The American Yeoman in Andy Weir's The Martian

In this essay I seek to place Andy Weir's The Martian (2011) in discourse with two imbricated genres: the political and cultural history of the American frontier, embodied, in this case, in the archetype of the yeoman, and the scientific and fictional history of Mars. The red planet has historically served as a site where, by way of the mythic American frontier, authors have sought imaginary solutions to contemporary anxieties. In the case of The Martian, Andy Wier draws upon the intellectual heritage of the American yeoman to present Mars as a habitable alternative to the Earth. His rhetoric is problematic not only because it lessens the apparent urgency of interventions into global climate change, but also because it reinforces the apparent verisimilitude of a certain version of American history. The Martian, I argue, represents the latest fold in the Martian fantasy of American frontierism in that it presents a version of the America's mythic past centered upon the white male experience and free of human or ecological victims. It thus seeks to sustain and invigorate a literary tradition predicated upon cultural, environmental, and physical violence as well as the marginalization of people of color in narratives of American history.