5 ms·
Interesting they mention and get quotes from the author of the Three Body Problem series. I just finished reading that series, and the whole time I had the fee
by legohead 9y ago
Interesting they mention and get quotes from the author of the Three Body Problem series. I just finished reading that series, and the whole time I had the feeling that it was written more to convince people of something than to actually entertain the reader.
The ideas in the books were pretty amazing, unique, and imaginative; but the story and writing itself was quite sub-par.
edit: I listened (audio books) to the English versions. I thought the translation was excellent. I don't want to spoil anything, but the author has a very dark vision of mankind and kept having his characters ostracized to the extreme which got old pretty quick. I didn't feel like the books were missing anything descriptive from lack of translation.
- skrebbel 9y agoNotpick: It's not the author, but the English translator.
- jacobolus 9y agoDid you read it in Chinese? Maybe something got lost in translation...?
- Jemaclus 9y agoI also really enjoyed the books, but definitely more from a "these are cool ideas" perspective than from great narrative storytelling. Something was probably lost in translation, but the ideas were really great. I especially like (and hate) the concept of the Dark Forest.
- QuercusMax 9y agoDid you read it in the original Chinese, or the English translation? I haven't read either, but it's possible that the English version misses a lot of nuance from the original version. (It's also quite possible the original is crap, and the translation is doing a very adequate job.)
- monochromatic 9y agoI actually thought the translator did a pretty good job (not to say that I can read Chinese or do a direct comparison). My only complaint was that I wish they'd westernized the names--they all sound too similar to my American ears.
- mattmanser 9y agoI felt the translation felt very awkward at times. Just scanning some articles about Ken Liu, it was his decision to try and stick to the original literary style, I think a lot of it came from that. In a lot of ways I liked it because the entire thinking behind the book was a different cultural thinking. But the resulting style is definitely a bit awkward in English and sometimes it was a little bit of a slog.
- Sangermaine 9y ago>The ideas in the books were pretty amazing, unique, and imaginative; but the story and writing itself was quite sub-par. Yeah, that's the vast, vast majority of sci-fi in a nutshell.