4 ms·
I enjoyed the book. What are some better ones you recommend?
by bcherny 9y ago
I enjoyed the book. What are some better ones you recommend?
- philipkglass 9y agoIf you want some first contact stories that are better (IMO) than The Three Body Problem, try: - Blindsight by Peter Watts (cannot recommend this strongly enough) - The Forge of God and sequel Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear - Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds - Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky I appreciated getting a non-Western take on one of the most durable SF tropes in the Three Body Problem, but I didn't much enjoy it overall, and didn't read the sequels. It didn't hang together logically for me. The aliens could have built orbital habitats in their home system faster and easier than finding a replacement planet, even if they couldn't directly fix the problems of their home planet. Also I had a hard time squaring the aliens' (believable, hard-SF) colony ship capabilities with their magical, completely-beyond-known-physics "sophons" that they sent ahead.
- golem14 9y ago"His master's voice", by Stanislaw Lem
- Flemlord 9y agoAnvil of Stars is my favorite book in this genre. It can be read without reading the prequel. Gateway by Frederic Pohl is also a great brush-with-aliens book although technically not first contact.
- thriftwy 9y agoJust wanted to concur that Blindsight is an awful book. I see it recommended everywhere but I've found it thoroughly uncompelling. As far as recommendations go, Mote in God's Eye is hard to beat.
- phaemon 9y agoTo "concur" means to agree; I'm not sure what word you meant but I'm assuming it was a synonym for disagree. EDIT: oh, did you perhaps misread "cannot recommend this strongly enough" as "cannot recommend this"? That would make sense.
- thriftwy 9y agoNo, you're right in that I am mistaken. I was meant to provide a negative review to balance a positive review.