5 ms·

I enjoyed the Three body Problem. It reminded me of post war US science fiction novel. Simplistic aliens who are clearly our foes, heroic male leads, paper thin

I enjoyed the Three body Problem. It reminded me of post war US science fiction novel. Simplistic aliens who are clearly our foes, heroic male leads, paper thin female characters and a bit of the confident can do swagger that comes with a booming economy.

kieckerjan 5y ago
That hardly sounds like a recommendation.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  And it's also completely nonsense. Hardly any of the listed characteristic applies to the first book (3BP), and none of them apply to the trilogy as a whole.
- esarbe 5y ago
  It's a very apt description.
muro 5y ago
The premise itself was good (especially in the second book) and I think the female characters were fine. I enjoyed the trilogy.
- nootropicat 5y ago
  I think literally all truly catastrophic events in the book were caused by females acting like immature children. They don't really suffer any consequences of their actions - nothing comparable to the magnitude of their sins - others do. It's an extremely antifeminist trilogy and clearly intended to be so. The alternative apt title would be 'How feminism destroys civilizations'. I don't think there's a spoiler tag on HN, so I wrote it as vaguely as it can be without spoiling the story. (please note I'm just describing how the book is, not making a statement about feminism)
  - TremendousJudge 5y ago
    I totally agree, it gets more weird as the trilogy advances as well. I really liked the basic premise, but at some point it becomes painful to read how in the far future all the men look like women and that's why humanity is weak.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    I didn't get that impression. More of a "people are idiots", which felt weirdly realistic (in the same way as the portrayal of Julia Bliss Flaherty in Seveneves was essentially the sad but realistic image of a politician I come to expect). I guess you could see antifeminism in either, if you really go in looking for it - but that says more about reader's preconceptions than about the book itself. Given the cultural context of the book and the author, "humans are fuckups" is a fully justified worldview, IMO (even though I'd prefer more "humans are awesome" literature; Liu Cixin's trilogy was really depressing).
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      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 been possible to have conjured up a male character to take at least one of the several treacherous and/or civilization-destroying actions Cheng took. Maybe the character of Wade could have been that, but in retrospect even this clumsy caricature of an amoral reptilian white American CIA asshole always made the right choices with respect to the survival of humanity. I really enjoyed the trilogy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have this specific flaw (and several others besides). Reading antifeminism is not the reader's fault; it's right there in the text.
saiya-jin 5y ago
[SPOILERS] Also, all good guys were chinese, and later all characters were chinese. The only people who survived it all were... and so on. 1 westerner there was the bad guy, and executed. Hollywood has similar issue with US-centric approach btw, not sure how visible from within, but from outside its a long running joke.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  It’s a Chinese book, written for a Chinese audience. I don’t know what you expected?
- goatlover 5y ago
  Wade in the third book is a very important US character.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  And in Clive Cussler's books, all the good guys were Americans! And all the shifty Europeans/Arabs/Russsians died!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
esarbe 5y ago
I found it similar in style to the Foundation trilogy; trying to be very scientific but with very weak characters.
- lmm 5y ago
  But the science was pure nonsense too. And not interesting nonsense. The videogame works by magic. The alien "protons" work by magic. The alien biology works by magic. It's not "what would the logical consequences be if the universe worked like this", it's just a bunch of stuff, tedious nonsense that means nothing. I hate the book (and while the people who told me it got better fooled me once, I'm certainly not going to read the other two and let them fool me twice) and can't understand where all the praise comes from.
  - dobladov 5y ago
    In my opinion the first book is a mere introduction to what happens in the second one were really many opened questions and strategies take place.
    - EdwardDiego 5y ago
      Aye, Liu Cixin's biggest impact on speculative fiction thought was the Dark Forest's answer to Fermi's Paradox.
      - rsynnott 5y ago
        I'm not sure that it was that original. Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space had a pretty similar answer (everyone's staying quiet because Bad Things happen if you don't) and he acknowledges influence from Gregory Benford's stuff, say. The explicit game theory approach in the Three Body Problem was kind of new, I suppose.
    - hhmc 5y ago
      The ideas are far from complex enough to require people to suffer through the first book, just to get the necessary context. I think there's probably a decent short story to be extracted from the key idea in the second book.
Nemrod67 5y ago
It clearly isn't a character-based story. But the aliens aren't clearly our foes, males and females do good and bad, and it explores some themes in relation to the "Great Leap Forward" and societal hierarchy that weren't so badly written... I guess my own critique would be that the style maybe didn't survive the translation. To each his own :p
psychometry 5y ago
What in the...? Those are the sorts of things that make you enjoy a novel? Jesus...
AniseAbyss 5y ago
Interesting and I agree, China is actually a lot like the US. Arrogant, self-righteous and dismissive. Not one iota of critical introspection.

kieckerjan 5y ago

That hardly sounds like a recommendation.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
And it's also completely nonsense. Hardly any of the listed characteristic applies to the first book (3BP), and none of them apply to the trilogy as a whole.
esarbe 5y ago
It's a very apt description.

muro 5y ago

The premise itself was good (especially in the second book) and I think the female characters were fine. I enjoyed the trilogy.

nootropicat 5y ago
I think literally all truly catastrophic events in the book were caused by females acting like immature children. They don't really suffer any consequences of their actions - nothing comparable to the magnitude of their sins - others do. It's an extremely antifeminist trilogy and clearly intended to be so. The alternative apt title would be 'How feminism destroys civilizations'. I don't think there's a spoiler tag on HN, so I wrote it as vaguely as it can be without spoiling the story. (please note I'm just describing how the book is, not making a statement about feminism)
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  I totally agree, it gets more weird as the trilogy advances as well. I really liked the basic premise, but at some point it becomes painful to read how in the far future all the men look like women and that's why humanity is weak.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I didn't get that impression. More of a "people are idiots", which felt weirdly realistic (in the same way as the portrayal of Julia Bliss Flaherty in Seveneves was essentially the sad but realistic image of a politician I come to expect). I guess you could see antifeminism in either, if you really go in looking for it - but that says more about reader's preconceptions than about the book itself. Given the cultural context of the book and the author, "humans are fuckups" is a fully justified worldview, IMO (even though I'd prefer more "humans are awesome" literature; Liu Cixin's trilogy was really depressing).
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    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 been possible to have conjured up a male character to take at least one of the several treacherous and/or civilization-destroying actions Cheng took. Maybe the character of Wade could have been that, but in retrospect even this clumsy caricature of an amoral reptilian white American CIA asshole always made the right choices with respect to the survival of humanity. I really enjoyed the trilogy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have this specific flaw (and several others besides). Reading antifeminism is not the reader's fault; it's right there in the text.

saiya-jin 5y ago

[SPOILERS] Also, all good guys were chinese, and later all characters were chinese. The only people who survived it all were... and so on. 1 westerner there was the bad guy, and executed. Hollywood has similar issue with US-centric approach btw, not sure how visible from within, but from outside its a long running joke.

Aeolun 5y ago
It’s a Chinese book, written for a Chinese audience. I don’t know what you expected?
goatlover 5y ago
Wade in the third book is a very important US character.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
And in Clive Cussler's books, all the good guys were Americans! And all the shifty Europeans/Arabs/Russsians died!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

esarbe 5y ago

I found it similar in style to the Foundation trilogy; trying to be very scientific but with very weak characters.

lmm 5y ago
But the science was pure nonsense too. And not interesting nonsense. The videogame works by magic. The alien "protons" work by magic. The alien biology works by magic. It's not "what would the logical consequences be if the universe worked like this", it's just a bunch of stuff, tedious nonsense that means nothing. I hate the book (and while the people who told me it got better fooled me once, I'm certainly not going to read the other two and let them fool me twice) and can't understand where all the praise comes from.
- dobladov 5y ago
  In my opinion the first book is a mere introduction to what happens in the second one were really many opened questions and strategies take place.
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    Aye, Liu Cixin's biggest impact on speculative fiction thought was the Dark Forest's answer to Fermi's Paradox.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      I'm not sure that it was that original. Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space had a pretty similar answer (everyone's staying quiet because Bad Things happen if you don't) and he acknowledges influence from Gregory Benford's stuff, say. The explicit game theory approach in the Three Body Problem was kind of new, I suppose.
  - hhmc 5y ago
    The ideas are far from complex enough to require people to suffer through the first book, just to get the necessary context. I think there's probably a decent short story to be extracted from the key idea in the second book.

Nemrod67 5y ago

It clearly isn't a character-based story. But the aliens aren't clearly our foes, males and females do good and bad, and it explores some themes in relation to the "Great Leap Forward" and societal hierarchy that weren't so badly written... I guess my own critique would be that the style maybe didn't survive the translation. To each his own :p

psychometry 5y ago

What in the...? Those are the sorts of things that make you enjoy a novel? Jesus...

AniseAbyss 5y ago

Interesting and I agree, China is actually a lot like the US. Arrogant, self-righteous and dismissive. Not one iota of critical introspection.