5 ms·

Completely disagree. The science was pretty good, for a pop audience, but there was zero character development - beyond Luo Ji, zero characters develop in the _

Completely disagree. The science was pretty good, for a pop audience, but there was zero character development - beyond Luo Ji, zero characters develop in the _entire series_. I don't want to spoil anything, of course, but you can pretty much decide the rest of the series based on what I've already written. Extremely disappointing.

legionof7 8y ago
I actually thought that there was some character development (like the Swordholder woman, I forgot her name). It's not "good" development but I think it's there. I also think that other parts of the series make up for it. Ofc, to each their own, books are subjective.
- demilicious 8y ago
  Interestingly I was thinking of her when I made the initial comment - I didn't mention her specifically, in order to avoid spoiling anything, but in my opinion she did not develop at all. Again, I don't want to talk specifically about any further events in the series, but to me, she didn't evolve at all as a character.
  - cizezsy 8y ago
    I am a Chinese, I agree with you. This book is consist of many wonderful "ideas" and bad-portray characters. In fact, IMHO, the characters in this book are only used to introduce those "ideas". But, those "ideas" are really amazing. This why some people love it, some think it is bad.
zone411 8y ago
If your tastes require solid character development then sure. But other people might enjoy a book more for its plot or ideas. There are books (especially in science fiction), movies, and TV shows that are widely recognized as very good without a lot of character development.
- beambot 8y ago
  To be "best of all time", it definitely needs all three: ideas, plot, & characters.
  - askmike 8y ago
    Not according to everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- arkh 8y ago
  > But other people might enjoy a book more for its plot or ideas. I'm on the "don't care about character development" side. But those books are atrociously slow. The whole "3 body problem" could be condensed to maybe 50 pages.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> there was zero character development - beyond Luo Ji Da Shi (together with Luo Ji, my favourite characters), Ye Wenjie, Yun Tianming and Thomas Wade develop across the series. If you cast the various human masses, the Trisolarans and Sophon as characters, which they resemble, they—too—develop compellingly over the series. Certain family lineages also cast favourably as “characters”. It does take a different view of character development to make things pop. For me, the best part about the characters was experiencing Liu’s worlds through their odd perspectives. (Cheng Xin was not a pleasant perspective. But against Wade’s and Beihai’s foils, it is thought provoking.)
int_19h 8y ago
I'd disagree that the science was good, even for a pop audience. It reads very much like somebody got a bunch of random "cool" scientific concepts, and then proceeded to treat them as deus ex machina devices without much understanding of the underlying physics. Just to give one example, at one point the first book features an integrated circuit somehow "etched" on the surface of a stretched-out elementary particle. And that's not just a random curiosity, but a key plot device, without which said plot collapses. I can't in good conscience call this hard sci-fi (which is how the book is usually advertised).
- stevenhuang 8y ago
  If that's what you think then you seem to have a very narrow view of what constitutes hard scifi. For example, the stretching as a recall is from the part about the elementary particles being folded into higher dimensions. Either you've dismissed that as fantasy or it seems your take on "hard" scifi is wholly unimaginative.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    It's not dismissive to call it fantasy. Do we have any scientific evidence that any of higher-dimensional antics in 3BP are possible? If not, then the author is making up his own world building rules (completely acceptable). But that makes the story more akin to scientific fantasy than hard scientific fiction. And unless the English translation excised a LOT of technical details, there are some huge leaps of scientific faith in 3BP.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      There's a rule I remember, that in hard-ish sci-fi, the author gets to invent one unrealistic thing. I wouldn't put Cixin Liu's trilogy as hard hard sci-fi, as it invents a few more, but all in all, there aren't that many "fantasy devices" there. It definitely has a flavour of hardness.
      - ethbro 8y ago

legionof7 8y ago

I actually thought that there was some character development (like the Swordholder woman, I forgot her name). It's not "good" development but I think it's there. I also think that other parts of the series make up for it. Ofc, to each their own, books are subjective.

demilicious 8y ago
Interestingly I was thinking of her when I made the initial comment - I didn't mention her specifically, in order to avoid spoiling anything, but in my opinion she did not develop at all. Again, I don't want to talk specifically about any further events in the series, but to me, she didn't evolve at all as a character.
- cizezsy 8y ago
  I am a Chinese, I agree with you. This book is consist of many wonderful "ideas" and bad-portray characters. In fact, IMHO, the characters in this book are only used to introduce those "ideas". But, those "ideas" are really amazing. This why some people love it, some think it is bad.

zone411 8y ago

If your tastes require solid character development then sure. But other people might enjoy a book more for its plot or ideas. There are books (especially in science fiction), movies, and TV shows that are widely recognized as very good without a lot of character development.

beambot 8y ago
To be "best of all time", it definitely needs all three: ideas, plot, & characters.
- askmike 8y ago
  Not according to everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
arkh 8y ago
> But other people might enjoy a book more for its plot or ideas. I'm on the "don't care about character development" side. But those books are atrociously slow. The whole "3 body problem" could be condensed to maybe 50 pages.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> there was zero character development - beyond Luo Ji Da Shi (together with Luo Ji, my favourite characters), Ye Wenjie, Yun Tianming and Thomas Wade develop across the series. If you cast the various human masses, the Trisolarans and Sophon as characters, which they resemble, they—too—develop compellingly over the series. Certain family lineages also cast favourably as “characters”. It does take a different view of character development to make things pop. For me, the best part about the characters was experiencing Liu’s worlds through their odd perspectives. (Cheng Xin was not a pleasant perspective. But against Wade’s and Beihai’s foils, it is thought provoking.)

int_19h 8y ago

I'd disagree that the science was good, even for a pop audience. It reads very much like somebody got a bunch of random "cool" scientific concepts, and then proceeded to treat them as deus ex machina devices without much understanding of the underlying physics. Just to give one example, at one point the first book features an integrated circuit somehow "etched" on the surface of a stretched-out elementary particle. And that's not just a random curiosity, but a key plot device, without which said plot collapses. I can't in good conscience call this hard sci-fi (which is how the book is usually advertised).

stevenhuang 8y ago
If that's what you think then you seem to have a very narrow view of what constitutes hard scifi. For example, the stretching as a recall is from the part about the elementary particles being folded into higher dimensions. Either you've dismissed that as fantasy or it seems your take on "hard" scifi is wholly unimaginative.
- ethbro 8y ago
  It's not dismissive to call it fantasy. Do we have any scientific evidence that any of higher-dimensional antics in 3BP are possible? If not, then the author is making up his own world building rules (completely acceptable). But that makes the story more akin to scientific fantasy than hard scientific fiction. And unless the English translation excised a LOT of technical details, there are some huge leaps of scientific faith in 3BP.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    There's a rule I remember, that in hard-ish sci-fi, the author gets to invent one unrealistic thing. I wouldn't put Cixin Liu's trilogy as hard hard sci-fi, as it invents a few more, but all in all, there aren't that many "fantasy devices" there. It definitely has a flavour of hardness.
    - ethbro 8y ago