I love space horror stories. I don’t like most horror, but space horror is different. I love the movie Pandorum, even though it was mostly a flop.
I have a long commute to work so I like listening to audiobooks on my drive. Right now I’m listening to The Martian.
I love that movie, and I have to say, if you averaged the book and the movie, it would be perfect. There are challenges in the book that Mark Watney faces that are just too over-the-top, that the movie in cutting for time, dealt with better. Then there were things explained in the book that were left out of the movie that shouldn’t have been and should have been left in there as a few lines of throwaway dialog.
Perfect example: it would have been just a few lines in the movie for Mark to say that he had enough multi-vitamins to last and all he needed was calories so he could live off potatoes for over a year and be fine, but they left it out.
Also – and I understand plot and all – but NASA knows that he has surplus water and his water is a closed system. Why did they launch protein bars? Dehydrated food would have been lighter and they could send more calories. Weight is the enemy in spaceflight so why send one more drop of moisture than the needed to. He could have used his surplus water to rehydrate his food.
But I digress…
One of the parts in the book left out of the movie is when the crew of the Hermes fly by Earth, they talk to their families.
Beth Johanssen has a conversation with her dad and tells him not to worry about her because she is the designated survivor. It’s a lie to make him feel better, but it’s a weird scene.
That gave me an idea for a space horror that I want to write inspired by The Martian but have no idea how.
Nutshell plot:
A team of astronauts is on its way to Mars. While one astronaut is on an EVA, the craft is hit with a meteoroid. The hull is breached and the ship goes to vacuum. Everyone but the astronaut on EVA is killed and flash frozen. A lot of stuff is blown out into space.
The astronaut re-enters the ship. She manages to patch what she can and seals off the rest. Puts the bodies into a part of the ship that has been exposed to space with the intent of at least bringing her crewmates home for burial.
The only way for the ship to come home – due to orbital mechanics – is a free return trajectory. Exactly the same as Apollo 13. When she gets close to Earth, NASA will launch a small craft to dock with the trans-Martian ship and rescue her.
With the loss of supplies blown out into space, she doesn’t have enough food for the rest of the mission. She stretched and stretches her rations but clearly, she will starve.
So one by one she has to retrieve her frozen crewmates, thaw them and eat them. The ship is on free return so there really isn’t much for her to do besides some regular minor maintenance. Not like The Martian where it is a constant struggle against the nature of space.
She is along for the ride, all she needs to do is not die of hunger. This is a slow, psychological descent into madness as she reminisces about her crewmates and her multi-year experience training with them for a Mars mission, as she eats them over the course of several months a piece at a time.
Of course, during this time NASA knows what’s going on, but can’t say anything about it to the public because of how they would react so that adds a dimension to this I haven’t exactly figured out yet. Probably something where it’s this giant cannibalistic elephant in the room that nobody can talk about to keep it a secret from the public. So while she’s still in contact with NASA, she’s isolated because of this unspeakable thing that is happening.
Space horror.
Lastly, I’m waiting on grades but I feel like I did well. I’m glad for the semester to be over, I was at the point where I was equating Hugoniots in my sleep.
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