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.
This is still an anthropomorphic view of death and loss. Rocky had to experience his crew passing in real time. Whether that or a different occurrence, we still don’t know how his “culture” would view death.