The Martian

As you can see, this plan provides many opportunities for me to die in a fiery explosion.

As a chemist, Vogel knew how to make a bomb. In fact, much of his training was to avoid making them by mistake.

Then I sat for a moment, dumbstruck that my plan had actually worked.

This allowed me to do what writers treasure more than anything else: catch the reader off-guard. There’s nothing better than knowing you’re going to outwit with the reader. And the type of people who read sci-fi are very difficult to outwit.

Amazingly, some of the bacteria survived. The population is strong and growing. That’s pretty impressive, when you consider it was exposed to near-vacuum and subarctic temperatures for over twenty-four hours.

My guess is pockets of ice formed around some of the bacteria, leaving a bubble of survivable pressure inside, and the cold wasn’t quite enough to kill them. With hundreds of millions of bacteria, it only takes one survivor to stave off extinction.

Life is amazingly tenacious. They don’t want to die any more than I do.

I started the day with some nothin’ tea. Nothin’ tea is easy to make. First, get some hot water, then add nothin’.

“But seeing his status doesn’t help,” Mindy said. “It’s not like we can do anything about it if he falls behind. This is a pointless task.”

“How long have you worked for the government?” Venkat sighed.

“It just goes to show,” Teddy said. “Love of science is universal across all cultures.”

You started my training by buying me a beer. For breakfast. Germans are awesome.