{"id":1758,"date":"2015-08-28T09:58:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T23:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/08\/28\/knack-movie-and-book-soldersmoke-on-mars-the-martian\/"},"modified":"2015-08-28T09:58:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T23:58:00","slug":"knack-movie-and-book-soldersmoke-on-mars-the-martian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/08\/28\/knack-movie-and-book-soldersmoke-on-mars-the-martian\/","title":{"rendered":"Knack Movie and Book &#8212; SolderSmoke on Mars &#8212;  &#8220;The Martian&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ej3ioOneTy8?rel=0\" width=\"440\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> <strong>I realize I&#8217;m very late in reading this book. Billy read it last winter. The movie is already coming out. I guess I didn&#8217;t see the Knack element in this story until I saw the movie trailer. Wow. This is a book and movie for us. Dude is stranded on Mars and has to fix the radio (with Hendrix playing in the background). I&#8217;m reading the book now (appropriately, on my I-phone). I find myself thinking about the Elser-Mathes Cup. <\/strong><br \/> <strong><\/strong><br \/> <strong>More on the book here: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> From the Wiki article: <br \/> Andy Weir, the son of a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Particle_physics\" title=\"Particle physics\">particle physicist<\/a>, has a background in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Computer_science\" title=\"Computer science\">computer science<\/a>. He began writing the book in 2009, researching related material so that it would be as realistic as possible and based on existing technology.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-alter_5-1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-alter-5\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[4]<\/span><\/a><\/sup> Weir studied orbital mechanics, astronomy, and the history of manned spaceflight.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-7\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-7\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[6]<\/span><\/a><\/sup> He said he knows the exact date of each day in the book.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-skepticality_8-0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-skepticality-8\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[7]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><br \/> Having been rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-alter_5-2\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-alter-5\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[4]<\/span><\/a><\/sup> At the request of fans, he made an <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Amazon_Kindle\" title=\"Amazon Kindle\">Amazon Kindle<\/a> version available at 99 cents (the minimum he could set the price).<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-alter_5-3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-alter-5\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[4]<\/span><\/a><\/sup> The Kindle edition rose to the top of Amazon&#8217;s list of best-selling science-fiction titles, where it sold 35,000 copies in three months, more than had been previously downloaded free.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-alter_5-4\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-alter-5\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[4]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-skepticality_8-1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-skepticality-8\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[7]<\/span><\/a><\/sup> This garnered the attention of publishers: Podium Publishing, an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013. Weir sold the print rights to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crown_Publishing_Group\" title=\"Crown Publishing Group\">Crown<\/a> in March 2013 for over a hundred thousand dollars.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-alter_5-5\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-alter-5\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[4]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><br \/> The book debuted on the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_New_York_Times_Best_Seller_list\" title=\"The New York Times Best Seller list\"><i>New York Times<\/i> Best Seller list<\/a> on March 2, 2014 in the hardcover fiction category at twelfth position.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-9\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)#cite_note-9\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">[<\/span><\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ue4PCI0NamI?rel=0\" width=\"440\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p> Our book: &#8220;SolderSmoke &#8212; Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm\">http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a> Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke\">http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a> Our Book Store: <a href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20\">http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I realize I&#8217;m very late in reading this book. Billy read it last winter. The movie is already coming out. I guess I didn&#8217;t see the Knack element in this story until I saw the movie trailer. Wow. This is a book and movie for us. Dude is stranded on Mars and has to fix &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2015\/08\/28\/knack-movie-and-book-soldersmoke-on-mars-the-martian\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Knack Movie and Book &#8212; SolderSmoke on Mars &#8212;  &#8220;The Martian&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}