I like stuff with romantic elements and angst, usually YA, fantasy, paranormal/urban fantasy or variations thereof. Usually wrinkles nose at sci-fi due to unlikely tech. Straight girl who likes boys that like boys!
So the part where I was so surprised because I liked The Martian and loved how the tech made so much sense? Yeah, I just read Andy Weir's mini-bio on his webpage and whaddya know, he is a programmer and a space science nerd:
ANDY WEIR was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. The Martian is his first novel.