Dead on Mars

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?"

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.

This is a really great story but it seems like some spammers have decided to target this story 😔dont focus on the ratings too much😊.

Really good start. At this space, this is going to be a high-quality novel. Looking forward to more chapters. We need more "short" novels on this site, they bring something that 2000 chapter novels don't, so to speak.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about this book from my friend. She’s SUPER picky about everything and so when I heard her talk about this book she said this is her favorite book and that she recommends it. So here I am.

Reveal Spoiler

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.

Every interaction with a Tomcat (crew robot) is a cringe. But there was one particularly infuriating moment after which I've decided to drop this novel altogether. No reasonable person would program an AI with such attitude and proceed to launch it into space.

Reveal Spoiler

Expected hard sf, unfortunately we have a traditionnal MC and characters far from what we would expect an astronaut to be. Irrational decisions, like having teenagers on mars. It may be due to the format, the author wanting to delay the action.

After reading ninety two chapters, I can say that this story worth my attention and my power stones, with the short number of characters still it keeps the reader attach to it with some witty humor of Tomcat, it's wonderful already

Reveal Spoiler

I love space novels, and system novels, and AI novels, and suvival novels, and funny novels. This is all of it, i am so tempted to go and read the raws, but i want to read it in eng, so i will wait for this thing to complete.

Slow pace + overly complicated system + dislikable MC = my fading interest... sorry author, I really was looking forward to this story and had been voting with energy stones since it came out, but this just isn't my cup of tea. ESPECIALLY because of the portrayal of the protag as an idiot monkey.