John J. Vinacci

First, a synopsis from Amazon: " The Employees  chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids."  Apparently, this book had been shortlisted for several sci-fi book awards and honestly, I can't even begin to understand why.  As stated in the book's synopsis, each chapter is a report/statement from an employee aboard the Six Thousand Ship t o a corporate investigatory board concerning the attachment of the employees to 'objects' that are taken on the ship. What the objects are exactly is never stated. There is no particular character to root for. A murder mystery is teased but never properly addressed. There is no deep philosophical exploration (much le...

 A man-vs-nature book set slightly in the future and on a different planet to boot, The Martian excels at something very particular: Making math relevant and accessible. Mathematical skills have never been my strong suit, but reading about an unintentionally stranded astronaut fighting to stay alive by having to do numerous calculations (that the story walks you through!) captivated me. Given our protagonist is a mechanical engineer and botanist with an everyman's sense of humor made astronaut Watney a character to root for when there are really no other characters to be found, not until more than a quarter of the way through the book. None of those characters are fleshed out, mind you, as this serves to keep the focus on 'the Martian' and this is a bit distracting as it makes the team at NASA working to save Watney caricatures. So, there is that flaw, while the eventual rescue attempt seem a bit rushed (yet thrilling nonetheless) and the book begins switching narrative pe...