Two novels about Mars

Back when I was in college, I experienced an aspect of reading that I think is common for English majors.  That is, while taking multiple courses it becomes necessary to keep up reading multiple books at the same time.  I think a lot of English majors, like me, were probably also reading novels for themselves outside of their coursework.  From time to time this would lead to tandem reading of novels that seem to speak to each other in interesting ways.  It is a neat way to find parallels between literature that, on the face, may seem to have little in common.  It is also a great place to begin asking questions about the works and challenging accepted readings of them. 
This intersection occurred for me recently when I happened to find myself reading both The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and The Martian by Andy Weir at about the same time.  See, I have a whole bookshelf packed with novels I want to get to, both books that are new to me and ones I want to reread.  I also have a backlog of ebooks in my phone that I read as chance happens.  I had read The Martian Chronicles years ago and wanted to revisit it and had The Martian in my phone waiting for me.  What strikes me about this tandem reading is how different these books are in approach and style.  Bradbury's Mars bears little similarity to the actual planet.  Instead, he uses Mars as a way to explore human interaction and the human urge to explore, colonize, and conquer.  Earthlings in The Martian Chronicles don't come off very good.  Bradbury creates a microcosm of Earth on Mars in which he can poke at different aspects of humanity.  There is a broad disregard for native Martian life and culture and many of humanities worst traits are immediately rebuilt in what some in the book see as a second chance to recreate a new social structure.  Bradbury's view of Mars and humanity veers from sentimental to apocalyptic and back.  It is a book that seems to want to ask questions about human nature and what we will be like when we reach past our own planet.  The answer keeps coming back that we are just going to keep being the same.
The outlook in The Martian is pretty different.  The majority of this book is narrated as Mark Watney's journal.  Watney is stranded on Mars, having been left behind as the rest of the crew of the Ares mission leave under emergency circumstances.  The captain and crew believe that Watney is dead after being speared by a broken communications antenna.  The rest of the novel details Watney's attempts to stay alive on Mars without support and NASA's attempts to get him supplies and/or rescue him.  This novel works to highlight what is best in humanity.  A mission of exploration becomes an opportunity to showcase human ingenuity and self-sacrifice.  Weir's naturalistic presentation seems more grounded in contemporary science.
These books demonstrate the different modes of sci-fi.  It doesn't really matter that Bradbury's Mars is so fantastic and unrealistic because he, ultimately, works to write about human attitudes toward science and each other more than about realistic space travel.  And even if Weir's novel seems truer to what we know about space exploration, it is equally speculative and hopeful in forwarding this scientific project.  These two books, like a lot of sci-fi, end up being more about the people and the ideas that they find important.  Bradbury warns about human nature and the way that even well-intentioned projects can lead to disaster while Weir presents a modern castaway romance that cheerleads supposedly dispassionate science.