alt Hacker News> Never read the Martian but I was told it was the same thing.
That's the very feeling I had when I read 'The Martian'. While I was reading it I actually thought something to the tune (It's been years now) "This reads like a movie".
Guess that explains why the movie is so faithful to the book.
It was not at all originally intended to be a movie, it just translated to movie format very well, as some books do.