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Hmm, comparing Liu to Clarke is fair, but I don't think it's so hard to find more recent western SF bristling with ideas, Iain Banks, for example. Liu does have
by blacksmith_tb 10y ago
Hmm, comparing Liu to Clarke is fair, but I don't think it's so hard to find more recent western SF bristling with ideas, Iain Banks, for example. Liu does have a very different feel (the 'different perspective') other commenters have mentioned, which certainly makes it worth a read, in spite of the flatness of characters etc. Some of it may be down to the translator, I found Dark Forest to be much more fun, though some of that is developments in the plot, not just Ken Liu's translation, I'm sure.
- Barrin92 10y agoI haven't read Banks in a long time admittedly, but as you point out there's just something different about Liu's voice that I don't think I've read for a long time. Take for example things like this >"One thing in particular that struck him was the total absence of landscapes, the mark of a mature aesthetic sensibility: hanging landscape paintings in a house situated in the Garden of Eden would be as pointless as pouring a bucket of water into the ocean". There's some kind of "humanness" and scale to his writing that's really great. I think his characters are necessarily flat because his characters pretty much always are humanity looking outward, there's really no place for lots of individual development.