Its stranded astronaut, Mark Watney, survived on Mars using ingenuity, duct tape and plenty of wisecracks, but the writing fell apart in the scenes in which people actually had to have a conversation. In real life, of course, not every conflict is a case study in engineering, but many readers still enjoy spending time with the character once widely - and chauvinistically - described as “the competent man.”Īndy Weir’s debut novel, “The Martian” (2011), found an enormous audience largely because it was a competent-man story that might have captivated fans in the 1930s. Like his counterparts in adventure and western pulps, he was generally white, male and good with his hands, but he was defined by his ability to solve problems with science and technology. In the years before World War II, a new kind of hero appeared in American science fiction.
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