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.
I wish the story had explained why Grace’s crew died. I kept waiting for it to be some big twist or reveal but it’s just accepted as “they both died for no reason.”
Also, I feel like there was an abandoned plot point or something for Dubois and Shapiro dying in the explosion.
I think for plot/writing reasons (similar to The Martian), Grace’s crew died. I wish there was a bigger deal made about the mysterious sleep deaths too, mostly because story-wise it’s a great character beat/world-building piece for Rocky as it’d be horrifying for him in context.
The explosion deaths are also pretty convenient to leave Grace on his own, show that stupid crazy terrible things happen as per the style of disaster stories, and more to show the contrast between actually very competent ideal candidates and Grace himself (again setting up his predicament).
I thought the explanation was that the mission was so rushed that the ship and automated systems failed to keep them alive during sleep/stasis.