My brother recently finished the trilogy and really enjoyed it. Then a coworker I haven’t seen in a year in a half (due to hybrid schedule I only see some co-workers at the Christmas Party) told me he had just read it and recommended it. Its apparently about preparing for an alien invasion force that will arrive in 200 years.
Also for any baseball fans GO RANGERS!!!!! My favorite team since childhood and only team not to do the pride crap. Hope they can finally get a World Series ring
I mentioned it sometime back in a similar discussion here. My problem with it was that it fundamentally is a hard sci-fi attempt at a cultivation novel. That is a genre of chinese fiction that I loathe, so when I noticed it was happening I noped out.
To explain slightly (but hopefully not give anyone the impression I'm endorsing it), cultivation dramas are those focused on a main character developing superhuman abilities through alchemy, meditation, magic, potions, and the like. It is overdone to the extreme both in number of works, and the navel-gazing of those works. The degree and speed at which the main character becomes a god is uninteresting and intensely masturbatory (and thus cringey to observe.) It is also generally a feature that there are constant philosophical debates that boil down to "Chinese is best" by misrepresentation of both their own arguments and all others.
Three Body is this by way of its main character, his ludicrous infallibility, constant power creep, and the many dialog examples where he performs meta analysis of the story with his opponents in actual conversation. The author also can't help but only allow Chinese characters to be good in the story that is fundamentally about the entire world unifying around an extraterrestrial threat. It gets accused of being 'based' because a couple of the villains are women, but I suggest not to put too much credit on that.
The third book is ultra based to the point of being misogynistic lol. For those who don't know, each book has a different main character, and the last book in the trilogy has a woman who repeatedly sabotages the survival of the human race until literally everyone except for two people is wiped out with a Looney Tunes dimensional raygun. Then the last two people (one of which is the woman) are implied to be doomed because of yet ANOTHER sentimental decision she made.
I know you can never go too hard on women here, but that's just too ridiculous for me.
Bonus, the *third book also has an alien Japanese waifu cyborg that puts on camo yoga pants and starts slaughtering people with a katana. This is supposed to be intimidating.
Man what on Earth did I just read lmao!
OK fair enough, what tags will give me spoiler redactions?
Supernatural does that as well. At first they're fairly human, but after a while they kill death and Gods.
Gotcha. I have a few books to get through before I start reading it. I appreciate the insight. Ive never read any Chinese Sci-Fi before
sounds a bit One Punch Mannish ?
Cultivation drama's beat the pants of western 'i am, therefore uber, forever'.
It is written as drama but i appreciate that the main premise is not 'i'm from krypton and got magic powers, meanwhile check out my humongous breasts and bullet proof butt' or whatever. Underdog working to better himself to take glorious revenge should resonate very strongly with anyone with half a brain. Sadly no magic 10,000 year old ginger bread in the real world.
Batman had that 'work hard to become great' for a hot minute, before he got familia-ed and beaten up by a psychotic blond bimbo.
I read the three books in the trilogy. My thoughts in brief:
I'd recommend the first two books in the series, but not the third.
Wow, thanks for saving me from wasting my time reading that trilogy. What a dumb ending.
Thanks! My brother said there are boring parts but also that the good parts made up for it. I feel obligated to read it because he is expecting me to give him my full thoughts
Well, worst-case scenario, if you really don't enjoy them but feel obligated to read anyway, you can always wait until the Netflix adaptation. The books will undoubtedly seem like masterpieces after watching that.
Ha!! True. I’m sure they will give it the usual Netflix treatment
Please edit with : SPOILER ALERT!
Yes that series was quite hyped up for a while there, especially after Barack Obama endorsed it.
Yea my brother didn’t tell me that tidbit. I saw it on the cover. Plus Netflix is adapting it so I’m sure it will be about black lesbians talking about feelings. My older brother was my first introduction to sci-fi and in 3rd grade I read his novelization of The Last Starfighter and Star Wars. Also when I was even younger he had a huge Robotech Manga I’d look through
I sure would have loved that. The Last Starfighter was one of my favorites as a kid. Part of me always wondered if arcade games were a secret test.
I’d be lying if I said that never crossed my mind. Plus as a kid whenever I came across a sewer grate I’d call out for the Ninja Turtles…. Until I saw IT
Netflix. So I guess if I really want it to be a good experience I can watch whatever garbage Netflix puts out and then the book will seem so much better
There is a Chinese version of it, and it is really, really good.
3-Body, 30 episodes, just came out earlier this year.
I foudn it on a streaming site on the high seas, with fan translations ("Turkeys in a Dark Forest").
The whole trilogy in 30 episodes? I can imagine non western media actually tried to adapt a book instead of injecting their own views
No, no, that's just the first book.
I read the first book. it was alright. if you're looking for a sci-fi book to read it's probably worth trying. easy read, no big words. pretty simple themes. straight-forward plot.
Only a third of it, got bored with it.
Too wordy or just not much action?
The first book and the first part is about resolving a sci-fi mystery but i got the solution but the motive of the aliens wrong about a third way (I borrowed the book only knowing that it was a popular sci-fi mystery) in and then it lost all the luster, since without the mystery it was not that interesting.
Gotcha. Thanks for the insight.
I read about half of the Three Body Problem. I've read a decent amount of non-English literature in translation, and to me, some authors and cultures translate better than others.
Three Body Problem just struck me as very Chinese, for lack of a better term, in a way that I found jarring. Ultimately, I got bored and quit reading.
For an entirely different genre and a VERY different kind of book that I feel very succesfully translates a foreign culture and civilization to English, I would highly recommend "My Name is Red" by the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk.
Another one I would highly recommend is "The Name of the Rose" by Italian Umbero Eco. It's dense as hell, but it's a wild ride.
I’ve been extremely negative on Eco ever since I read his utterly retarded 14 features of fascism. Maybe I’ll check out his books.
I read Foucault's Pendulum in high school and I felt like someone locked me into an airtight tank filled with the author's farts. I'm sure Eco likes to huff them a lot but I wasn't a fan.
Eco's specialty was language, symbolism, literature, and the Medieval. The Name of the Rose combines all of that! It was perfect for me. I've tried to read two other Eco books and couldn't finish them.
Similarly, I admire Noam Chomsky's linguistics work for his originality and his contributions that have advanced even computer science. I do NOT admire--or care--about his political blatherings.
Cool! Thanks for the recommendation
My dad is from Philly (he met my mom and settled down in Oklahoma and then I moved to Texas as an adult after I got out Air Force so that’s why I’m a fan of Texas teams except for the Sooners) so I’d love a Rangers and Phillies World Series. After the way the 2011 World Series ended I really want to see them finally win one.
I haven't read it but it reminds me ( a bit) of the Helliconia Trilogy that took place over an extended timeline with differing lead characters.
And just simply because I thought of it - can recommend The Last Legends of Earth by A.A Attanasio. Which I did a paper on in Uni. Premise is Earth was destroyed Millenia ago - but an advanced species found our dna in some rocks and recreates us as a slave race.
That sounds interesting. Thanks!
Smith: I'm not sure if you're aware, so excuse me if this is patronizing, but the phrase "three-body problem" comes from Newtonian physics. It turns out that if you have a two-body problem -- meaning, for instance, that only the earth and sun exist -- then you can solve the problem 'analytically', meaning that you can write done some sort of elliptical function that tells you how the two things are going to move for eternity.
But... if there are three bodies... say, the earth, sun and moon... then no such solutions exist. And, even worse, the solutions (which can only come via computer) are chaotic -- at least in principal (in reality, the absolute massiveness of the sun prevents most of the chaos).
I mention this because the conceit of the book is that a third body is around, which severely affects the Earth's ecosystem. It makes growing season unpredictable etc. Anyway, the upshot of this 'third body' is that the story is incredibly tedious. Now, if you're a 'believer', meaning that you actually think that we'll colonize Mars etc, then you might find it interesting. But as someone who notices that we can't even fill potholes... well, science has pretty much fallen off the map for me.
Aerotrain
Thanks! I am familiar with some Newtonian stuff but wasn’t familiar with the origin of the title. I’ve been fascinated with space and UFOs/Aliens have been a guilty pleasure of mine since childhood so I would like to see space colonization one day. It will definitely through private companies I’d imagine.
Funny story….when I joined the Air Force I remember hoping I’d get info about UFOs everytime I had a classified briefing. I mean it was in the back of my mind but I knew it was a longshot since I really didn’t do anything around that topic. I did hear some second and third hand stuff as well as a first hand account from a retiree.
Thanks again!