Worldcon: Interlude.

"I am definitely gonna die up here ... if I have to listen to any more of Commander Lewis's god-awful disco music." 

Mark Watney, The Martian 

It's the end of Day 2 at Worldcon, and I'm relaxing in my VRBO rental unit.  Unlike a lot of the VRBO/AirBnb units I've stayed at, it actually has a decent sized TV, so I've hooked up my laptop (like any good geek I always pack an HDMI cable, just in case) and I'm watching The Martian.

One of the running gags in the plot is that castaway Mark Watney, the reluctant hero of the story, is forced to rely on his commander's terrible 70s media collection for entertainment: disco music and Happy Days. (If memory serves, in the book he also reads Johanssen's collection of mystery novels.)

But wait - where's Watney's personal media library?  I can't imagine that he left for a lengthy Mars mission* without something in terms of personal entertainment.  To help establish a baseline, I'm on a six day trip, and whereas I didn't add anything to my media, that's because I didn't need to.  I have most of my music collection on my iPhone: that's 5,871 songs, which, based on a three and a half minute average song length, works out to about 342 hours of music.  That's more or less 14 days of nonstop 24/7 listening.  I also have 453 e-books on my phone - including The Martian - and about 100 hours of video on my iPad and MacBook combined, based on different movie and TV program lengths.  

Digital storage is increasingly small and cheap - why would Watney not take every song he's every enjoyed, every movie he's ever even thought about watching, and the contents of Congressional Library in digital format?

I know, it's because it's funnier, but it's an unexpected plot hole considering the strict science of the rest of the storyline.

- Sid

*The book has the trip taking 124 days one-way with an ion drive propelling the Hermes.