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posts about science fiction.

recently, in a bookstore, i stumbled about a book called the martian, which tells a story about an astronaut who gets stranded on mars and tries to survive. i really enjoyed reading it, after all the story sounds quite realistically to me. it’s a great book indeed! if you like hard scifi, it’s definitely worth reading.

one thing which was nagging on me while reading the book was that the author’s name, andy weir, sounded somewhat familiar. even though this was supposed to be his first book. well, while reading on, my suspicion grew that andy was somewhat releated to a webcomic i used to read, called casey and andy. (it’s basically about mad scientists. lots of nerdy humor!) and indeed, after finishing the book, i tried to look this up, and found out that casey and andy was written by someone called andy weir, and his homepage also features a section creative writings, where he also mentions his book the martian. bingo!

it’s really cool to see that someone who created a webcomic (one i really enjoyed!) to be (somewhat) commercially successful – after all, there are plans to make a movie out of the martian, directed by ridley scott and featuring matt damon.

today i saw moon, a 2009 science fiction movie. i’ve heard about the movie before, maybe seen a trailer, or maybe read a review, but i’ve never managed to see it until i found it on dvd on friday. it is about a guy working alone on a moon base, mining helium-3. close to his three year contract, he’s looking forward to return home, to his wive and daughter. he starts seeing things, until a fatal accident and someone’s too big curiosity brings everything out of control. leads to an unpleasant discovery. (if you want to know more, read the synopsis on wikipedia.) the movie is well made, and one particularly great part is the soundtrack, composed by clint mansell. parts of it became an earworm for me:

[[for legal reasons, i do not want to include youtube videos here anymore. please click on this link to watch the video at youtube.]]
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