Review Detail of Xul in Dead on Mars

TL:DR: Whether it is based on a movie I haven’t watched or a question I haven’t asked, I do not care. 10 chapters in, for a Sci-Fi, it is not great. For a short story, it is not great. —————————————————— Sure, the author had done their homework, but why focus on the past, when the novel is based on the future? Should the homework not be about the future? Should there not be any theories based on the current development of technologies? For example, for water “creation”, there is a full paper based on water extraction from martian soil, why not use that instead of “recycle water from urine, faeces and BREATHING?” Here is another example, “oxygen has to be extracted from water”? Really? MOXIE doesn’t matter to the author then? Or is it because that technology hadn’t come out by the time this was published, thus the author did not care enough to put more research and thought into it? A final example although there are many others, (not just on the survival side, there is also, e.g, the “one-sided lander” concept) the lack of food. The author could not come up with a theory to make any ‘farm’ despite having a FULLY SENTIENT AI. Really? “Homework” is all fine and dandy, but hard Sci-Fi needs more than just that. And sure, all these points could be countered at later chapters, which brings me to my next points. —————————————————— There is not much to talk about regarding the various settings in merely 10 chapters, but characters, even if they are in a white small blank room, could achieve a lot in a story (with a good plot, obviously). Sadly, this story does not have that. ML: “I am still a virgin”, comedic, may be funny to some, but shouldn’t there be more details about himself? The author surely did not want us to relate to a character in mars simply from those lines. Right..? I wouldn’t talk about the characteristics of their behaviour as some might say, “to each their own”. However, even then, there should still be realism about their behaviour so that they aren’t outside the norm of characters. By that, I mean surviving for the sake of survival is not a great motivator. There should be another such as searching for Earth, terraforming mars, just leaving the planet, etc. If I were to say what this character represents, it would be satire as there is no realism to it. AI: I completely fail to understand why this character is a character. We can’t relate to it (it is a robot without feelings), we can’t hate it (again, it is a robot without feelings), we can’t like it as, so far, it’s just been there to calculate. If I were to say what it represents, I would say it is to support ML’s satire. FL: 10 chapters in, nothing remarkable. Except that opposite from ML who is calm, she is anxious. This character might be the only one with depth, despite only appearing on a handful of paragraphs. The author may have done their “physics homework”, but they forgot the more important one, the homework about stories. —————————————————— This was an award-winning story? How..? Had Chinese Sci-Fi literature fallen that low? What a shame. P.S1: Nothing against the translator, I’m simply taking that review as the author’s words, as the TL seems more knowledgeable about them. BTW, does not matter to me even if the translation is MTL as long as the characters and plot are good enough. P.S2: I am using “they” as a third-person pronoun, in full knowledge of “author” being singular both in form and as an individual.