I’m excited to see so many people writing about The Botanist .. er The Martian, including:
Alun Salt in AoB Blog (Incidently, Alun wrote about the book back in 2014, inspring me and others to read it),- Adam Rutherford in the Guardian,
- and Chris Martine in HuffPost (who, very coolly, just named a new species “Solanum watneyi” in honor of the fictional Martian botanist…., hats off to you Chris),
- Chris Arridge in The Conversation deconstructs the suitability of Martian soil (with and without .. ahem .. amendments) for growing potatoes,
- The Crop Science Society of America observes that good nutrition (human and soil) benefits from greater crop diversity, specifically by including pulses,
- Emma Cooper notes that at least blight won’t be a problem…
- The University of Arizona reports, “The Martian Food Growing System: It’s Here”
- and here’s mine again from this blog.
(I’ll add to this list if you let me know of other botany-biased reviews).
The film opens this week, and the preview reviews have already been quite positive. Several of us scattered around the world are planning to go on Friday 2 October, as a sort of virtual film club. Why don’t you join us? I look forward to hearing the perceptions of the plant science community.
Update: Did I enjoy the film? Yes.
I saw the film on Sunday, and I really enjoyed it too 🙂
This is an interesting one – Scientists at Washington State University and the University of Idaho have published a five-page study guide helping students figure out how to farm on Mars, in a scenario very like Mark Watney’s in The Martian: https://news.wsu.edu/2015/10/20/scientists-publish-case-study-for-growing-food-on-mars/#.VidZBCvse5K