Reviews of Dead on Mars
Dead on Mars
Skyray Descriptor
- Overall Rate
- Translation Quality
- Updating Stability
- Story Development
- Character Design
- world background
This is a award-winning short story that's only 251 chapters long. It's about the length of most contemporary science-fiction books with about 4 major arcs, with each arc having a clear focus for survival. Although there's a book and movie named The Martian that follows a similar premise, this story is built on a question found on the Internet: If you were an astronaut on a mission to moon, and you see the Earth explode, what would be your first reaction? Hence, the same challenges and ones even more challenging are what our protagonists face in this story, especially when there's no Earth to provide them any support. With the cast being a bare minimum of three characters, it makes you deeply feel for them while also enjoying their antics when the mood is tense due to the looming doom. You can feel the subtle changes in their behavior as the sense of loneliness, despair, and helplessness gets to them. It really makes you feel empathy for these characters that it's bitter-sweet when the story ends. The author has done his homework in the scientific aspects of the book, and being a physicist by training, I'm rather impressed. It's still very much grounded in reality and not something totally out there. While being science-fiction, it also delves into (among others) the age-old philosophical question: "What is the meaning of life?"
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I don't recommend this novel to the people of the Science Fiction community. The main reason for that is that it is unrealistic. You might find that funny, but it is very important. A story, any story, must have some kind of base ground to stand on or the readers won't be able to understand and make comparisons to it. A story is only a comparison to the readers current life experience to the life experience of the characters in the story. What this means is that in order for a reader to understand a story, they have to have at least some similarities. I truthfully wouldn't mind this novel if it had some semblance of seriousness in it's writing. If it was more realistic it'd probably be a very good read. The way it is now, not so much. The writing itself is counterproductive to the story it's trying to tell. Last human in existence, last man alive, yet for some reason there's no suspense, no *******, no reality to the story. It has no depth, and that's because the author decided to add a C3PO to it for slapstick comedy purposes. Some people might look at the A.I. in the story and it's character interactions with the main characters and say that the author wrote it to act such a way to give some kind of psychological relief to the characters themselves. That the characters are in such a serious situation that some outside help is required to prevent a mental breakdown. I would say that they're grasping at straws. I would say that for one simple reason, the slapstick comedy isn't designated only to the robot AI. If that was the case then I'd kind of agree with that line of thinking, but it isn't. A prime example of this is the fact that the first thing the MC thinks about when he hears that the earth was destroyed is that he's still a virgin. This is in the context of the main characters first internal monologue. Our first "meeting" with the character we're going to be spending the rest of the novel with. It's what sets the tone for the entire story. It makes a very poor first impression. I could go on, but stopped reading at chapter 7. I couldn't rationalize the story any longer. If the reader cannot insert themselves into the story, into the situation the main character is in and rationalize the decision making that the character is making then that constitutes a failure of writing in my honest opinion. This goes back to the first part of this review, there has to be some kind of middle ground between the reader and the story. A bridge that allows the reader to understand and "imagine" themselves into the situation the main character finds themself in. All of this being said, for serious readers of science fiction, this novel is probably not for you, it's lacking in rational decision making. If you're just looking for something to pass the time, there are worse things to read, at least until it goes premium and everyone drops it.
If you are looking for a good sci-fi novel then you are looking in the wrong place. At the get-go, the main character is utterly useless in making base decisions despite being an astronaut and is given background/decisions with a quirky ai robot that's serves only to provide information or slapstick. There's worse ways to pass the time but dont expect realism as the characters seem completely new to the operations of space majority of the time which I would think they should have been given training for these scenarios given anything can go wrong in space. This is more a comedy with a guy and a talking robot than a space novel about being stranded.
TL:DR: Whether it is based on a movie I haven’t watched or a question I haven’t asked, I do not care. 10 chapters in, for a Sci-Fi, it is not great. For a short story, it is not great. —————————————————— Sure, the author had done their homework, but why focus on the past, when the novel is based on the future? Should the homework not be about the future? Should there not be any theories based on the current development of technologies? For example, for water “creation”, there is a full paper based on water extraction from martian soil, why not use that instead of “recycle water from urine, faeces and BREATHING?” Here is another example, “oxygen has to be extracted from water”? Really? MOXIE doesn’t matter to the author then? Or is it because that technology hadn’t come out by the time this was published, thus the author did not care enough to put more research and thought into it? A final example although there are many others, (not just on the survival side, there is also, e.g, the “one-sided lander” concept) the lack of food. The author could not come up with a theory to make any ‘farm’ despite having a FULLY SENTIENT AI. Really? “Homework” is all fine and dandy, but hard Sci-Fi needs more than just that. And sure, all these points could be countered at later chapters, which brings me to my next points. —————————————————— There is not much to talk about regarding the various settings in merely 10 chapters, but characters, even if they are in a white small blank room, could achieve a lot in a story (with a good plot, obviously). Sadly, this story does not have that. ML: “I am still a virgin”, comedic, may be funny to some, but shouldn’t there be more details about himself? The author surely did not want us to relate to a character in mars simply from those lines. Right..? I wouldn’t talk about the characteristics of their behaviour as some might say, “to each their own”. However, even then, there should still be realism about their behaviour so that they aren’t outside the norm of characters. By that, I mean surviving for the sake of survival is not a great motivator. There should be another such as searching for Earth, terraforming mars, just leaving the planet, etc. If I were to say what this character represents, it would be satire as there is no realism to it. AI: I completely fail to understand why this character is a character. We can’t relate to it (it is a robot without feelings), we can’t hate it (again, it is a robot without feelings), we can’t like it as, so far, it’s just been there to calculate. If I were to say what it represents, I would say it is to support ML’s satire. FL: 10 chapters in, nothing remarkable. Except that opposite from ML who is calm, she is anxious. This character might be the only one with depth, despite only appearing on a handful of paragraphs. The author may have done their “physics homework”, but they forgot the more important one, the homework about stories. —————————————————— This was an award-winning story? How..? Had Chinese Sci-Fi literature fallen that low? What a shame. P.S1: Nothing against the translator, I’m simply taking that review as the author’s words, as the TL seems more knowledgeable about them. BTW, does not matter to me even if the translation is MTL as long as the characters and plot are good enough. P.S2: I am using “they” as a third-person pronoun, in full knowledge of “author” being singular both in form and as an individual.
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