Read: The Martian, by Andy Weir.
It’s funny - having read a few reviews of this book (which exploded in popularity after the author first released it serially for free on his website), people seem to be attacking it for the exact same reason that others hold it up as a classic: The Martian, regardless of which way you look at it, doesn’t really have time for solid character building or intimate moments. It’s a one-man-against-the-elements story, with a strong commitment to scientific fact, and it makes for curious reading.
It can be extremely dry at points, delving into hard science so much that you forget you’re reading a work of fiction, not an actual NASA report. The protagonist, Mark Watney, is mostly there to be buffeted around by the elements and to make a few jokes to deal with his grim situation, but you never really gain any insight into his head. Likewise, the characters back on Earth feel like thinly sketched characters, often only appearing for as long as the exposition needs them.
And I say curious reading because I really did enjoy this book, even though it lacks a lot of what I usually look for in genre literature. Hell, I criticized The Strain for this exact same style of writing, and I’m not sure I can say why it works so much better here. Perhaps because it fully commits - there is maybe a novel here about Mark Watney’s PTSD and the neuroses that his crew eventually suffer from on the way back to Earth, but it’s one that Weir didn’t go with, to his credit. Either way, it makes for an interesting read, and one that I struggled to put down. I’m just not sure why.