I have descended from my ivory tower and read a fiction book that was written in the 2000s…and I had such a fun time doing it! Andy Weir weaves science into his stories so well, and I loved the relationship between Grace and Rocky. Finally, as far as tropes go, humans and aliens trying to teach each other their respective languages is one of my favorites.
Yeah I listened through it on audiobook and it was definitely fun, but could have been fan fiction. I picked it up because I thought it was supposed to be some great modern piece of sci fi literature, far from it. The scientific and philosophical angles are also very shallow and unoriginal.