Clara’s Verdict
Re-recording a book that already had a well-liked audio edition is a risky proposition, and the only real justification is that the new version does something the old one could not. This one does. Wil Wheaton’s reading of The Martian is a properly considered piece of casting, and the production adds bonus material drawn from the writings of Mark Watney, the sort of extra that could easily have been a gimmick and is not.
The novel itself needs little defence from me. Andy Weir’s first book remains the cleanest demonstration I know of a very simple idea executed perfectly: put a competent, funny person in an impossible situation and let the reader watch him work. Eleven hours passes without a slack stretch anywhere in it. The 4.6 average from one hundred and seventy-four UK ratings reflects a book that has aged well and a production that serves it properly.
About the Audiobook
Six days after becoming one of the first people to walk on Mars, Mark Watney is sure he will be the first person to die there. A dust storm has nearly killed him and forced his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead. He is stranded and completely alone, with no way even to signal Earth that he is alive, and his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. As he points out himself, starvation is not the likeliest end. Damaged machinery, an unforgiving environment and plain old human error are all better bets.
What follows is a sequence of engineering problems, each one solved and each solution creating the next crisis. Weir’s structural choice, telling much of the story through Watney’s logs, is what makes the book work. The voice is sardonic, immediate and stubbornly cheerful, and it converts what could have been dry technical writing into something closer to stand-up performed under sentence of death. Watney’s ingenuity, his engineering skills and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit are the whole substance of the thing, and the tension never once depends on a villain.
This Audible Studios release is a brand-new production rather than a reissue, and it includes bonus content taken from Watney’s writings, which sits well with a novel already assembled out of documents. The Martian stands alone, with no series or reading order to consider, and at ten hours and fifty-nine minutes it is a manageable listen by the standards of the genre.
The Narration
Wheaton is a shrewd choice for this particular voice. Watney is a scientist whose defining trait is that he is funny in the face of catastrophe, and the delivery has to hold both halves at once without either undercutting the other. Wheaton’s default register is dry, quick and faintly conspiratorial, which is precisely what a log entry addressed to nobody in particular requires.
The sarcasm is where he earns the casting. A less confident reader either flattens the jokes into information or leans on them so heavily that the danger evaporates entirely. Wheaton throws the lines away and trusts the writing, so that you laugh and then remember, half a second later, that the man is going to die. The publisher’s own note about him breathing new life and plenty of sarcasm into the part is unusually accurate marketing.
He is less showy in the sections away from Mars, where mission control and the crew take over, and I would not call the character differentiation there especially elaborate. Those passages are handled competently rather than memorably. It hardly matters, because the book belongs to Watney and the great majority of the running time is his voice alone. On that central task Wheaton is excellent, and eleven hours in his company is a genuinely enjoyable way to spend a week of commutes.
What Readers Say
Only a score is available here. The Martian holds an average of 4.6 stars across a substantial sample for this one specific recording, which is a reassuring figure for a re-recorded edition in particular.
That last point matters more than it might appear. When a popular audiobook is recorded again with a new narrator, the existing audience tends to arrive with opinions already formed, and scores frequently suffer as a result. A 4.6 across this many ratings indicates that listeners either came to the story fresh or accepted the new interpretation on its own merits. With no listener testimony to weigh, I will put my own reservations on the record instead. The mission control sections are the weakest writing in the book and the least interesting listening, and anyone who wants emotional interiority rather than problem-solving will find Watney’s relentless competence a limited diet across eleven hours. Neither objection changes my view that this is among the most purely entertaining novels of its decade.
Who Should Listen?
Anyone who enjoys watching expertise applied under pressure should take this, including readers who do not normally touch science fiction at all. No aliens appear, no invented technology is required, and nothing here demands genre literacy. The obstacles are physics, chemistry, botany and bad luck, and the appeal sits close to that of a very good survival memoir.
Character depth is not what this book supplies. Watney is defined almost entirely by how he behaves rather than by any inner life, and the supporting cast are functional at best. Anyone who finds technical explanation tiresome should also be warned that the novel contains a great deal of it, delivered cheerfully and at length.
Existing owners of the earlier recording will want to know whether the new one justifies itself. On the strength of the casting and the additional Watney material, I think it does.
