I've never pushed a novel before, and today I made an exception for that man and talked about the third science fiction novel published by Andy Weir, the original author of "The Martian", in 2021 - "The Rescue Plan".
As a technology house addicted to space, Andy Weir began to update "The Martian" on his blog in 2009, and he never thought that he would be out of the circle.
But his thousands of fans responded so enthusiastically to the work that he pack the novel on Amazon's self-publishing platform for $0.99.
By March 2013, Random House bought the rights to the novel in six figures, and soon after, 20th Century Fox Pictures bought the rights to the film adaptation, directed by the great director Red Liscote, and Matt Damon played the hapless astronaut Mark Watney.
The film version of "The Martian" received 7 nominations for the 88th Academy Awards and grossed $630 million worldwide, which in turn contributed to a surge in novel sales.
After the word-of-mouth second novel "Moon City", "Rescue Plan" was published in 2021, which is another word-of-mouth at the level of Wang Fried.
This part is a spoiler, if you mind, please watch the second part directly.
The novel is about the sun being infected by a star-eater, a neutrino-level creature similar to seaweed.
They frantically absorb energy in the sun, multiply on a large scale in Venus, and then return to the sun to absorb energy, and so on, the sun's temperature plummets, and in a few decades half of the Earth's population will die.
Scientists found that the starphage infected many stars, but T Cetus, 11.9 light-years away from Earth, was unharmed.
They used the star phage as fuel to build a spacecraft close to the speed of light, sent 3 astronauts to T Cetus to study the star of the star phagosaurus, and then used a small spacecraft to send the research data back to Earth.
But they didn't have time to produce more starphages as fuel, so the 3 astronauts could not return after completing their mission and had to die in outer space.
Ryan Grace is a middle school teacher who drives ducks onto shelves and boards a spaceship. The accompanying astronaut died unexpectedly before reaching T Star, and he became humanity's only hope.
Incredibly, he met an alien Loki at T Star, who came to T because of the Star Eater.
He became the first human to contact aliens, teamed up with Loki to save two galaxies, and became close friends.
I've been immersed in the world of The Rescue Plan for the past few days, and apart from a few hardcore details, it reads very smoothly.
The story is not unconventional, a bit like discovering a virus - looking for a pattern of antibodies, and the sun cooling is also a setting that many science fiction works like to use.
But Andy Will wrote too well, he continued his posture of solving everything scientifically in "The Martian", explaining scientific principles in every detail, and the solution of many scientific problems became an important cool point of the novel.
After three works, this has become a kind of label for the author, and it is completely at odds with mainstream Western science fiction. Accustomed to dystopia, cyberpunk, space opera, and teenage fantasy, Andy Weir's science fiction is the orthodox way of writing in my mind.
Another cool point of "The Rescue Plan" is the narrative structure. The opening is an amnesiac man who wakes up from a spaceship, he does not know who he is or what his goal is, and can only recall his identity while surviving alone in the depths of space.
Such a two-line narrative not only increases the sense of suspense, but also leads to the earth line, which can adjust the rhythm of the narrative, and the recall paragraphs are closely related to the current problems, which is a very cinematic structure.
I have no doubt that the novel was aimed at the film adaptation at the conception stage, after all, the screenwriter who participated in "The Martian" must have had a lot of experience in writing the screenplay.
When it comes to "Rescue Plan", the whole book is very graphic, one scene after another, and the crisis setting of the beginning and turn is particularly like the structure of the movie.
If you like watching movies, you'll be very comfortable with the clean pace of the novel, even like it.
Another surprising aspect of the novel was the positive depiction of the alien Loki in the constellation Eridani.
When the author began to describe Loki's appearance, I had a bad hunch. How to write aliens in line with readers' expectations is an almost impossible task.
As said in "The Mystery Ball", we creatures on Earth live in the same environment, and there are so many differences. For example, you can't communicate with dolphins, at least not fluently, or discuss scientific problems.
Then aliens living in completely different galaxies, they may be incomprehensible beings, for example, they may be high-dimensional creatures, and a large part of them are invisible to us humans. In such a situation, it is almost impossible to establish communication with them.
I once thought that depicting aliens and alien technology like "The Three-Body Problem" was the only feasible way, but in "The Rescue Plan", humans not only face aliens directly, but also make contact one of the core plots, which is extremely risky and difficult, but I think Andy Will achieved this feat.
He makes convincing rationalizations of encounters and communication, such as the fact that two organisms are homologous, the air pressure is close and the speed of thinking is similar. The most important thing is that only at the same level of technology will choose to go to Cetus to find answers, too backward or too advanced to achieve this operation, or there are more advanced methods.
For example, dolphins cannot build spaceships to reach Cetus at the speed of light, but they are not aware of the impending catastrophe.
On this basis, humans and aliens have established a fairy friendship that makes people "leak on their faces", and the process is interesting, turning the heavy story of life and death into fun.
The novel may not reach the meaning of "The Three-Body Problem" that makes you look up at the stars and think about the universe, and from this point of view, "Rescue Plan" cannot reach the science fiction classic, but it is very cute and enjoyable to read, and I personally like it very much.
The film adaptation rights were sold at a high price before the novel's publication, starring Ryan Gosling (the same name as the main character in the book), and "The Martian" screenwriter Drew Goddard wrote again.
My only concern is directing duo Phil Rhodes and Christopher Miller, who have co-directed Food Comes from the Sky, The Dragon Tiger Boys series and The Lego Movie, as well as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
First of all, they are live-action film directors with limited experience and too strong comedy genes. Although "Rescue Plan" is also full of humor, it is still mainly science fiction, and I hope they can shoot this part well.
Because I'm so looking forward to this movie!