I have only read "Three-Body Problem", and I found it to be atrocious writing on pretty much all levels. Language-wise, it was more cliched and wooden than many fanfics I've read. Character development is non-existent, and most of the characters are very shallow and only exist to advance the plot. The plot itself, aside from the basic idea of a three-body system with life, was also very boring - the only part of it that I actually looked forward to continue reading was the Cultural Revolution flashbacks. And then there's the whole sci-fi part of it, which was beyond ridiculous - sentient…
> while the protagonist frets over the level of offense she might cause at the tea party if she chooses to wear the more scandalous gloves I have to admit this made me boggle. I really enjoyed them _because_ the culture was strange and unfamiliar and it was just assumed you'd know what was going on -- which is exactly what mainstream fiction does, of course. (Aside: that's one of the things I enjoyed most about the Three Body Problem.) Compare with most SF which is "20th century California, but it's in space". (Note: I have never been to California.) Or most fantasy, which is "noble…
Liu Cixin, the author of The Three Body Problem had a short story (2002) on communication with gravitational waves. In a distant future, just before the human started the largest, continent-scale particle accelerator (capable of reaching 10^20 GeV) to collect the final data for the Theory of Everything (ToE), an alien agent Risk Eliminator intervened at the last second and dismantled the accelerator, transforming it into a bunch of trees and grass. The alien told humans that the experimental verification of Theory of Everything was extremely dangerous - This was the experiment that triggered…
I can't read the article because paywall, but Cixin Liu's three body problem trilogy had had a big impact on me. A big theme of the books is how we collectively process information and make decisions. The world is threatened by an alien species and different people have different strategies for deference. They need to pick something that can't be predicted and defeated. Essentially earth needs a collective poker face while rapidly innovating a unique solution. There is an implied parallel between human behavior and quantum particles. Our decisions are influenced by the information we have…
Interesting to see you mentioning Foundation trilogy as an analogue, and in context of characters, with what I understand as an implication that in both cases, "weak characters" were their negative sides. I agree with comparison to Foundation, in that both books were not about characters at all, and that was a feature, not a bug. With Foundation in particular, I'm perplexed when I see it being criticized for lack of character depth, given that the books literally beat the reader over their head with multiple levels of reminders that the books are about large forces shaping societies, forces…
In Seveneves, any negative portrayal of any particular woman was massively counterbalanced by the narrative of, ummm, the seven Eves. What female character in 3BP trilogy balances the disastrous actions of Ye Wenjie and Cheng Xin, the two most consequential female characters? Granted, the disastrous action of Ye was somewhat offset by the inspiration she gave Luo Ji. (In the long run, she was still responsible for the deaths of billions.) But Cheng is something else entirely. The plot of a book is entirely up to its author. The time scale portrayed is many hundreds of years. It would have…
I don't think Iain M. Banks is a good writer. (You can see it in this piece, which falls into the trap of using long words to sound clever.) His sci-fi has a serious flaw: it's static. Nothing changes, everything is inevitable, the baddies are predestined to lose. His characters and dialogue are bland. The books do have a strength, which is the completeness of their picture of the world. The concept of the Culture is interesting. I think it has less to do with the third dimension of space, and more to do with the 1990s. The Culture looks a lot like confident liberal democracy, pitting its…
Recently read and most recommended: * Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin * Slaughterhouse Five..., Vonnegut --- I'm in the middle of Ready Player One. Of the last dozen books I've read[1], Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin left my head swimming for the most days, so I'd highly recommend it. It was really eye-opening to read sci fi from a different cultural baseline. Most of my dozen latest reads were during an internet fast. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9443888 They included Asimov, Bradbury, Christie, Philip K Dick, Pratchett, Simmons, Stross, and a few by Vonnegut. I'm not arguing…
* full plant-based/vegan diet + salt/oil/sugar free * Linux * committed to exercise every single day (gym, cycling) * revamp finances * regular reading (Three Body Problem, Snow crash etc.) * regular meditation practice * climbing mountains * finishing my computer science degree - GatesNotes - NewYorker/NYTimes/NY Magazine - MarketWatch - Other blogs? - Sign up for classes - Unpack - Finance/Invest/Budget Deep Dive/ call Fidelity - MarketWatch / Fool / Bogleheads - Tech refresh - Write/Read - Mindfulness - Mindfulness in Plain English / The Mind Illuminated - Yoga - Plan…
It depends heavily on the genre, at least for me. So-called genre fiction--mysteries, sci-fi, fantasy, that sort of thing--really doesn't hold up to rereading, since the whole draw is, by and large, the setting and the plot. I still remember the solution at the end of Murder on the Orient Express, and I still know how Liu Cixin's theory of galactic civilizations is going to play out in the Three Body Problem, so there's not really a draw to reread those books: the language is serviceable but not exciting (at least in the translated TBP), there's no real symbolism/inter-textuality to dig into…