I think hard SF is harder to write. It's easy to fall in the trap of cardboard characters and too much science. This book has far too many mysteries and not much character development.

I was expecting better, but considering it took me more than an year to finish this short book, I think I'll stick with The Martian in the future.

Not that I don't like hard SF. I loved the Coyote series by Allen Steele, primarily because it has humans rather than science as the center piece.

This was probably just a bit too much for me.