I got about roughly 30% of the way through the book when something significant happened in the story and I put it down because I wasn’t sure I wanted to read an Andy Weir version of first contact. I really enjoyed The Martian, and how it made technical challenges interesting narratively. This does much the same although with a lot more hand-waving certain parts of how the science actually works and extrapolating how to deal with it anyway.

But then there’s the stuff with the alien. Rocky is a cool dude. But also this book isn’t really ever interested in exploring how an alien culture might interact with humanity. We get some cool scenes of Grace and Rocky’s initial attempts and communication through deduction but once that hurdle is cleared there is hardly any exploration of what Rocky’s culture is like. It just happens to be close enough to human that we just go with it. I don’t want to criticize a book for what it isn’t, and what it isn’t is a rigorous exploration of the difficulties of first contact with a completely alien species would be like.

So what is the book? It’s a fairly hard sci-fi exploration of a frankly ridiculous premise where a lone dude has to solve a a series of technical problems with science! It has much the same sense of humor as The Martian and I think it did a great job of walking the reader through the science and technology (other than the numerous parts where Rocky just fixes a thing, which get very little exploration) and the story briefly touches on some big philosophical ideas without ever giving them the same study that it gives the technical ideas.

I was given a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.