an open letter, meant politely

dear andy weir,

thank you for the book. my nephew lent it to me and i finished it in two days, so the machine works.

a few notes, meant plainly. your protagonist reasons out loud, in full sentences, at length, and no working scientist does this. the device gets the physics onto the page and the cost is that ryland has no interior life that isn't a lecture. i'd have taken half the explanation and twice the doubt.

your alien is the best thing you have written. the biology is thought through, the pressure and temperature constraints stay consistent, and the communication problem is solved in stages that each cost something. then you gave it a voice that reads like a bloke from work, which flattens it. a creature that thinks in a different physics shouldn't sound like the funniest person in the room.

astrophage: i did check. the energy density required to move a starship isn't reconcilable with something that also sits comfortably in a cloud layer and radiates at a wavelength you can pick out from earth. i can accept one impossible thing quite happily. you've stacked three and then done careful arithmetic in front of me to show the fourth is fine, which only draws attention to the other three.

the amnesia framing is an exposition workaround and i think you know that.

5 out of 10 from me. i'd read the appendix on eridian biology that you obviously have in a folder somewhere.

regards / kepler