PRE-SPOILERS PART: Meg Howrey has done perhaps the best job of relating the current thinking/engineering of getting humans to Mars. And she does so without going into in-the-weeds tech jargon. But if you are at all familiar with the various humans-to-mars mission ideas swirling around these days, you will recognize almost everything she describes and appreciate the accuracy. But more importantly, The Wanderers is about the interior lives of the astronauts and their families. It is obvious to me that Howrey has read multiple astronaut autobiographies as well as works by aerospace psychologists. She really understands how astronauts think. If you grew up wanting to be an astronaut, or have ever seriously pursued the dream of space travel, or have done work that supports those who travel in space, then you will find beautiful prose here that may seem like someone pulled secrets from your soul.
Oh, and lot of the dialog is damned funny.
[Audiobook note: The reader, Mozhan Marno, is quite good and handles the various accents (Russian, Japanese) superbly.]


SPOILERS PART: Like [book:The Martian|18007564], The Wanderers has no villain. The conflict and suspense come merely from the situations in which the astronaut trainees and their family members find themselves. I find this immensely refreshing. I also appreciate that Howrey avoids most of the all-too-familiar tropes of Mars-mission fiction: the last-minute crewmember swap-out, the crewmember who goes nuts, the catastrophic dust storm, some bio-contamination from Mars that threatens the crew, etc. Of course, she avoids this in part by writing not about an actual mission to Mars, but a simulation of one. Or does she?


SUPER-SPOILERY PART: Seriously, don't read this until after you finish the book.



No, really. I meant it. Have you finished the book?



Okay. It was just a simulation, and Sergei, Helen, and Yoshi would have been able to quickly realize why based on physics.




You really finished the book? Because I'm gonna drop the spoiler here. Alright then.






In the story, the astronauts are told that Prime engineers have created tools that weigh 38% of what they do on Earth to help with the simulated feeling of being on Mars, and have weighted the boots of the astronauts' Mars exosuits to prevent injury-inducing running and jumping while working outside. But whether inside the "lander" or outside on "Mars", there is no way to change the rate at which things fall. If the astronauts had really been sent to Mars, they would have known it by the simple fact that anything dropped would fall to the ground much more slowly than on Earth.

BUT it is to Howrey's credit that I didn't even start worrying about this question until almost the last few pages of the book. I was so swept up in the story that my skepticism was dampened. There is some seriously good writing here. ( )

I forced myself to finish this. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. ( )

It's sad that my 200th book of the year wasn't a good one.

Oh, it has its moments. It's actually quite well-written, and brilliantly observed, if I'm going to be honest.

But, it's a typical "literary" novel: long on observation and thought, really thin on plot and wraps up with a non-ending ending.

Yeah, there's some wrap up, yeah, there's some plot, but I realized about a third of the way through what was coming...or, not coming, as it turns out...and almost set the book aside.

I'm glad I didn't, simply for the writing, but damn it, I really do prefer a book where something other than thought happens. ( )

Three astronauts have been selected for the first crewed mission to Mars. Well, they might be going to Mars. The idea is that first they will do a simulated version of the trip, complete with full-length stints in rather cramped spaceships, while they and their families are observed to see how well they handle it.

I must admit, this wasn't quite what I was expecting. Despite having seen it described as a "psychological novel," I was somehow expecting a more compelling sort of narrative, a little bit more plot. Indeed, such plot as there was didn't exactly work for me, as there's an ambiguous but important aspect to things that I just couldn't really accept at all.

But even the stuff that doesn't work on a plot level does work beautifully on a thematic one. Ultimately, this isn't a novel about training to go to Mars, but rather one about all the ways in which people try to shape their own selves into who they think they should be, and about the faces we present to each other. The Mars simulation idea is a wonderful metaphor for that, and Howrey approaches it in some complicated, insightful ways I don't think I've ever seen done before. ( )

fiction (human drama astronauts; one of the main characters has Asperger's). ( )