocent and child-like he is dimly aware that he is missing something in life and believes that if only he could learn to read and write he would become smart like his friends in the bakery where he works. He enrols in night school and impresses his teacher by his strong desire to try to improve himself.

Meanwhile a group of researchers have created an experimental medical technique to increase intelligence, with notable success on the white laboratory mouse Algernon, and now they want to try it on a human. Charlie’s teacher suggests that they use Charlie Gordon as a guinea pig. Charlie on being told what it may achieve, promptly volunteers and he is given the new treatment.

Throughout the pages of this book, you get to know Charlie as he starts to understand who he is. It is easy to empathise with him because the whole book is written by Charlie himself as he writes up personal progress reports for the experiment. Starting off as a struggling illiterate, with few words he gradually improves until he is writing and expressing himself fluently. As he starts to become smarter, he begins to realises what the people he thought of as friends at the bakery really thought of him. Eventually the experiment, which had started so well, proves to be a failure and Charlie gradually realises what is in store for himself as Algernon the mouse starts to degenerate until eventually you come to the point where you understand why there were flowers for Algernon.
Flowers for Algernon helps understand those less gifted with intelligence than yourself and if you do not already understand, you will see them in a different light after reading this book.
If you do not like sad endings do not read this book, it is compelling and moving but ultimately very sad but I am glad I have read it and will certainly read it again and again.

Since composing the post, I have found several other Blog sites posting this book and some using it as educational literature, so it seems I am not alone with my opinion of this novel.  Also the blurb on the book cover states that five million other readers have bought the book, although it does not say that five million people all liked what they read, I like to think so, but if it is used by schools and colleges, having a book you must read often puts you off.  It certainly put me off Dickens and I only read and enjoyed his books several decades after leaving school.  So if you had to read it as a student, give it another try, it may not be as bad as you think.  

A Book Review - Rupert Bear

In these stories a much loved character that is known as Rupert Bear is featured in a continuous series of adventures. What most people should realise from his name is that he is not in fact a fictional character at all, but a real person. All fictional bear characters invariably have a name starting with B, Bruno, Barney etc. As his name is Rupert we can see immediately that like Winnie the Pooh, it is a real name. No one could make up a name like that.
Describing him as a bear is rather unkind because there is nothing ursine about him apart from the shape of his head. Unknown to most people, he is completely human but suffers from an inherited genetic deformity analogous to the Elephant man, but more symmetrical in effect. His deformity is an inherited condition that both his parents and many of his relations suffer from too, and may in fact be a mutation. Other symptoms of this condition are that he is completely hairless and his body chemistry causes his skin to be paper white most of the time. His complexion sometimes takes on a brownish yellow hue, something like a sun tan, but which is actually the reverse and is caused by a lack of sunlight since this colouration is most predominant in midwinter, particularly around Christmas time.

Rupert is brown in midwinter

Rupert is otherwise completely human, having correctly proportioned limbs and five fingers and five toes on his hands and feet. However, he rarely takes his shoes off, even when playing at the seaside, and appears rather reticent to expose his feet. I can only assume that whilst not deformed visibly they need his special supportive boots that he wears constantly.


This poor child has been brought up in a kind of reservation which is shared by other similarly afflicted people, including an entire family of ‘Elephant Man syndrome’ people who are much more elephantine than Rupert is Ursine, having very deformed bodies giving rise to thickened skin, a trunk like appendage on the face and deformed hands and feet. Most of the other unfortunates living in the same location have the same white pigmentation and as with Rupert’s friend Bill, a black banding which gives rise to his nickname Bill Badger. The white areas on most of these victims, turns a slightly different colour around mid winter too, ranging from the brown Rupert shows to a grey colour for the Elephant family.


Amongst the deformed people living in Nutwood you will run across a few healthy people who are employed by the institute. The ‘Professor’ and the scientist, known only as the ‘Chinese Conjurer’, are medical professionals who are working on possible cures, but the main aim of Nutwood is integration with the outside world.

These two men have dedicated their lives to helping people like Rupert

To this end carefully selected staff are encouraged to live in along with their own families and mix with the afflicted and are slowly integrating them into a modern society.

Occasionally Rupert and his family travel outside this area, often to a particular destination, a small seaside town referred to as Sandy Bay and the nearby Rocky Bay, where they mingle with many normal people who are unusually kind to them, obviously aware of the project and ‘that there but for the grace of God etc.’ The names of these places given in the stories are obvious disguises for the real locations.


Mixing with normal people can be quite traumatic for poor Rupert and sometimes after a long visit away from Nutwood he requires counselling.

I felt everyone really hated me

As well as dedicated professionals, occassionally this is done by voluntary groups often recruited from the Girl Guides, since they are able to retain a child’s perspective.

Sometimes being accepted by these children is important therapy

To pay for this vast and very long term project, apart from the yearly Rupert annuals on sale around Christmas, a great deal of merchandising is done based around fantasy versions of their life, which whilst a steady mans of funding for the institute, is also a subtle means of preparing the outside world for the sight of these unfortunate, hideously deformed, people when they are finally integrated fully into the outside world.
This project has been running for several decades and needs to be staged very carefully to avoid trauma on the part of the victims and encourage acceptance on the part of the outside world. One very interesting side effect of the complaint which causes these ghastly deformities is that almost all of the victims have incredible longevity and they age so slowly that over the entire length of the project few have shown any signs of ageing. This too is being researched very closely since it is obviously of great interest to the outside world and seems to have been passed on to some of the social workers and medical teams that have had long term contact with these victims. This is not advertised widely since it is little understood and the team would be overwhelmed with volunteers whose only motive would be to gain longevity.

It is difficult to imagine what it must be like for the children to remain immature for such a long time, but with only one or two exceptions, notably the Foxoid brothers and the porcine girl, they seem well adjusted and remain perpetually cheerful and in good spirits.


Because of the longevity of many of the long term people working there you will see a number of different styles of clothing being worn from many different eras, which suggests some have been working there a very long time indeed. Amongst the inmates of this institution, symptoms can be limited to just his skin pigmentation and the longevity.


The two characters shown below, the Regency gentleman and the Pike man, who has been in the area a very long time, have no visible mutations at all other than longevity and a greater or lesser degree of skin pigmentation disorder.


Normality in appearance is not always a sign of dedication to the project, because certain unfortunate cases have been unable to cope with the longevity and have lost touch with reality. In their minds they believe themselves to be genuine pirates or bandits and so on and before discovery are often able to hide in the vast Nutwood grounds with fellow delusionists, living the life of an outlaw and so reinforcing their delusion.

The published stories that have come out of this amazing institute, as opposed to the unpublished details of certain case studies which remain too disturbing to reveal, whilst more often are fantasy, not all are entirely fictious since delusional patents believing themselves to be real bandits or pirates have needed the authorities to flush them out of hiding so that they can be restrained and given therapy.

Because Rupert and other children are free to roam the Nutwood grounds, they have occasionally stumbled across these unfortunate victim’s hideouts and become involved in their recapture. On these occasions, the marketing department quick to realise the potential as a narrative, have used some of these real life situations as the basis of various published adventure stories.
Long before I discovered the truth behind them, Rupert stories were an important part of my childhood literature and I read and re-read any Rupert Annuals I was given for Christmas. Now I am aware of the wonderful charity that is behind these I am overwhelmed with admiration and hope that modern science can improve the lot of thes remarkably cheerful individuals.
All the stories are very entertaining and I give them 9.9 out of ten for readability and despite the tragic truth behind these stories I would recommend them for any child.
Because the Nutwood institute is entirely self funding, they have a registered charity which can be found at www.nuttwood.org where donations may be given via Play Pal.