9 ms·

I’m currently reading the trilogy, and while it’s an entertaining enough read I don’t really understand the fascination with it. The overall plot is a bit simpl

• moloch-hai 4y ago
  It gets points for audacity that has been largely lacking in domestic production. It is forgiven various flaws, for that. Tackling big themes is hard enough that we are obliged to forgive much to get it. So we do.
• nus07 4y ago
  The Dark Forest is a great book and the first one is alright. The fascination mainly stems from having a non-western sci-fi point of view since most other sci-fi books always were written from a Western protagonist standpoint. Also the backdrop is the cultural revolution which riles up a lot of people.
• lucb1e 4y ago
  I liked it a lot more than Asimov's, for what it's worth. It's one of my favorite stories so, yes, I would say it's a masterpiece. The plot is not simplistic and the characters do not appear wooden to me. The Expanse I liked even better (at least until the last book or two), though it probably helped that I didn't have trouble remembering the names. My western bias shows in that I had a lot of trouble telling apart the chinese names even on the second "read" (audio book) of the 3BP trilogy, especially when they then add nicknames into the mix. Da Chu and Chu Cheng are the same person¹, but besides him and a few other main characters, I had to get who's who from context. (And, pardon, but calling people Ding, Dong, and Meow takes me out of the story the first few mentions.) Whether I'd still like The Expanse more if I didn't have this problem in 3BP... hmm, probably yes because there's this 'political correctness' stuff that isn't really my thing, but it would certainly be a close call. ¹ Now that I look it up on Wikipedia, it's apparently spelled Shi Qiang and Da Shi. (Original spelling is from memory, last time I listened to the books was about a year ago)
  • djtango 4y ago
    I'm Chinese but not fluent in mandarin and I struggle with Chinese names. I wouldn't feel too bad about it... Mainstream "English" names (like James, Mark, Lily, Sarah etc) are essentially independent words whereas Chinese names are compositions of characters which are much more opaque to non-speakers. Not to mention that that romanisation is lossy see how `Wu` contains numerous different surnames[0]. (Aside, I only recently found out similarly for Vietnamese `Nguyen` can also include more than one surname) Without the additional meaning they're just symbols and good luck differentiating between Zhang Chang Zang or Zu Zhu or Min and Ming etc [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_(surname)#:~:text=W%C3%BA%20is%20the%20pinyin%20transliteration,common%20surname%20in%20Mainland%20China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_(surname)#:~:text=W%C3%BA....
  • throw1234651234 4y ago
    Liu Cixin is a bad author, in all regards. Still, the Asimov comparison holds water in that Asimov never could write a character anyone cares about either. He does seem to be more self-aware of it than Cixin is though. Cixin actually tries to write personalities, whereas Asimov bypasses them. Clarke bypasses them. Very unfortunately, late Stephenson largely falls into the same pattern, despite standing quite a bit above the rest. Though Stephenson obviously built on the foundation (hue) Asimov and Clarke established, so it's not fully fair to compare them. In short, these books are bad. Cixin is closer to NK Jemisin than other Nebula Award winners.
    • vulcan01 4y ago
      > late Stephenson Which Stephenson are you referring to?
      • throw1234651234 4y ago
        Neal Stephenson's later work. My wording definitely could have been better.
      • _mhr_ 4y ago
        Probably meant "of late"
• zelphirkalt 4y ago
  I actually enjoyed reading about what characters in the book come up with, in terms of ideas for solving difficult situations. Quite clever really. Also I did not find the characters to be too "wooden". They have their individual mentality or views on life and act according to those. It is not the best science fiction novel series I have ever read (that would probably be the original Dune novels), but it is a good one in my book (ha).
• sebastialonso 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing! Last two years I've been feeling like I'm taking crazy pills with all the hype for the trilogy. I finished the first book with high uncertainty if I should even open the second one, which I did, only to put it back after 50 pages. It's not necessarily bad (subjective after all) but there's an argument that it lacks many elements to be considered a masterpiece. Even accounting lost-in-translation-ness, you still have a more or less average storytelling structure, with not that much innovative elements. Hype definitely makes an average work turn into something annoying if you happen to disagree with the hive mind. I did like the part about the mass computer and the sequential cycles. The narration of that arc was super enjoyable.
  • jstrieb 4y ago
    I felt like you do until about two thirds of the way through the second book, which is where things really pick up. These books have since become some of my favorites. I understand where you're coming from, but I encourage you to try and power through to the end of the second book. The things you complain about are long gone by then, and you might change your mind like I did!
    • sebastialonso 4y ago
      Thanks for the advice. Will add Dark Forest to my queue.
    • ribit 4y ago
      Second book was a struggle for me. The wallfacer stuff was fairly boring to me and the extremely misogynistic way to long passages of „Luo Ji the incel meets young Werther“ we’re just infuriating. I has to literally skip pages there. Then there were admittedly some unexpected plot twists followed by a very banal climax aka. Dark Forest which was telegraphed from the start, with only real mystery being how nobody in 200 years didn’t reach this extremely obvious conclusion.
• in3d 4y ago
  Not all good books have to be high literature about well-developed characters going on emotional journeys and learning about themselves or whatever. We can use books about thought-provoking big ideas with some twists thrown in.
  • jnsie 4y ago
    This is a strawman. There is a whole lot in the middle between "wooden" characters and "high literature about well-developed characters going on emotional journeys...". One can write an interesting character without attempting highfalutin literature.
    • TeMPOraL 4y ago
      Time and capacity is finite. There may be authors capable of creating both deep characters and insightful stories/settings in the same work - but there are more authors who are capable of only one or the other. I understand you consider good characters the necessary part of a good work. For me, the necessary part is the ideas/setting/worldbuilding - good characters are nice to have, but they're not what I'm reading sci-fi for. Which means we'll both appreciate the stories of those few authors that nail both criteria, but otherwise we'll have opposite preferences. Case in point: I liked the 3BP trilogy very much.
• wrp 4y ago
  Similar reaction. My favorite fiction genre has always been SF, particularly hard SF. Having read so much, it's hard to find something that really catches my interest with its novelty. I started reading the trilogy because I kept hearing that it was so good and had a lot of novelty. Well, the 1st book was a struggle, IMHO pretty bad writing, but I kept at it because people said it got better. It didn't. Then I started the 2nd and got half way through before I gave up on the writing ever getting any better. I skimmed through the 3rd to see what I might miss and was really unimpressed. Now, of course people have different tastes, but I can't see why people who say they like hard SF think these are good books.
  • rendall 4y ago
    Same. Malevolent far away creatures with such power to perceive everything on Earth and understand what they are seeing enough to make a countdown timer appear in someone's visual field could probably think of cleverer ways to destroy us. The "science" was implausible. It might be a scary idea in a fantasy setting - demons from another dimension or something - but science fiction has rules. Even Donnie Darko with a wormhole in his chest was more plausible.
• nostrebored 4y ago
  While many of the plot devices and tropes are core to sci fi, the delivery method is very different. I don't think the characters are wooden so much as presented and characterized differently than in western sci fi. It's a lot like watching a Korean drama vs. an American one in terms of the way that the arc unfolds and the suspension of disbelief that's expected.
• jacquesm 4y ago
  It's a bit like Jean Michel Jarre's concerts in China. It's not by far the best that we've produced but it was the first to be performed at that scale in a culture that had relatively little contact with Western music. The flip side is that very few Chinese books make it to the West in translation, and as such it is both a first and a sample at the same time, it may not be the greatest book ever written but it certainly isn't the worst either. Hailing it as a masterpiece is a bit over the top but then again, if that incentivizes publishers to translate more books from Chinese to English then it has my vote. FWIW I'm pretty old school when it comes to SF and found it readable but certainly not at the level of the holy trinity.
  • ectopod 4y ago
    What's the holy trinity?
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke. Obviously there are many more great science fiction writers and many that preceded them that set the stage. https://sfandfantasy.co.uk/php/the-big-3.php https://sfandfantasy.co.uk/php/the-big-3.php
      • bookofjoe 4y ago
        Bradbury?
• ducharmdev 4y ago
  Having not read any of Liu's works: how exactly is the idea of total surveillance a narrative innovation of Liu's? I'm reminded of Arthur C Clarke's The Light of Other Days; that to me was total surveillance.
  • everly 4y ago
    [Spoiler alert I guess] Having only read the wiki page for The Light of Other Days (now very interested in reading the book, thanks!), it seems you’re mostly right, with the difference in Liu’s work being that total surveillance of earth is achieved by an alien species from another galaxy.
    • avaldez_ 4y ago
      >by an alien species from another galaxy In the book, trisolarans are from the Alpha Centaury system, the closest one to our own.
    • ducharmdev 4y ago
      Ah that is slightly different. To me, Light of Other Days is very much a thought experiment into how humanity would deal with the complete eradication of privacy; while initially the technology is only in the hands of a few, eventually it is made accessible to virtually everyone. It's less about some outside force surveiling (whether aliens or big corporations), and more about what happens when surveillance becomes a basic fact of life (e.g. why wear clothes if everyone can see you shower anyway?). I also noticed that Liu cities Clarke as one of his inspirations according to Wikipedia, totally makes sense based on this thread.
      • iainmerrick 4y ago
        I’m pretty sure The Light of Other Days is not really an Arthur C Clarke novel; it’s a Stephen Baxter novel with Clarke’s name on it. (Of course it could still be good.)
• thinkoid 4y ago
  On the wooden characters. I subscribe to this point of view. Initially, I thought it was just the inability of the writer to write convincing motivations but the more I read it dawned on me that there is a serious socialist propaganda undertone in his brush when it comes to the Chinese characters and plots. Motivations are off and the discourse is as unbelievable as to make the characters seem like pure fantasy and not of the good kind. My opinion is that either he is hopelessly unable to escape the propaganda tone (with a serious reek of Young Guards) or he deliberately wrote (or rewrote) the offending parts to make the material more palatable to the censorship apparatus. The western characters in the novel are even worse. High notes on the scifi, abysmal on the human milieu.
  • shakow 4y ago
    > unable to escape the propaganda tone (with a serious reek of Young Guards) We're still talking about the guy whose book opens on a bortherly civil war between two Young Guards factions, followed by a public lynching by the same guards, and a young girl ending in a re-education camp? An opening that has been damaging enough by Chinese censors to be moved a few chapters later in the Chinese edition of the book?
    • thinkoid 4y ago
      Yes, same guy. Please keep in mind that the rules on what reality is acceptable or not come down from Minitrue and they may change without prior warning. Look, I am speculating here as to the motives but the words, the phrases, the intonations, they all ring true in my ears. His characters sound and walk and talk as if they are copied down from the pages of Pravda, I kid you not.
      • shakow 4y ago
        Have you read it in Chinese? Or are you projecting your impressions of the USSR on 3BP? Have you thought that what rings to you like “authoritarian communist China” may just be “authoritarian for centuries China”? For all I know you may be right on the writer, but judging the translated work of a guy from a country half a world away from your clichés on another country (I will assume you neither lived in nor speak/read the language) sounds a bit like a stretch to me.
• mxkopy 4y ago
  The simplicity is part of the aesthetic. IMO the trilogy is more philosophical exercise than narrative, so if you weren't looking for that then it makes sense you wouldn't be too hype about it. At risk of spoiling things, I do recommend you go til the end, it's quite a journey
• sdwr 4y ago
  The writing is bad, but the sci-fi elements blend with history and real life perfectly. There's a reason Obama gave a blurb for it. There are great threads in there. The dark forest as an illustration of paranoia matches up with the culture of fear in unstable political climates, and is also a hopeful description of peace in a nuclear time. "Hot contact" with an advanced alien race mirrors the US and China. The exploration of hidden information with sophons, wallfacers, and star signaling. Foundation was written when the US was cementing its empire. It thinks about legacy, decline and planning. The series reads as safe, cozy, paternal (some of the main antagonists are petty bureaucrats and gentle public disapproval). Three Body is much more chaotic, jumbled, in the trenches. The systems are bigger and stronger than the people, practically and narratively. Asimov's robots were essentially human, dealing with how to be good citizens. It's all human scale. Liu's people are triggers for events far larger than themselves.
  • pjc50 4y ago
    > There are great threads in there. The dark forest as an illustration of paranoia matches up with the culture of fear in unstable political climates, and is also a hopeful description of peace in a nuclear time. "Hot contact" with an advanced alien race mirrors the US and China. The exploration of hidden information with sophons, wallfacers, and star signaling. Yes. It's very specifically linked to the Cultural Revolution, and the question of how it's possible to know things in an environment that's specifically intended to prevent you finding out the Truth - whether that's communist China, or a universe in which distant aliens can mess with your particle physics experiments. The writing necessary to support the exploration of this idea ends up being very didactic - the huge VR section in Three Body Problem - but then so does Neal Stephenson.
    • wirrbel 4y ago
      I really enjoyed the CR section. After a lot of “save the cat” style prose it’s refreshing to read something new. Even though it doesn’t follow the rules from the average writing community college writing class
  • michaelwilson 4y ago
• ajoseps 4y ago
  I also felt the same way around the characters. They all felt very stiff to me. Not sure if it's the translation or if that's just how they're written.
  • manmal 4y ago
    I’ve seen an analysis that claimed that each character in 3BP represents an idea, and that’s why they don’t develop. Some of them do transform (once) and grow stale/useless after they got to shine.
• arkh 4y ago
  > I don’t really understand the fascination Decent sci-fi not written by a White heterosexual male. And for the first volume, a description of the Chinese revolution lot of people prefer to hide.
  • KMnO4 4y ago
    > not written by a White heterosexual male Completely unnecessary. Please don’t bring racism/sexism into your opinions of media.
  • jorvi 4y ago
    I think most hard sci-fi readers don’t give two hoots if their literature of choice is written by a western white man, Māori non-binary person or even an AI. On topic, I deeply disagree with the original commenter, these books can easily stand shoulder to shoulder with series like The Expanse or the Zones of Thought trilogy (by Vernor Vinge).
• hardwaregeek 4y ago
  Yeah the extended sequence where the dude invents an imaginary waifu and then he uses his all-powerful position to find her? And he actually believes that she’s cool with this? The writing is awful and has no sense of psychological realism, and falls into the typical “logical science man” who can do no wrong, really the sci-fi equivalent of a mary sue. Sure the ideas are neat but I’d rather read a synopsis than this cardboard writing.
  • sylens 4y ago
    Man that part is really awful. I have skipped over it entirely on subsequent re-reads.
  • nafey 4y ago
    I think it was implied that the girl was a government spy and used plastic surgery and the copius amount of details given to Da Shi to play a role. That being said i think the whole premise is somewhat sexist.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• irowe 4y ago
  Not to pile on too much, but I feel very similarly. It seems like about 80% of the way through the first book (beginning with the Panama Canal attack), Liu gave up on trying to write characters and started trying to compensate with bigger (and admittedly very cool) sci-fi set pieces. Overall, the first book had a good set of strong characters (Ye Wenjie, Wang Miao, Da Shi) and was still good enough to be one of my favorites. The second book still had some good character writing (mostly in Zhang Beihai, although Luo Ji had a okay arc), but I felt like the plot really meandered to the point where I almost put the book down before the reveal of the Dark Forest concept, which was interesting and novel enough to compel me to finish. The final book has the whole kitchen sink of cool sci-fi conceits thrown at it, but there are even fewer memorable characters, and the plot time-jumps so many times that it feels like the antithesis of “show, don’t tell”. What’s sad is that the core storytelling skill of Liu is clearly there (for example, with the fairy-tale allegories), but it’s so buried under the drive to introduce a new technology every chapter that it’s hard to appreciate the final book as a good novel.
  • saiya-jin 4y ago
    Yes I have to agree, sci-fi/technology parts are properly novel, creative and give you the reason to want to read more. I presume in 50 years it will be less so but thats fine. But characters are flat, simple even, and I really didn't care about most of them. Without giving major spoilers about the end, its china and chinese above rest of humanity, every single non-chinese I recall is portrayed as evil. Also the end was properly disappointing. Can't call a novel great with such big flaws, but I understand why HN crowd likes it so much. For what's worth, I enjoyed ie Hyperion cantos much more. A bit less quantum gadgetry (or is it) but basically 7 very different stories ranging from space operas to nearly cyberpunk and characters I enjoyed following till very end.
    • dirkg 4y ago
      Hyperion is literature and art, besides having just as many mind blowing scifi ideas. Its easily my favorite.
  • dirkg 4y ago
• jrochkind1 4y ago
  I also didn't really love the Three Body Problem, even though many of my friends did, I had a similar review to you. (Didn't read the subsequent ones. I am a heavy SF reader, although of course i don't like everything I read, even if other heavy SF readers did!). I wondered, like some in this thread, if it had something to do with Chinese writing styles and/or translation. BUT. I actually really loved Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang -- translated into English by the same translator as the Three Body Problem, Ken Liu! I think I could recognize some overlap in 'style' in writing between the two, like a certain literal descriptiveness and lack of a lot of psychological interiority. I don't know for sure if that comes from Chinese writing styles, or the translator, or just a coincidence/my imagination. But I really liked Vagabonds a lot, despite not liking the Three Body Problem. I really recommend Vababonds! It's still a pretty philosophical book. About the experience of immigration to a culture other than you grew up in (and then return), among others. But I found the philosophical topics more engaging, and the story interesting, and the characters sympathetic and identifiable. I cared what the outcome of the plot would be, while also finding the philosophy engaging. I'm still a bit surprised as to the Three Body Problem being so popular, don't totally understand it!
• cyp0633 4y ago
  Liu seems to put stress on the world view instead of giving detail about characters. Many Chinese authors are pretty good at shaping characters, such as Lu Yao. He doesn't write sci-fi, though.
• kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  It's not the translation. The writing is just bad. It isn't anywhere close to Hugo level work suggesting there was a payoff for international recognition.
• tgv 4y ago
  I found The Three Body Problem disappointing. The "big idea" was more of a magical contraption which couldn't work in practice (there's no true 2D in our space), and the scene with the tanker mentioned in another comment was utterly unbelievable. That can't just have been the translation. Around the same time, I read Exhalation by Chiang, who is of Chinese descent. That was a truly wonderful book, which addresses "big themes" in short stories. If you haven't read it, here's a rather big idea I'd never encountered before: what if the Biblical creation story is true, but God doesn't seem to listen? How alone would we be?
  • agentwiggles 4y ago
    Chiang is absolutely amazing, and my only criticism of him is that he needs to write MORE! Hell is the Absence of God is probably my all-time favorite spec-fic story (from his other anthology, Stories of Your Life). The dude's fiction is phenomenal.
• yboris 4y ago
  I found the first book in the trilogy to have more character and history stuff per unit of science fiction than I'd like. I felt like 50% could be removed without losing too much importance. But I'm so glad I stuck through, the follow-up books are excellent, and the whole story is amazing. I chose to listen to all three as audio-books; they made for an excellent commute before my 100% remote started.
• Phelinofist 4y ago
  The German translation was good in all three books IMHO. But yeah, it still felt foreign sometimes, but I guess this is caused by the fact that most of the characters are Chinese and thus act "foreign". I haven't read much sci-fi before, but have a fair bit after and found the trilogy to be my favorite. Currently I'm reading Arthur C. Clarke Childhood's End and like it so far.
• amsilprotag 4y ago
  Totally agree with poor plot and dialogue. But if you had read it on publication in 2008, viewing the aliens as US and Earth as China, you would have been one in a small minority to foresee something like the Oct 2022 Biden order to revoke citizenship from anyone working in the Chinese semiconductor industry.
• cdelsolar 4y ago
  the Dark Forest is an absolute masterpiece, from someone that has read a lot of classic sci-fi.
  • rendall 4y ago
    Liu Cixin has read a lot of classic sci-fi?
• Zababa 4y ago
  I don't agree with the storytelling being awkward and the characters wooden. I do feel like the novels don't leave much to do after you've finished them, while in some other works you can dig and dig and dig and never stop, but I don't know if this is true or just me. As for the sci-fi elements, just like with Hyperion I read these books as fantasy. It's in the future and they've got spaceship and robots, sure, and they often try to explain the technologies, but they do that in fantasy too when explaining how magic works. In general I don't think much about stuff like "objective quality" when reading or watching something, and prefer to dig into the actual story or universe, or the story behind it (how did they get the idea and stuff like that).
• thedrbrian 4y ago
  if you want some interesting sci fi. I've just finished "the Saturn Run" by John Sandford and Ctein. One of those stories like Portal 1/2 I'd like to forget and be able re-experience for the first time
• schwartzworld 4y ago
  > I don’t really understand the fascination with it. People who aren't used to sci-fi think the ideas in the book are mind blowing. It's like someone who has never heard rock music hearing a shitty cover of Sweet Child Of Mine.
  • rendall 4y ago
    I'm not a fan of the books either and as an avid reader, science fiction is my overwhelmingly favorite genre. Still, I think this is unfair. Lots of hard core scifi fans love them. I don't get it, either, but let's all be ok with people appreciating that which we do not without insulting or questioning their taste.
    • schwartzworld 4y ago
      I don't think what I said is insulting. TBP comes up in conversation surprisingly often, and the reason is always the "mind-blowing ideas" in the book. The idea that tropes only seem novel to the uninitiated isn't insulting to the uninitiated. It might be insulting to the author who wrote that drek, but I could say much worse about TBP.