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.
You didn’t enjoy the main character explaining how to do a math problem on how to open a door rather than just turn the handle?
I liked reading the Martian, but PHM seemed like it was just making up things for the main character to have to explain with science and math.