Life on Mars

It’s a book, it’s a playlist: The Martian, by Andy Weir, in which an astronaut is mistakenly left alone on Mars to fend for himself and has to summon all his MacGyver/Castaway-ish/sarcastic-quipping powers to survive sol after sol on the barren Red Planet. During down time (when, say, the H2 oxidizer has to replenish the zineadrine tanks, or something), he’s stuck with his once-fellow astronauts’ left behind media libraries. Which means ’70s TV and a lifetime’s supply of disco, of which he is not fond. There’s no author’s playlist for the title, so we made one: A lifetime’s supply of disco (which is actually just about a day long, but should keep you dancing about as long as your legs can hold you up).

And here’s our outer space songs playlist. “Life on Mars” included, but not before the Beach Boys get to teach us what’s what: “Solar system/brings us wisdom.”

Here too is Sonic Boon‘s tribute playlist for the fictional stranded astronaut–good for stranded astronauts everywhere. Disco free.