A man wakes up on a spacecraft with amnesia, two dead crewmates and no idea why he is there. The memory comes back in pieces alongside the present-day problem, which is a sound way to deliver a lot of exposition without it feeling like exposition.
The science is the appeal, same as The Martian. Problem, constraint, available materials, attempt, failure, revised attempt. It is engineering as plot.
Rocky is the reason this one is better than The Martian. First contact handled as a working relationship between two competent people with no shared language and a deadline.
The ending earns itself.
Read December 2023.
