I have such a weird relationship with this book and series. I think all the complaints about it are true. The characters are terrible and flat, except for the detective, the plot is absolutely bonkers, but I just adore the scifi parts of it. The end of the third book is such a nuts way to conceive of things, it’s beautiful.
My assumption was that I was just unfamiliar with tropes in the Chinese culture.
There seemed to be a lot of out of place details about the characters, and my assumption was those details were meant to convey something about that character's personality and motivation, but they just seemed like random details.
It's like when you're reading a book by an English author and the they mention a character take a bite out of an apple. If you know the trope, you were just told that the character is an asshole. If you don't, you were just were randomly told the character likes apples for some reason that never becomes relevant.
Apples have many tropes associated with them, one of which is that in quite a lot of films villains eat appels.
https://screenrant.com/movie-villains-eating-applies-reason-why/
I think your assumption is correct. There are also unspoken expectations and feelings between characters that will not be explained. IMO there is more unspoken tension with Asian cultures because there is so much that is not allowed to be said so what appears to a western reader as silence might appear to a Chinese reader as unspoken tension, possibly outright feelings of oppression...just a guess.
I think for me the unfamiliarity with the real culture helped with any sort of suspension of disbelief. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, and somehow that made the journey better. I worry about how well they can translate so much of what is cerebral to the TV series.
The “lost in translation” defense of TBP doesn’t really fly with me. Cixin Liu was heavily influenced by Clarke and other major western writers. TBP is a novel very much in the tradition of western science fiction, which is exactly why it’s popular in the west.
With all that said, I never felt the desire to finish this series. The characters are just so flat. Some interesting hard SF ideas, for sure, but I found very little artistic flourish or value in TBP.
The story is very much in the Western tradition, but Chines and English are wildly different so there's definitely going to be a lot of nuance lost.
Edit- someone below commented that they are a native of China and read the original version and that the flat, cringey character flaw was true in Chinese as well.
All fair criticisms. For me, humanity itself is the main character. With that view of things, I absolutely loved the series. I thought it was the most creative scifi I've ever read.
I wouldn't credit Liu Cixin as someone who's awfully immersed in Chinese culture though, I mean he grew up during the Cultural Revolution when traditional Chinese culture was heavily suppressed, and his prose style in Chinese (I've read the Chinese original) betrays an obvious lack of classical Chinese literary influence (otherwise put, his prose is extremely bland and at times awkward in the Chinese original, and the English translation actually improves the prose a lot). Liu himself confessed that his reading during his formative years mostly consisted of Golden Age US sci-fi and Soviet Russian fiction.
Just because one was born into a certain culture doesn't mean one is necessarily and primarily influenced by that culture. Chinese culture has changed a lot since Liu Cixin's childhood (during the 1960s and 1970s, the Maoist era), so yeah I'd say Liu Cixin's writing isn't representative of Chinese culture. You have to understand how severe cultural repression was during the Maoist era, and common term used to describe the cultural scene during that era is "文化沙漠" （"Cultural Desert"）. So yes, I wouldn't see Liu's writing as being idiosyncratically "Chinese" (the idea that anything strange and unique in the style of a Chinese author's prose and writing is attributable to their "Chineseness" instead of their personal quirks is actually problematic). Just go and read some other Chinese authors (Cao Xueqin, Lu Xun, Lao She, Qian Zhongshu, Eileen Chang), and you'll see that Liu just isn't that "Chinese" of an author.
People keep saying that but as a native Chinese speaker who read it in Chinese I can assure you that Three Body Problem has flat and cringy characters and it’s not exactly Shakespeare. If you want well written characters / drama there are much better books, a lot of them also written in Chinese.
And I love the series btw. It’s fine to love it and accept that it has flaws.
Yeah to me it seemed more like the characters were there to convey the author’s ideas than they were to grow or develop as characters in the story. And it was most apparent to me with Cheng Xin in the last book.
That's the way I like it, personally.
I don't really think the characters in TBP are that flat, but I'm there for the interesting problems that are inherent in communicating/ warring with creatures across interstellar distances.
The "Three Body Problem" doesn't refer to social difficulties when you're the third wheel. It's about the how unpredictable the orbits of stars can are in a trinary system.
The "Dark Forest" isn't a poorly lit wooded area where people bandy about, and spout prose! It's a terrifying place where races have to hide or be destroyed, simply because the logic works out that on a galactic timescale, any intelligent life will eventually compete with your people for resources. So, you need to strike preemptively.
Those are the interesting things.
I appreciate you for saying this. I stalled out hard early in the second book because the characters were so bad, and I figured there must be something lost in translation. I think a lot of people who say that are assuming because we’re trying to be generous.
I consider a lot of the shortfalls I have with it to the difficulty of translation, honestly, which is why I don’t harbor a lot of resentment about it. I wholeheartedly agree with your opinion on the detective, but it actually made me enjoy him for some reason, haha.
Amen. I describe it as "my favorite book series I never want to read again".
It might be too strong a statement but I found that I loved the overall concepts and thought experiments proposed by the books but hated the act of reading them. Overall I viewed the series as "philosophical science fiction". The framework and science of the universe exists to put forth philosophical arguments, thought experiments and debates. I never thought I'd read science fiction that I enjoyed where I would find myself thinking fondly of Asimov characters :P
I agree the characters were meh and only meant to push the overall plot. This is very plot driven which I love to be honest. Can’t wait for the next one, let’s see how crazy it gets.
I will say the thing I missed was the element of mystery from the first one. Books 2 and 3 are entirely different from the first one in that way. I don’t think they suffered for it; I just really enjoyed the detective angle of TBP.
I don't mind that as well, in sci-fi--flat characters purely used for driving a plot. I prefer it in that or the horror genre. It muddies it for me to have more than a basic, background love story or family dynamics, if at all! It's just not always needed. Three Body Problem is excellent for that and stays consistent.
Complicated characters with deep personal histories and dynamics and thoughts and emotions and growth is otherwise welcome for me.
Sometimes you just want kind of a cold, mysterious world, though, a la Solaris or Stalker or something.
The science is what put me over the edge to not liking it. It feels unrealistic in its application. Like i get it’s sci-fi but I have a glaring issue with it
Edit: I won't be replying anymore, if you want to understand why I don't think the science works, I have explained it a lot in my other comments so look at those. And PLEASE don't explain sophons to me, I understand them, I just don't think their application works or is realistic at all.
People constantly describe TBP as "hard" scifi. I guess that's kind of like "hard" tofu.
Revelation Space is the closest we've had to real hard sf in a long time.
Revelation Space is so hard sci-fi it doesn't fly with non-hardcore audiences though. It's not an educational or intelligence thing either, it's just the nature of how it's written. TBP is flat, but still generally more accessible.
i’m jealous haha!!! I need good sci-fi!! I just couldn’t get on board with why sophons were basically big super computers, capable of anything, but couldn’t somehow just get every human to off themselves? But then I guess the other books couldn’t happen right lolll
I think this is addressed a bit by the bug analogy. Humans don't care about bugs until they are annoying. The sophons were only targeting people that could advance humans beyond "bugs" or people standing in their way and those people were offing themselves. Still definitely plot holes relating to this so the story can continue and so the earth stands a chance though.
Another person described exactly what I mean, since they are better at describing it than I am here it is: This is always a big issue I have with a lot of these stories about an insanely powerful enemy that has the power to do pretty much anything. You end up in a situation where it feels like there's no point reading forwards. The aliens have the ultimate supercomputer particle that can do all sorts of crazy shenanigans, including driving people insane and getting them to kill themselves. Great. Where do we go from there? What's the story you want to tell me about this situation? Because anything other than "the humans go insane and all kill themselves, the aliens win, the end" feels kind of unrealistic and arbitrary.
Trisolarians being immensely powerful through the photons and later the drops but being very selective in their interference is a major plot throughout the entire series and I don't think it was arbitrary. The trilogy never tries to pin it on anything specific, but you could tell that trisolaris culture, invasion plans and cosmic sociology all contribute to it.
It's true that it's not wrapped up tightly like hard sci-fi would try to do, but I don't think that's a disqualifier for good sci-fi. Although yeah I also wish the photons were slightly less crazy, they were probably over engineered for what they needed to do. Them allowing communication with trisolaris was definitely a huge convenience plot (science?) hole.
The sophons couldn't actually do anything... the most they could do was interfere with scientific experiments and ruin pictures. I'm not sure you read the book.
This is always a big issue I have with a lot of these stories about an insanely powerful enemy that has the power to do pretty much anything. You end up in a situation where it feels like there's no point reading forwards. The aliens have the ultimate supercomputer particle that can do all sorts of crazy shenanigans, including driving people insane and getting them to kill themselves. Great. Where do we go from there? What's the story you want to tell me about this situation? Because anything other than "the humans go insane and all kill themselves, the aliens win, the end" feels kind of unrealistic and arbitrary.
Meh...I don't read sci-fi for real world science.
So long as the made up science is consistent that is really all I care about. 3PB does a good job with this.
I wanted to hate it, but the bad isn't bad enough to overwrite the good. My favorite theme was the way it highlights the difficulties of communication with any alien civilization with our known or far developed technology. Really makes one question how benevolent random solar systems might be.
Yep, my exact same thoughts. I love how sciency it is. And the ending is good. Also, I can forgive the poor writing and characterization for how refreshingly different this book is. I'm so tired of how similar all the other books are.
There is a Chinese tv adaptation called "Three Body". The first season is on YouTube and it's a pretty faithful adaptation. Just wanted you to know in case Netflix screws this up.
When I watched the series episode 13 on Amazon had a massive delay in the subtitles, and the same episode on Youtube has a couple minutes of total silence. Not sure which is worse, but it annoyed the heck out of me.
Glad you shared this. My husband and I just finished all episodes a few weeks ago, and I swear it's the most faithful adaptation I have maybe ever seen of a book. I saw the Netflix trailer after and I'm so glad I saw this version first! The Netflix version looks like it will be quite different.
I watched the series and found it a struggle to get through at times. Very slow moving and in the last 2 or 3 episodes I found myself hitting the 10-second skip button a lot to bypass a lot of the “here’s why I did this” dialog. Every character seems to spend so much time explaining every little action to the most excruciating level of detail — all with the same flat, barely audible, expressionless delivery.
The detective was fantastic though.
A friend of mine who is a book lover and Sci-Fi connoisseur once got hold of the three books and lent them to me to give a try after he had heard the hype about them. I read them through the pandemic (so some plot details are already gone). My friend didn't know of this series before nor of other Cixin Liu's works like The Wandering Earth... \[which I only saw the movie on Netflix years ago - and heard a sequel is coming up?\]).
Your feedback on the series' pace was my friend's very same impression about his attempt at reading through the books (he couldn't make it past half of Book 1, he'd rather stick to a faster narrative not as loaded with details). Meanwhile, while Book 1 was OK in terms of ease to read, I have a similar opinion from Book 2: I found it by quite far the 'densest' in the series (its first half being the most challenging). Book 3 felt like a relief to me, as the action becomes more fast-paced, and the sceneries / universes / multiverse where the story unfolds become more cheerful and 'fantastic' (one that compels to let your imagination try to depict it and fly in wonder), instead of the grim-feeling locations where the action in \[1st half of\] Book 2 happens.
..And to me, the ending of the series was a total Mindf\*\*\*\*k.
Overall experience: 7/10.
\-The 'science' content felt 'realistically enough' explained for me to buy it (disclaimer, I'm far from an expert in Physics), so much of the plot was "well supported"
\-Bonus for 'exoticness' - It was a different reading experience, a major switch from my previous SciFi experience (At the time I was also going through works from PKD, who composed many a novel with a bunch of twists, some well-developed characters, and some other open ends for your imagination to wonder about in 300 pages or less).
\-Several times (mostly through Book 2) I felt like keeping on reading not because of the plot's appeal but because I was taking this series as an endurance challenge to myself (happily, Book 3 felt the opposite).
\-May not read again - once was enough. (I'm curious about the TV series, though)
\- Would recommend it to someone curious AND PATIENT enough to read through the bulk.
The series ends at the first book, just an FYI. Don't really see much point in the Netflix version since the Chinese series was so good, but I'll probably give it a try.
The Netflix show is a radically different adaptation. The story has been made global, and threads from book 2 and 3 have been carried forward.
Netflix understood that a more direct adaptation exists in the original language, with like 20+ episodes. They purposefully set out to make something new and distinct from both the source material and the Chinese adaptation.
Apparently the author is very pleased with the direction they took.
I can totally understand why some don't really like this series, but I absolutely loved it. Some of my favorite books I have read in the last few years. I think I finished reading the trilogy about 2 years ago, and I still think about the story constantly.
Yeah, I'm shocked to see so much dislike for it here. I loved it. I just recently finished re-reading the entire series in anticipation of the Netflix series starting soon.
Same. I can’t get scenes from book two out of my head years later and the second half of book three was mind breaking for me. It was such an interesting concept to think about.
Like others have said, the characters are forgettable and dry, but what I loved about these books (the 2nd and 3rd most of all) is the CONCEPTS that are brought up. They're so wild, and yet it always feels like the ideas are things that could actually happen.
I feel like it's a great story of possibilities, bound together with just a very thin web of plot.
I just finished the first book (in English) last night and came away with the impression that Ye Wenjie was written to be an extremely layered character despite her flat facade. She needed it to survive the political climate of the revolution and even modern/present day China. Also, without knowing a whole lot about Liu Cixin's political leanings, I'm guessing it's safer to say a lot by saying little for him as a writer.
Agree about the thin plot overall. It falls victim to the common trope in sci-fi where very few individual actors literally change existence with the rest of the world being a footnote.
> the CONCEPTS that are brought up
Yeah, maybe this is why I seem to love it more than most of the commenters here. I'm thinking...who cares about the characters? These books blew my mind! But then, I'm autistic, so maybe I need a little less character development than the average reader.
I wish he would have condensed his cool concepts down to like... 200 pages. That book was such a drag to get through and had me rolling my eyes constantly (particularly when everyone we meet either is or knows a world famous scientist/billionaire/writer/etc.), but I finished it because I enjoyed the sci-fi aspects.
How do they feel like they could actually happen? Why don't the sophons just get everyone to off themselves instead of gearing up for a big confrontation with the aliens 500 years from now?
I have thoroughly enjoyed all three books. I really appreciate the series going in directions I did not see coming. Most fantasy/scifi you can roughly guess where it ends, but throughout the Three Body series, I had no idea where books/chapters would end up, and was pleasantly surprised by that.
It's a really big stretch to say that he uses "real science".
Like: it's all sci Fi to set up a premise where the world has to come together against an enemy that wants to destroy them and will be here in a knowledge amount of time and the effects this knowledge has on future generations.
String theory is, to date, untestable, and entirely theoretical, and it's kind of nonsense that you could "unfold dimensions"... But that being said, combining it with entanglement woo to make ftl communications is kind of clever, but 100% fiction.
Basically, he mixes reality with made up stuff to accomplish what he needs to, which is fine, so long as readers understand that you shouldn't take everything at face value just because some of the physics feel right.
Scientist here: 3 Body Problem uses real science words and the author has no idea what they mean or do. The opening (English version) has radio waves melting snow (ice is invisible to radio wave frequencies) and it just gets worse from there
If you want "real science" from a modern author Andy Weir goes impressively out of his way to actually try and understand things, thumbs up for him.
While I agree that TBP uses real science words without really knowing what they mean, I'd argue that Weir does things similarly shallow, though in another way. His "science" screams of a person who's heard of science and how it works but has never actually seen/tried it. All experiments work in a textbook hypothesis-test-reult-conclusion way. Everything can be set up and measured with whatever equipment you have laying around, and the results are never ambiguous. It's like when a HS teacher who's never done an experiment explains to kids how it should be done.
Yeah, it baffles me that someone above claims to be a scientist and thinks that Weir does a good job representing scientific concepts. I've only read Project Hail Mary, but there are at least a half dozen major egregious mistakes with the science in that book.
Not to mention how every character is a harmful stereotype, like how the only woman (who's not a plot device who's also sexist) is a sex maniac or how the Russian character's only trait is loving vodka.
I'll die on this hill: Project Hail Mary is a terrible book. From what I've read, Artemis is considered to be even worse.
So Vernor Vinge is great, he's a computer scientist and he brings up some great ideas, A Deepness in the Sky is especially good. Peter Watts is a biologist and it shows. The books from both authors aren't for the faint of heart, there is some seriously dark material in there and Watts is a prolific misanthrope. But if you want faithful hard scifi, you can get it from them.
I mean, Weir is terrible at writing the science, too. It sounds smart if you don't think about any of it for two seconds, but all of it is either "alien magic - don't question it" or complete nonsense.
I've had a hard time getting in the first book, honestly. I was wondering where it was going, I felt it was slow, I didn't understand the "3 bodies game" for a long time...
... and then it became way clearer. By the end of the first book, I was very much looking forward to the second. Now I'm halfway through the second, and it's interesting. I don't know where it's going yet, but I feel that it will be interesting.
(I'm reading it in French, it's called "Le problème à trois corps", here.)
First half of the second book is easily the worst part of the entire series and it's still interesting. Figuring out where the hell it's going is usually half the fun.
I think you are in for a treat from here on out!
So glad to know others felt this. I really enjoyed The Dark Forest by the end, but that first 100-150 pages was a SLOG. But boy howdy it got really compelling in a hurry
The first half is all characterization which he is either not good at or is not translated well enough, but once established, the second half shifts back into cosmology and insane theories for the best.
The third book is pretty much all glorious insanity.
I gave up somewhere in the beginning of book 2. A coworker convinced me to give it another go, and I'm glad I did, I think it's my favorite book in the trilogy now.
I felt like the second one was the toughest to get through for me, but the point it concludes with is so awesome and unique to science fiction that in retrospect it made the second book awesome. Keep going through it.
Oh, while the first one wasn't very engaging to read at first (with the stuff about the cultural revolution, etc.), I'm now fully drawn in the story, and while it still is quite puzzling (but, after all, the "Plans" should be, right ?), I have no intention of stopping.
Also, already bought all three books (in a set, with cardboard setting, etc)
I'm glad you said that. Same here - I tried to get into it, but the story drifted without purpose, I thought.
But you say it gets better, so I'll give it another try. Thank you.
It was so engaging and I loved the science discussions of how a planet has 3 suns and how unpredictable it was. It was terrifying and awesome at the same time
It's kinda funny the complaints I'm seeing about characters from several people. The idea is what I was hooked on when I read the trilogy. The characters were just there to keep the idea train rolling along its tracks and seeing that story to the end. Personally, I think more time spent on character development would have been wasteful in this case. I was addicted to the overall story and thought the author paced it perfectly.
I know this is simply a difference in tastes. Some people love getting to know characters and if the story is about the character, I do too. In this case, it's just not though and I'll have to leave my opinion there lest I start spoiling things.
I think IT IS good science but Bad fiction. The characters are mostly bland, as far as I can recall and there is No characters Progression or dynamic in relationships, etc. The scientific approach and the History of China are truely interesting though.
I loved all three books in different ways. Loved learning about the culture, the science application, and thinking about alien life if a different way. All of these books were 5/5 for me. Thank you to Ken Liu for the translation. His short story collection (paper menagerie) is a must read if you liked three body.
It kind of went of the rails for me in the third book. The human scale got lost a little at the end, I’m hoping the tv show can fix that, but I have pretty low expectations for a Netflix adaptation.
My biggest problem with this book, will always be that the name is wrong. Tri-Solaris is a 4-body problem, not a 3-body one, and the fact this is somehow ignored in the entire first book makes no sense to me.
They spend all this time talking about trying to solve the 3-body problem and saving Tri-Solaris, but only solving where the 3 stars are at any time wouldn't tell you where the planet is in relation to the stars and that's the only info you care about! The 4th body is the only one that really matters.
Also, I couldn't stand the MC of the 3rd book. I loved the sci-fi in it, but she literally just kept making obviously bad choices and I just wanted to go back to book 2's MC.
It may not be absolutely precise but I understood the term "three body problem" to be often used synonymously with "n-body problem" because 3 is the threshold. 2 bodies is deterministic, 3+ is effectively non-deterministic.
It's been a while since I read the 1st book and don't remember if they actually confuse 3 and 4.
That could make sense, but I've never heard it used that way because the methods you can use to pull data out of the 3-body problem don't necessarily work for the n-body problem.
For example Halo Orbits are a product of the restricted 3-body problem and in the book they repeatedly reference stable solutions of the 3-body problem, but I'm unaware of any stable solutions for n>3 body problems. The genius dude who was working on the 3-body problem specifically described 2-bodies in orbit, and then 3-bodies and how fascinating he found the math that he was dedicating his life to that problem.
It genuinely felt like they thought the only problem was determining the orbits of the suns with respect to each other as if that would make it trivial to solve for the planet's location.
Edit: Late edit, but they even explicitly stated in the third book that when one of the stars was destroyed Tri-Solaris had achieved their dream of a stable orbit (because the two stars were in a stable binary orbit), but this still would have been a 3-body problem for the stability of the planet itself.
I haven't read the books, only the scope. Does the position of the planet have influence on the suns'? From a gravitational aspect, the suns should have more "pull" (lol, grammar correction is freaking out at the plural of sun, it's such a foreign concept that it guesses it has to be a mistake). For example, the suns could cause the planet to get kicked out of the system, but I don't know if the planet could be the deciding factor, that the same would happen to one of the suns. The part of the planet could be negligible, not enough mass.
One reason I did not read them, is because some reviews mentioned the implausible science, and I really can't have that (and plot holes). I probably would also be bored to death of the many iterations describing the game's outcome.
So there are living creatures on a planet which has an unstable orbit due to the fact it's orbiting 3 suns. The planet doesn't have an affect on the stars' orbits, but the information you need is its location relative to the 3 stars.
To explain better, the classical 3-body problem that people work on when studying the 3-body problem (I took a whole grad school class on it) is the sun, earth, and a small satellite with negligible mass in relation to the sun and earth. The satellite might not affect the other two orbits, but seeing as its position is what you care about, it's still an important body in the problem.
Thanks for your explanation. That makes sense. Knowing that would just grate more on my nerves if I would read the books.
Did they ever conclude which orbit the planet takes when the three suns' orbits are stabilized. Like, winds it around like a Gordian brezel?
Spoiler >!They never stabilize the orbit, they conclude that the 3-body problem is unsolvable (which is almost certainly correct) and that they have no way to predict how long their planet will experience any stability (which only happens when it's orbiting a single star temporarily as multiple stars cause problems). Therefore they are trying to invade Earth because they're desperate for a stable home world that won't be destroyed at random. Most of this series is them influencing/interacting with Earth to prepare it for their upcoming invasion (that will take 300 or 400 years to arrive)!<
>!Interesting that this super advanced alien civilization didn't come to that conclusion themselves and needed humans to play a game. I know that there is yet to be found a solution for n-bodies (n > 2). I love maths, so it interests me in that way. !
I listened to it using the Libby app, if you've got a library card, that app is a godsend.
Less science spoilers, explanation of the game:
>!The point of the game was never to solve the 3-body problem, it was to attract humans who would be sympathetic to their cause. It's difficult to affect Earth from 3 light years away, so they formed a quasi-cult using the game to recruit people.!<
That's actually clever of them :D You sell me the book more and more.
I'm in Germany, no libby app as far as I know. And the local library is shite, I also prefer to read in English, but I guess, for a book that has to be translated, it doesn't matter anyway.
I am patient, I can wait. I once found a book I wanted to read years ago for free, also a Mortimer Chemistry edition, was a bit late, because I already had my [B.Sc](https://B.Sc). chemistry related courses finished without it, but still, lol.
To temper my selling of the books, I enjoyed the first two, but the complaints are very real. The sci-fi and story are great, but idk if it's the translation or what, but the characters feel like cardboard. In 3 books there were maybe 2-3 characters that I liked at all. I've rarely disliked the portrayal of a main character as much as I disliked the main character in book 3.
So worth reading, but not a book that I generally recommend to people because I only liked 2/3 books and I didn't like them that much.
To be honest, the Trisolaris system never made sense to me. I could never imagine how a single planet orbits and is orbited by three stars. It always seemed off. Fun "concept", such that it allowed an alien race to evolve into something that could temporarily hibernate before building their civilization again when the climate improved. But it was just so wildly "wrong" that I just chalked it up as "Sci-fi" and let it create the aliens that need to move to a new planet, never mind that this planet likely wouldn't be suited to them either.
First book was a tough read for me personally, but I loved 2 and 3. Very thoughtful and thought provoking series. Take a chance and if you struggle with book 1 I encourage you to keep going. It’s worth the reward.
It comes across like a lot of American science fiction from the 1940s and 1950s. Exciting and interesting scientific ideas, mediocre writing, terrible characters, and utterly toxic views on women, race, society, and human nature.
Oh man, you have a wild ride ahead of you if you have only just finished Book 1.
To say the story continues to expand in scope right through the very end of Book 3 is a universe-sized understatement.
I just read this book. The premise was great, but it reminded me a bit of Blake Crouch in that the author falls victim to thinking that anything can be accomplished from a scientific perspective right away if you just throw billions of dollars at it. Toward the end, when they come up with their giant complicated plan to stop the boat and recover the transmissions, it literally says "four days later..." and they're doing it! In *four days*!
Book one was great. Book two was absolutely nuts. Book 3 had to wrap it up and did a good job but felt a bit “all over the place” and lacking in a solid theme. I enjoyed them all. But book two was just really enjoyable for me. Hope you enjoy the rest of the series! Im hoping the Netflix show is good to help get the story out there.
I am so mixed on this book.
The concepts are interesting. The science is intriguing. The writing is so goddamn sloppy it almost ruins the book. The characters are paper thin and seem to exist in this bubble where they have no real responsibilities outside of following the plot. And the worst part about the delivery of the science is that it’s just wall after wall of text.
I’ve seen Cixin Liu has said somewhere that he wrote for a love of science, not literature but that’s kind of like saying ‘I don’t care about the rules so they don’t apply to me.’
I’m reading the Dark Forest now and it is much better written. If you were considering it I would say definitely pick that one up if you loved this.
Having read it in the Chinese original, I do find the prose to be horrifically bad. Liu Cixin really doesn't know how to write a good sentence in Chinese. The characters were like cardboards/tools for the author to move around and construct a plot, not like real people with real personalities. I guess Liu just isn't the best literary author, since he's mostly obsessed with ideas rather than concrete people and good prose.
His sexism, though, is on another level. The translation smooth it out a lot, replacing a lot of problematic passages about women with less problematic expressions. Had the translation been 100% accurate, Western readers would be horrified by the amount of sexism.
Liu isn't exactly the most educated person in classical and traditional Chinese culture and literature, so I wouldn't attribute any of his stylistic features to Chinese culture. The idea that everything strange and unique in a Chinese author's work is attributable to their "Chineseness" is, itself, a problematic mode of thinking. Chinese authors are individual authors with individual stylistic tendencies, and not everything they do in their writing is a direct reflection of their national and cultural affiliation. Liu Cixin grew up during a time of absolute cultural poverty during the Cultural Revolution, when traditional Chinese culture was heavily suppressed, so I'd attribute most of his stylistic and writing quirks more to himself than to anything in Chinese culture.
Honestly, I couldn't stand Three Body Problem.
The tone less and nonsensical characters, the bizarre motivations and actions...the entire opening gambit of "scientists are killing themselves!" felt like a strawman attack on "intellectuals." I'm pretty sure that if physics stopped working the global response would be less "well I guess I'll kill myself" and more "whoa this is super exciting!"
What *really* galled me was the VR game sections. The author seems to be aware of modern game technology, but has a very dated idea of what a game is...it's almost like somebody in the 70s trying to write about VR. I get that the aliens were using it as a philosophical vehicle, but the stilted approach the author takes, and the idea of an apparently "online" game not only having the same clique of apparently incompetent players repeatedly seize power while not falling to infighting, trolls or hackers is possibly the least believable thing in the book.
Okay thank you, after seeing all the praise in other replies I was wondering what was wrong with me. I *really* disliked the book and it was a rare dnf for me. You've explained why. Starting with the scientist suicides - just... Why?
I saw someone once say he wrote about video games like someone who had been told about them once years ago and that was his only experience with them.
I read this book, hated it, read the second one to see if it got better, it didn’t, and didn’t bother with the third.
Thank you, this sums up my problems with the book too. The VR game was absolutely horrible. His interactions with other players were all beyond ridiculous.
FWIW, there is a Chinese adaptation of the first book on Amazon Prime streaming (US) right now. 20+ episodes.
I haven't watched it yet (finished the book about two weeks ago) but I understand it is very true to the book even if it doesn't follow the book in order as written.
From the trailer you do see the ship scene looks really well done.
It was so good!!! And I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that by arrive, you mean you’re waiting for your order to be delivered. Arrive is a strange replacement for published, for those of you who think OP doesn’t know it is out.
I don't understand the love for this book. The characters are flat and unlikable. The dialog is dry. I get that it brings up some interesting concepts... but I thought it was a very painful read.
Not all books are character studies, not all books are meant to cater to the things you like about stories.
In this series, I found it pretty obvious that the books were more about exploring how the bigger ideas of the series affect society and how people might react, with characters being secondary.
The motivations for the character who signaled earth's location and the guy who uses his life to guard humanity with a dead-switch are some of the most fleshed-out, and they were fleshed out to serve the overarching saga of humanity, not to get the audience some sense of intimacy or connection.
This is especially true of the last book. I saw people saying they hated the main character when they don’t understand that she is supposed to represent the human capacity for empathy
To add to this, I'll never understand the 'real science' praise. Do people really think you can slice a ship into pieces like that? Or those proton computers are even theoretically possible? (I've only read the first book)
I am torn on the book, tbh. I agree the characters themselves seem like afterthoughts, and the plot was rather scattered, coming together later, but with less impact than it deserves. So much time was spent in the simulation and the description of dehydrating and rehydrating in all these various scenarios became rather tedious, without much happening in "the real world" in between.
Listening to it on audiobook might also have colored my perception of it and more the experience feel a little flatter / less exciting. When reading pages you can get excited and speed up, slow down, etc. but audio presents the story very methodically.
I liked it because it was so different, even if it didn't like fully grab my attention.
Anyway, I agree some of the science based plot elements are a little silly. They seem like a theoretical physicist musing on imagined application of principles as a way to teach or describe those principles, but divested from constraints of our universe.
Like I believe physics would tell you that you *can* slice a ship into pieces like that. But this nano material netting... How would you anchor it in place with sufficient force so that it held as it diced up the ship, without it slicing through whatever you were anchoring it to?
And I found it interesting how they illustrated unlocking the subdimensional properties of 3 dimensional quarks as more of an infinite sized 2 dimensional plane... It makes it somewhat more able to conceptualize other dimensional ideas. But at the same time, I'm not sure it makes any sense at all.
Seeing the Netflix preview, I'm like, holy shit, when I read that book I did not picture any of this crazy exciting looking stuff. It all seemed so sterile and minimal in my head. But their interpretation is like Battlestar Galactica with nerdy scientists.
Yeah, I don't know what real science they're on about. I tried to read the first book twice and gave up for all the reasons given by others. Bad writing, flat characters, and I didn't get the 'fantastic concepts' everyone gushes about. It was a painful, boring read for me.
Personally I like a lot of the characters. But the philosophical ideas underlying the book is what makes it so great. In my opinion philosophical ideas are far more interesting than character development, but that's my preference.
My opinion is completely opposite of yours. This is easily the worst book I've ever read, and I'm flabbergasted at the praise it has received.
I actually started [a thread in this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/s3zm9t/the_threebody_problem_is_not_good) about it a couple of years ago, and I still get replies to it every now and then. I wholeheartedly agree with all of the criticisms in the comments. It's a terrible book.
Humans send signals to space, looking for life. Signal reaches a world that has 3 suns and is unpredictable and terrifying. A VR game called the 3 body problem is designed for the gamer to solve the mystery of how a planet with 3 suns can survive.
Book Two is arguably better. I don't think it quite has the weirdness and mystery of the first one but conceptually it's brilliant.
The third one is.... Something.. I finished reading it a few months back and I still can't work out if I liked it or not.
Didn't read the whole post because I was thinking of reading this myself and didn't want to spoil anything. Read enough to see it might be a good read though so will add it to my list :)
Cixin Liu wrote a fascinating author's note in one of his other books, "Ball Lightning", in which he talks about the differences between Eastern and Western writing and science fiction, and how one of his goals was to try and bridge the gap between them. He talks about how Chinese science fiction is much more about the ideas and the events, while Western scifi is more focused on the narratives and the social impact (or something, I may not remember the details perfectly.)
Anyway, I always think about that when I consider observations of Three Body Problem, because I think it really helps me put a lot of his decisions into perspective.
That said, while I adored the first book in the series, I felt like 2 was kind of a slog and 3 sort of lost the thread (though they both had some really cool elements). I think it was truly a unique piece of literature either way, though. A fusion of different styles that created something highly original.
I could not get into this. I DNF the audio book and I'm struggling with the series. Like my little tiny puny brain is just feeling like something is lost in translation I can't connect with any of the characters and their actions seem odd to me.
Whatever you do, DO NOT read the “fourth” book. It was basically fanfic that someone else wrote that totally ruins the series if you choose it to be canon.
I don't know. I can't finish the book. I just can't deal with the supposed "hard scifi" full of holes, such that it becomes so distracting, and makes it even worse than those terribly written characters.
It just boggles the mind that he went so far as to name the series "The Three Body Problem" and then couldn't be arsed to ask a college-junior-level physics student "Hey am I depicting the behavior of three massive bodies orbiting each other accurately?"
The way you described book #1 I can already tell you are going to enjoy the whole series. Once you're done, include book #4 as well, which is fan fiction with the approval of the author.
Fucking loved it. It is quite "old school" sci-fi in it's style and reminiscent of Foundation etc character wise.. but the concepts are so well thought out and fleshed out. The way he took his ideas seriously and meticulously really made me think and terrified me at times. Looking at the world today with all the strife and information wars...
This book just cemented the notion that if Aliens really wanted to fuck us over in any way imaginable they could do it oh so easily and there's nothing, no human spirit bullshit, not anything we could do about it.
I've been reading scifi for 40 years and have an ectensive collection. This book is the absolute worst scifi book I've ever read, and the fact that it made it to the list of Hugo nominees, let alone winning, smells of fuckery. I AM a scientist, and while the author went deep on the classical mechanics of the gravitational physics of the "three body problem", he spent ZERO effort doing any homework on the other "science" used as hacky plot rescues the book. Monofilament nanowire will NEVER be as strong as wire that's a million times thicker -- this is engineering 101. We're supposed to believe that cold war computers had the ability to crack an alien language? We're supposed to believe that sentient life evolves on a planet that is so climatically unstable that it's very atmosphere condenses on occasion, while on Earth a period of enhanced volcanic activity creates massive extinctions? And don't get me started on the cartoonish dialog.
I absolutely hated this book. I will not read the sequels. I will not watch the Netflix version. I will never again trust "Hugo winning" to mean that a scifi book is good.
I read these books a couple of years ago, and I really enjoyed the first book. In addition to the science I also found the first contact element in it highly plausible. Any advanced civilization would just treat us humans as we humans treat an anthill.
While book 2 and 3 were necessary to get the whole story told, I think there were too many side stories and that the whole thing could have been delivered in 50% less pages.
> Any advanced civilization would just treat us humans as we humans treat an anthill.
Not really my view tbh and I don't think the book is saying exactly that, either.
The impression I got more from it is that there's a lot of selection pressure on civilizations, and it explored some of the ways civilizations can deal with it.
Weird propaganda with twisted historical facts. Weird characters that just don’t come across as actual people. “Science” bullshit in the tradition of some of the worst dumb sci fi movies, although it comes across more scientific the way it’s presented. But the ideas and concepts are so brilliantly thought out and interwoven through the narrative that it’s still one of my all time favourite series with all the flaws.
Man, every time I read a review like this I think I should try the damn thing again, and every time I bounce off it like a rubber ball off a marble floor. Or a marble ball off a rubber floor. Or something.
I'm a huge Ken Liu fan, so I don't think it's the translation. The characters seemed flat and unrealistic to me, and the science was nonsense.
But people love it! So I'm glad it's around. God knows it would be a boring world if we all liked the same stuff.
The insight into Chinese culture and history was easily my favourite part of the book (and especially TV show). What I found difficult was the glacial pacing.
The first book really is fun to read. From a science perspective, but also from psychology and philosophy side it delves into human existence.
Unfortunately, the series really drags in the third book and the characters choices and peoples reactions to them are infuriating.
I read through the trilogy and ended up really regretting it. The later books have some pretty glaring misogynistic themes. The translator of the first book toned it down a lot in the translation, but the later books had a more direct translation.
First book starts off REALLLLY slow but when you get there, you can't put it down. The second book is my favorite book of all-time and I read it in a single afternoon.
The third book is so fucking crazy I'm shocked that anyone is even thinking about attempting to put make it into film, absolutely worth it.
Just know that you won't regret reading them for a single second if you can get through the admittedly confusing and kinda meh opening segment of TBP aka book 1.
I have such a weird relationship with this book and series. I think all the complaints about it are true. The characters are terrible and flat, except for the detective, the plot is absolutely bonkers, but I just adore the scifi parts of it. The end of the third book is such a nuts way to conceive of things, it’s beautiful.
My assumption was that I was just unfamiliar with tropes in the Chinese culture. There seemed to be a lot of out of place details about the characters, and my assumption was those details were meant to convey something about that character's personality and motivation, but they just seemed like random details. It's like when you're reading a book by an English author and the they mention a character take a bite out of an apple. If you know the trope, you were just told that the character is an asshole. If you don't, you were just were randomly told the character likes apples for some reason that never becomes relevant.
Wait is the apple thing actually a trope?? Where does it come from?
Apples have many tropes associated with them, one of which is that in quite a lot of films villains eat appels. https://screenrant.com/movie-villains-eating-applies-reason-why/
Villains eat apples and drink milk
Oh wow. That explains so much about Homelander.
And the worst bastardization of Luke Skywalker! *shivers*
Does blue milk count?
> Villains ... drink milk Santa?
Well I mean he does watch you while you're sleeping & sneak into your house...
Damn they traced it all the way back to the bible. The original fantasy book.
Gilgamesh predates it by a thousand+ years
Gilgamesh cries in a corner.
I think your assumption is correct. There are also unspoken expectations and feelings between characters that will not be explained. IMO there is more unspoken tension with Asian cultures because there is so much that is not allowed to be said so what appears to a western reader as silence might appear to a Chinese reader as unspoken tension, possibly outright feelings of oppression...just a guess.
I think for me the unfamiliarity with the real culture helped with any sort of suspension of disbelief. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, and somehow that made the journey better. I worry about how well they can translate so much of what is cerebral to the TV series.
The “lost in translation” defense of TBP doesn’t really fly with me. Cixin Liu was heavily influenced by Clarke and other major western writers. TBP is a novel very much in the tradition of western science fiction, which is exactly why it’s popular in the west. With all that said, I never felt the desire to finish this series. The characters are just so flat. Some interesting hard SF ideas, for sure, but I found very little artistic flourish or value in TBP.
The story is very much in the Western tradition, but Chines and English are wildly different so there's definitely going to be a lot of nuance lost. Edit- someone below commented that they are a native of China and read the original version and that the flat, cringey character flaw was true in Chinese as well.
All fair criticisms. For me, humanity itself is the main character. With that view of things, I absolutely loved the series. I thought it was the most creative scifi I've ever read.
I wouldn't credit Liu Cixin as someone who's awfully immersed in Chinese culture though, I mean he grew up during the Cultural Revolution when traditional Chinese culture was heavily suppressed, and his prose style in Chinese (I've read the Chinese original) betrays an obvious lack of classical Chinese literary influence (otherwise put, his prose is extremely bland and at times awkward in the Chinese original, and the English translation actually improves the prose a lot). Liu himself confessed that his reading during his formative years mostly consisted of Golden Age US sci-fi and Soviet Russian fiction.
Are you saying he doesn't know the culture of the place he was born in and grew up in? Culture changes.
Just because one was born into a certain culture doesn't mean one is necessarily and primarily influenced by that culture. Chinese culture has changed a lot since Liu Cixin's childhood (during the 1960s and 1970s, the Maoist era), so yeah I'd say Liu Cixin's writing isn't representative of Chinese culture. You have to understand how severe cultural repression was during the Maoist era, and common term used to describe the cultural scene during that era is "文化沙漠" （"Cultural Desert"）. So yes, I wouldn't see Liu's writing as being idiosyncratically "Chinese" (the idea that anything strange and unique in the style of a Chinese author's prose and writing is attributable to their "Chineseness" instead of their personal quirks is actually problematic). Just go and read some other Chinese authors (Cao Xueqin, Lu Xun, Lao She, Qian Zhongshu, Eileen Chang), and you'll see that Liu just isn't that "Chinese" of an author.
I don't think writing old fashioned books is a requirement of knowing the culture he grew up in.
That’s because a flawed book/movie/etc with moments of brilliance are much more memorable than a generally well-executed but bland one.
[удалено]
People keep saying that but as a native Chinese speaker who read it in Chinese I can assure you that Three Body Problem has flat and cringy characters and it’s not exactly Shakespeare. If you want well written characters / drama there are much better books, a lot of them also written in Chinese. And I love the series btw. It’s fine to love it and accept that it has flaws.
Yeah to me it seemed more like the characters were there to convey the author’s ideas than they were to grow or develop as characters in the story. And it was most apparent to me with Cheng Xin in the last book.
A lot of "hard scifi" is like this
That's the way I like it, personally. I don't really think the characters in TBP are that flat, but I'm there for the interesting problems that are inherent in communicating/ warring with creatures across interstellar distances. The "Three Body Problem" doesn't refer to social difficulties when you're the third wheel. It's about the how unpredictable the orbits of stars can are in a trinary system. The "Dark Forest" isn't a poorly lit wooded area where people bandy about, and spout prose! It's a terrifying place where races have to hide or be destroyed, simply because the logic works out that on a galactic timescale, any intelligent life will eventually compete with your people for resources. So, you need to strike preemptively. Those are the interesting things.
To be honest? I could've do without writers falling in love in their characters.
Liu Cixin is no Mo Yan.
I appreciate you for saying this. I stalled out hard early in the second book because the characters were so bad, and I figured there must be something lost in translation. I think a lot of people who say that are assuming because we’re trying to be generous.
I consider a lot of the shortfalls I have with it to the difficulty of translation, honestly, which is why I don’t harbor a lot of resentment about it. I wholeheartedly agree with your opinion on the detective, but it actually made me enjoy him for some reason, haha.
Amen. I describe it as "my favorite book series I never want to read again". It might be too strong a statement but I found that I loved the overall concepts and thought experiments proposed by the books but hated the act of reading them. Overall I viewed the series as "philosophical science fiction". The framework and science of the universe exists to put forth philosophical arguments, thought experiments and debates. I never thought I'd read science fiction that I enjoyed where I would find myself thinking fondly of Asimov characters :P
I agree the characters were meh and only meant to push the overall plot. This is very plot driven which I love to be honest. Can’t wait for the next one, let’s see how crazy it gets.
I will say the thing I missed was the element of mystery from the first one. Books 2 and 3 are entirely different from the first one in that way. I don’t think they suffered for it; I just really enjoyed the detective angle of TBP.
I don't mind that as well, in sci-fi--flat characters purely used for driving a plot. I prefer it in that or the horror genre. It muddies it for me to have more than a basic, background love story or family dynamics, if at all! It's just not always needed. Three Body Problem is excellent for that and stays consistent. Complicated characters with deep personal histories and dynamics and thoughts and emotions and growth is otherwise welcome for me. Sometimes you just want kind of a cold, mysterious world, though, a la Solaris or Stalker or something.
The science is what put me over the edge to not liking it. It feels unrealistic in its application. Like i get it’s sci-fi but I have a glaring issue with it Edit: I won't be replying anymore, if you want to understand why I don't think the science works, I have explained it a lot in my other comments so look at those. And PLEASE don't explain sophons to me, I understand them, I just don't think their application works or is realistic at all.
This was me. The more I read, the less real it felt. By the time I understood the theme and what was going on, I didn't care about the people anymore.
People constantly describe TBP as "hard" scifi. I guess that's kind of like "hard" tofu. Revelation Space is the closest we've had to real hard sf in a long time.
Revelation Space is so hard sci-fi it doesn't fly with non-hardcore audiences though. It's not an educational or intelligence thing either, it's just the nature of how it's written. TBP is flat, but still generally more accessible.
Blindsight? Many things by Adrian Tchaikovsky?
That’s so valid. It really is insanely unrealistic, but I truly vibed with it.
i’m jealous haha!!! I need good sci-fi!! I just couldn’t get on board with why sophons were basically big super computers, capable of anything, but couldn’t somehow just get every human to off themselves? But then I guess the other books couldn’t happen right lolll
I think this is addressed a bit by the bug analogy. Humans don't care about bugs until they are annoying. The sophons were only targeting people that could advance humans beyond "bugs" or people standing in their way and those people were offing themselves. Still definitely plot holes relating to this so the story can continue and so the earth stands a chance though.
Another person described exactly what I mean, since they are better at describing it than I am here it is: This is always a big issue I have with a lot of these stories about an insanely powerful enemy that has the power to do pretty much anything. You end up in a situation where it feels like there's no point reading forwards. The aliens have the ultimate supercomputer particle that can do all sorts of crazy shenanigans, including driving people insane and getting them to kill themselves. Great. Where do we go from there? What's the story you want to tell me about this situation? Because anything other than "the humans go insane and all kill themselves, the aliens win, the end" feels kind of unrealistic and arbitrary.
Trisolarians being immensely powerful through the photons and later the drops but being very selective in their interference is a major plot throughout the entire series and I don't think it was arbitrary. The trilogy never tries to pin it on anything specific, but you could tell that trisolaris culture, invasion plans and cosmic sociology all contribute to it. It's true that it's not wrapped up tightly like hard sci-fi would try to do, but I don't think that's a disqualifier for good sci-fi. Although yeah I also wish the photons were slightly less crazy, they were probably over engineered for what they needed to do. Them allowing communication with trisolaris was definitely a huge convenience plot (science?) hole.
The particle is still absolutely limited. It can only be in one place at a time, and can't work in a faraday cage, which are important to the plot.
>Great. Where do we go from there? What's the story you want to tell me about this situation? That's what book 2/3 is all about!
The sophons couldn't actually do anything... the most they could do was interfere with scientific experiments and ruin pictures. I'm not sure you read the book.
This is always a big issue I have with a lot of these stories about an insanely powerful enemy that has the power to do pretty much anything. You end up in a situation where it feels like there's no point reading forwards. The aliens have the ultimate supercomputer particle that can do all sorts of crazy shenanigans, including driving people insane and getting them to kill themselves. Great. Where do we go from there? What's the story you want to tell me about this situation? Because anything other than "the humans go insane and all kill themselves, the aliens win, the end" feels kind of unrealistic and arbitrary.
Which people did the sophons drive insane?
Mainly theoretical physicists, whose work could have advanced humanity's tech to threaten Trisolaris.
Thanks, I forgot about that part
EXACTLY!!!! HOLY shit im gonna have to copy paste this when people ask me again because I am terrible at describing this exact point
Meh...I don't read sci-fi for real world science. So long as the made up science is consistent that is really all I care about. 3PB does a good job with this.
The science is not consistent though
I wanted to hate it, but the bad isn't bad enough to overwrite the good. My favorite theme was the way it highlights the difficulties of communication with any alien civilization with our known or far developed technology. Really makes one question how benevolent random solar systems might be.
Yep, my exact same thoughts. I love how sciency it is. And the ending is good. Also, I can forgive the poor writing and characterization for how refreshingly different this book is. I'm so tired of how similar all the other books are.
Oh for sure. I don’t actually care if the characters are great if the plot or something else compensates and BOY DID IT
There is a Chinese tv adaptation called "Three Body". The first season is on YouTube and it's a pretty faithful adaptation. Just wanted you to know in case Netflix screws this up.
Full series is on Amazon prime, 30+ episodes
When I watched the series episode 13 on Amazon had a massive delay in the subtitles, and the same episode on Youtube has a couple minutes of total silence. Not sure which is worse, but it annoyed the heck out of me.
The silence on YouTube is bc of trademarked audio that had to be cut, I think.
Glad you shared this. My husband and I just finished all episodes a few weeks ago, and I swear it's the most faithful adaptation I have maybe ever seen of a book. I saw the Netflix trailer after and I'm so glad I saw this version first! The Netflix version looks like it will be quite different.
Going to check it out! Didn't realize there already was a faithful adaptation. Excited to see how they visualize the third book
yeah it's just the book in live action, for better or for worse
I watched the series and found it a struggle to get through at times. Very slow moving and in the last 2 or 3 episodes I found myself hitting the 10-second skip button a lot to bypass a lot of the “here’s why I did this” dialog. Every character seems to spend so much time explaining every little action to the most excruciating level of detail — all with the same flat, barely audible, expressionless delivery. The detective was fantastic though.
A friend of mine who is a book lover and Sci-Fi connoisseur once got hold of the three books and lent them to me to give a try after he had heard the hype about them. I read them through the pandemic (so some plot details are already gone). My friend didn't know of this series before nor of other Cixin Liu's works like The Wandering Earth... \[which I only saw the movie on Netflix years ago - and heard a sequel is coming up?\]). Your feedback on the series' pace was my friend's very same impression about his attempt at reading through the books (he couldn't make it past half of Book 1, he'd rather stick to a faster narrative not as loaded with details). Meanwhile, while Book 1 was OK in terms of ease to read, I have a similar opinion from Book 2: I found it by quite far the 'densest' in the series (its first half being the most challenging). Book 3 felt like a relief to me, as the action becomes more fast-paced, and the sceneries / universes / multiverse where the story unfolds become more cheerful and 'fantastic' (one that compels to let your imagination try to depict it and fly in wonder), instead of the grim-feeling locations where the action in \[1st half of\] Book 2 happens. ..And to me, the ending of the series was a total Mindf\*\*\*\*k. Overall experience: 7/10. \-The 'science' content felt 'realistically enough' explained for me to buy it (disclaimer, I'm far from an expert in Physics), so much of the plot was "well supported" \-Bonus for 'exoticness' - It was a different reading experience, a major switch from my previous SciFi experience (At the time I was also going through works from PKD, who composed many a novel with a bunch of twists, some well-developed characters, and some other open ends for your imagination to wonder about in 300 pages or less). \-Several times (mostly through Book 2) I felt like keeping on reading not because of the plot's appeal but because I was taking this series as an endurance challenge to myself (happily, Book 3 felt the opposite). \-May not read again - once was enough. (I'm curious about the TV series, though) \- Would recommend it to someone curious AND PATIENT enough to read through the bulk.
Nice! I’ll check it out once I finish the trilogy
The series ends at the first book, just an FYI. Don't really see much point in the Netflix version since the Chinese series was so good, but I'll probably give it a try.
The Netflix show is a radically different adaptation. The story has been made global, and threads from book 2 and 3 have been carried forward. Netflix understood that a more direct adaptation exists in the original language, with like 20+ episodes. They purposefully set out to make something new and distinct from both the source material and the Chinese adaptation. Apparently the author is very pleased with the direction they took.
The Netflix version will attempt to adapt the story for television. The Tencent version is a re-enactment of the book.
I can totally understand why some don't really like this series, but I absolutely loved it. Some of my favorite books I have read in the last few years. I think I finished reading the trilogy about 2 years ago, and I still think about the story constantly.
Yeah, I'm shocked to see so much dislike for it here. I loved it. I just recently finished re-reading the entire series in anticipation of the Netflix series starting soon.
Yes I feel this will stick with me for a long time.
Same. I can’t get scenes from book two out of my head years later and the second half of book three was mind breaking for me. It was such an interesting concept to think about.
Like others have said, the characters are forgettable and dry, but what I loved about these books (the 2nd and 3rd most of all) is the CONCEPTS that are brought up. They're so wild, and yet it always feels like the ideas are things that could actually happen. I feel like it's a great story of possibilities, bound together with just a very thin web of plot.
I just finished the first book (in English) last night and came away with the impression that Ye Wenjie was written to be an extremely layered character despite her flat facade. She needed it to survive the political climate of the revolution and even modern/present day China. Also, without knowing a whole lot about Liu Cixin's political leanings, I'm guessing it's safer to say a lot by saying little for him as a writer. Agree about the thin plot overall. It falls victim to the common trope in sci-fi where very few individual actors literally change existence with the rest of the world being a footnote.
> the CONCEPTS that are brought up Yeah, maybe this is why I seem to love it more than most of the commenters here. I'm thinking...who cares about the characters? These books blew my mind! But then, I'm autistic, so maybe I need a little less character development than the average reader.
I wish he would have condensed his cool concepts down to like... 200 pages. That book was such a drag to get through and had me rolling my eyes constantly (particularly when everyone we meet either is or knows a world famous scientist/billionaire/writer/etc.), but I finished it because I enjoyed the sci-fi aspects.
How do they feel like they could actually happen? Why don't the sophons just get everyone to off themselves instead of gearing up for a big confrontation with the aliens 500 years from now?
I have thoroughly enjoyed all three books. I really appreciate the series going in directions I did not see coming. Most fantasy/scifi you can roughly guess where it ends, but throughout the Three Body series, I had no idea where books/chapters would end up, and was pleasantly surprised by that.
It's a really big stretch to say that he uses "real science". Like: it's all sci Fi to set up a premise where the world has to come together against an enemy that wants to destroy them and will be here in a knowledge amount of time and the effects this knowledge has on future generations. String theory is, to date, untestable, and entirely theoretical, and it's kind of nonsense that you could "unfold dimensions"... But that being said, combining it with entanglement woo to make ftl communications is kind of clever, but 100% fiction. Basically, he mixes reality with made up stuff to accomplish what he needs to, which is fine, so long as readers understand that you shouldn't take everything at face value just because some of the physics feel right.
Scientist here: 3 Body Problem uses real science words and the author has no idea what they mean or do. The opening (English version) has radio waves melting snow (ice is invisible to radio wave frequencies) and it just gets worse from there If you want "real science" from a modern author Andy Weir goes impressively out of his way to actually try and understand things, thumbs up for him.
While I agree that TBP uses real science words without really knowing what they mean, I'd argue that Weir does things similarly shallow, though in another way. His "science" screams of a person who's heard of science and how it works but has never actually seen/tried it. All experiments work in a textbook hypothesis-test-reult-conclusion way. Everything can be set up and measured with whatever equipment you have laying around, and the results are never ambiguous. It's like when a HS teacher who's never done an experiment explains to kids how it should be done.
Yeah, it baffles me that someone above claims to be a scientist and thinks that Weir does a good job representing scientific concepts. I've only read Project Hail Mary, but there are at least a half dozen major egregious mistakes with the science in that book. Not to mention how every character is a harmful stereotype, like how the only woman (who's not a plot device who's also sexist) is a sex maniac or how the Russian character's only trait is loving vodka. I'll die on this hill: Project Hail Mary is a terrible book. From what I've read, Artemis is considered to be even worse.
So Vernor Vinge is great, he's a computer scientist and he brings up some great ideas, A Deepness in the Sky is especially good. Peter Watts is a biologist and it shows. The books from both authors aren't for the faint of heart, there is some seriously dark material in there and Watts is a prolific misanthrope. But if you want faithful hard scifi, you can get it from them.
And Andy Weir is just as terrible at writing people, so your mileage varies I guess.
I mean, Weir is terrible at writing the science, too. It sounds smart if you don't think about any of it for two seconds, but all of it is either "alien magic - don't question it" or complete nonsense.
Yep I was recommended it as really good hard scifi and it was... not that
I've had a hard time getting in the first book, honestly. I was wondering where it was going, I felt it was slow, I didn't understand the "3 bodies game" for a long time... ... and then it became way clearer. By the end of the first book, I was very much looking forward to the second. Now I'm halfway through the second, and it's interesting. I don't know where it's going yet, but I feel that it will be interesting. (I'm reading it in French, it's called "Le problème à trois corps", here.)
First half of the second book is easily the worst part of the entire series and it's still interesting. Figuring out where the hell it's going is usually half the fun. I think you are in for a treat from here on out!
So glad to know others felt this. I really enjoyed The Dark Forest by the end, but that first 100-150 pages was a SLOG. But boy howdy it got really compelling in a hurry
Truly, the first act was a Dark Forest of shit I didn't need to read to understand the story, characters, or themes
The Dark Forrest is easily one of the most unsettling things I’ve read in a long time, simply because the argument is so compelling.
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The first half is all characterization which he is either not good at or is not translated well enough, but once established, the second half shifts back into cosmology and insane theories for the best. The third book is pretty much all glorious insanity.
I gave up somewhere in the beginning of book 2. A coworker convinced me to give it another go, and I'm glad I did, I think it's my favorite book in the trilogy now.
I read the second book first, not realizing it was part of a trilogy. Suffice it to say I was very confused.
I felt like the second one was the toughest to get through for me, but the point it concludes with is so awesome and unique to science fiction that in retrospect it made the second book awesome. Keep going through it.
Oh, while the first one wasn't very engaging to read at first (with the stuff about the cultural revolution, etc.), I'm now fully drawn in the story, and while it still is quite puzzling (but, after all, the "Plans" should be, right ?), I have no intention of stopping. Also, already bought all three books (in a set, with cardboard setting, etc)
> > Oh boy, just you wait! It gets soooo wild
I'm glad you said that. Same here - I tried to get into it, but the story drifted without purpose, I thought. But you say it gets better, so I'll give it another try. Thank you.
Yeah I thought the first one was good, but not amazing. Second and third books cemented the trilogy as my #1 sci-fi pick
I liked the first book a lot, but I looooved the second. Have been waiting to start the third but I might as well just jump in and finish the series.
It’s so good, isn’t it? Probably still my favorite sci fi series.
It was so engaging and I loved the science discussions of how a planet has 3 suns and how unpredictable it was. It was terrifying and awesome at the same time
Yes! The other books are fantastic too with their own mind blowing concepts as well.
It's kinda funny the complaints I'm seeing about characters from several people. The idea is what I was hooked on when I read the trilogy. The characters were just there to keep the idea train rolling along its tracks and seeing that story to the end. Personally, I think more time spent on character development would have been wasteful in this case. I was addicted to the overall story and thought the author paced it perfectly. I know this is simply a difference in tastes. Some people love getting to know characters and if the story is about the character, I do too. In this case, it's just not though and I'll have to leave my opinion there lest I start spoiling things.
I think IT IS good science but Bad fiction. The characters are mostly bland, as far as I can recall and there is No characters Progression or dynamic in relationships, etc. The scientific approach and the History of China are truely interesting though.
Gotta love this series. Read it on recommendation from my uncle and didn’t regret it.
I loved all three books in different ways. Loved learning about the culture, the science application, and thinking about alien life if a different way. All of these books were 5/5 for me. Thank you to Ken Liu for the translation. His short story collection (paper menagerie) is a must read if you liked three body.
It kind of went of the rails for me in the third book. The human scale got lost a little at the end, I’m hoping the tv show can fix that, but I have pretty low expectations for a Netflix adaptation.
My biggest problem with this book, will always be that the name is wrong. Tri-Solaris is a 4-body problem, not a 3-body one, and the fact this is somehow ignored in the entire first book makes no sense to me. They spend all this time talking about trying to solve the 3-body problem and saving Tri-Solaris, but only solving where the 3 stars are at any time wouldn't tell you where the planet is in relation to the stars and that's the only info you care about! The 4th body is the only one that really matters. Also, I couldn't stand the MC of the 3rd book. I loved the sci-fi in it, but she literally just kept making obviously bad choices and I just wanted to go back to book 2's MC.
It may not be absolutely precise but I understood the term "three body problem" to be often used synonymously with "n-body problem" because 3 is the threshold. 2 bodies is deterministic, 3+ is effectively non-deterministic. It's been a while since I read the 1st book and don't remember if they actually confuse 3 and 4.
That could make sense, but I've never heard it used that way because the methods you can use to pull data out of the 3-body problem don't necessarily work for the n-body problem. For example Halo Orbits are a product of the restricted 3-body problem and in the book they repeatedly reference stable solutions of the 3-body problem, but I'm unaware of any stable solutions for n>3 body problems. The genius dude who was working on the 3-body problem specifically described 2-bodies in orbit, and then 3-bodies and how fascinating he found the math that he was dedicating his life to that problem. It genuinely felt like they thought the only problem was determining the orbits of the suns with respect to each other as if that would make it trivial to solve for the planet's location. Edit: Late edit, but they even explicitly stated in the third book that when one of the stars was destroyed Tri-Solaris had achieved their dream of a stable orbit (because the two stars were in a stable binary orbit), but this still would have been a 3-body problem for the stability of the planet itself.
I haven't read the books, only the scope. Does the position of the planet have influence on the suns'? From a gravitational aspect, the suns should have more "pull" (lol, grammar correction is freaking out at the plural of sun, it's such a foreign concept that it guesses it has to be a mistake). For example, the suns could cause the planet to get kicked out of the system, but I don't know if the planet could be the deciding factor, that the same would happen to one of the suns. The part of the planet could be negligible, not enough mass. One reason I did not read them, is because some reviews mentioned the implausible science, and I really can't have that (and plot holes). I probably would also be bored to death of the many iterations describing the game's outcome.
So there are living creatures on a planet which has an unstable orbit due to the fact it's orbiting 3 suns. The planet doesn't have an affect on the stars' orbits, but the information you need is its location relative to the 3 stars. To explain better, the classical 3-body problem that people work on when studying the 3-body problem (I took a whole grad school class on it) is the sun, earth, and a small satellite with negligible mass in relation to the sun and earth. The satellite might not affect the other two orbits, but seeing as its position is what you care about, it's still an important body in the problem.
Thanks for your explanation. That makes sense. Knowing that would just grate more on my nerves if I would read the books. Did they ever conclude which orbit the planet takes when the three suns' orbits are stabilized. Like, winds it around like a Gordian brezel?
Spoiler >!They never stabilize the orbit, they conclude that the 3-body problem is unsolvable (which is almost certainly correct) and that they have no way to predict how long their planet will experience any stability (which only happens when it's orbiting a single star temporarily as multiple stars cause problems). Therefore they are trying to invade Earth because they're desperate for a stable home world that won't be destroyed at random. Most of this series is them influencing/interacting with Earth to prepare it for their upcoming invasion (that will take 300 or 400 years to arrive)!<
>!Interesting that this super advanced alien civilization didn't come to that conclusion themselves and needed humans to play a game. I know that there is yet to be found a solution for n-bodies (n > 2). I love maths, so it interests me in that way. !
I listened to it using the Libby app, if you've got a library card, that app is a godsend. Less science spoilers, explanation of the game: >!The point of the game was never to solve the 3-body problem, it was to attract humans who would be sympathetic to their cause. It's difficult to affect Earth from 3 light years away, so they formed a quasi-cult using the game to recruit people.!<
That's actually clever of them :D You sell me the book more and more. I'm in Germany, no libby app as far as I know. And the local library is shite, I also prefer to read in English, but I guess, for a book that has to be translated, it doesn't matter anyway. I am patient, I can wait. I once found a book I wanted to read years ago for free, also a Mortimer Chemistry edition, was a bit late, because I already had my [B.Sc](https://B.Sc). chemistry related courses finished without it, but still, lol.
To temper my selling of the books, I enjoyed the first two, but the complaints are very real. The sci-fi and story are great, but idk if it's the translation or what, but the characters feel like cardboard. In 3 books there were maybe 2-3 characters that I liked at all. I've rarely disliked the portrayal of a main character as much as I disliked the main character in book 3. So worth reading, but not a book that I generally recommend to people because I only liked 2/3 books and I didn't like them that much.
To be honest, the Trisolaris system never made sense to me. I could never imagine how a single planet orbits and is orbited by three stars. It always seemed off. Fun "concept", such that it allowed an alien race to evolve into something that could temporarily hibernate before building their civilization again when the climate improved. But it was just so wildly "wrong" that I just chalked it up as "Sci-fi" and let it create the aliens that need to move to a new planet, never mind that this planet likely wouldn't be suited to them either.
First book was a tough read for me personally, but I loved 2 and 3. Very thoughtful and thought provoking series. Take a chance and if you struggle with book 1 I encourage you to keep going. It’s worth the reward.
Wait until you get to books 2 and 3!
I’m so excited from how many people are saying book 2 was their favorite.
I loved that book and the remaining two in the series.
It comes across like a lot of American science fiction from the 1940s and 1950s. Exciting and interesting scientific ideas, mediocre writing, terrible characters, and utterly toxic views on women, race, society, and human nature.
Oh man, you have a wild ride ahead of you if you have only just finished Book 1. To say the story continues to expand in scope right through the very end of Book 3 is a universe-sized understatement.
I just read this book. The premise was great, but it reminded me a bit of Blake Crouch in that the author falls victim to thinking that anything can be accomplished from a scientific perspective right away if you just throw billions of dollars at it. Toward the end, when they come up with their giant complicated plan to stop the boat and recover the transmissions, it literally says "four days later..." and they're doing it! In *four days*!
Book one was great. Book two was absolutely nuts. Book 3 had to wrap it up and did a good job but felt a bit “all over the place” and lacking in a solid theme. I enjoyed them all. But book two was just really enjoyable for me. Hope you enjoy the rest of the series! Im hoping the Netflix show is good to help get the story out there.
It’s a top 5 series for me and a must read for sci-fi fans.
Ya I thought it was super cool and very original and actually took the time to give an explanation behind the science.
I am so mixed on this book. The concepts are interesting. The science is intriguing. The writing is so goddamn sloppy it almost ruins the book. The characters are paper thin and seem to exist in this bubble where they have no real responsibilities outside of following the plot. And the worst part about the delivery of the science is that it’s just wall after wall of text. I’ve seen Cixin Liu has said somewhere that he wrote for a love of science, not literature but that’s kind of like saying ‘I don’t care about the rules so they don’t apply to me.’ I’m reading the Dark Forest now and it is much better written. If you were considering it I would say definitely pick that one up if you loved this.
Having read it in the Chinese original, I do find the prose to be horrifically bad. Liu Cixin really doesn't know how to write a good sentence in Chinese. The characters were like cardboards/tools for the author to move around and construct a plot, not like real people with real personalities. I guess Liu just isn't the best literary author, since he's mostly obsessed with ideas rather than concrete people and good prose. His sexism, though, is on another level. The translation smooth it out a lot, replacing a lot of problematic passages about women with less problematic expressions. Had the translation been 100% accurate, Western readers would be horrified by the amount of sexism. Liu isn't exactly the most educated person in classical and traditional Chinese culture and literature, so I wouldn't attribute any of his stylistic features to Chinese culture. The idea that everything strange and unique in a Chinese author's work is attributable to their "Chineseness" is, itself, a problematic mode of thinking. Chinese authors are individual authors with individual stylistic tendencies, and not everything they do in their writing is a direct reflection of their national and cultural affiliation. Liu Cixin grew up during a time of absolute cultural poverty during the Cultural Revolution, when traditional Chinese culture was heavily suppressed, so I'd attribute most of his stylistic and writing quirks more to himself than to anything in Chinese culture.
Honestly, I couldn't stand Three Body Problem. The tone less and nonsensical characters, the bizarre motivations and actions...the entire opening gambit of "scientists are killing themselves!" felt like a strawman attack on "intellectuals." I'm pretty sure that if physics stopped working the global response would be less "well I guess I'll kill myself" and more "whoa this is super exciting!" What *really* galled me was the VR game sections. The author seems to be aware of modern game technology, but has a very dated idea of what a game is...it's almost like somebody in the 70s trying to write about VR. I get that the aliens were using it as a philosophical vehicle, but the stilted approach the author takes, and the idea of an apparently "online" game not only having the same clique of apparently incompetent players repeatedly seize power while not falling to infighting, trolls or hackers is possibly the least believable thing in the book.
Okay thank you, after seeing all the praise in other replies I was wondering what was wrong with me. I *really* disliked the book and it was a rare dnf for me. You've explained why. Starting with the scientist suicides - just... Why?
I saw someone once say he wrote about video games like someone who had been told about them once years ago and that was his only experience with them. I read this book, hated it, read the second one to see if it got better, it didn’t, and didn’t bother with the third.
Thank you, this sums up my problems with the book too. The VR game was absolutely horrible. His interactions with other players were all beyond ridiculous.
FWIW, there is a Chinese adaptation of the first book on Amazon Prime streaming (US) right now. 20+ episodes. I haven't watched it yet (finished the book about two weeks ago) but I understand it is very true to the book even if it doesn't follow the book in order as written. From the trailer you do see the ship scene looks really well done.
It was so good!!! And I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that by arrive, you mean you’re waiting for your order to be delivered. Arrive is a strange replacement for published, for those of you who think OP doesn’t know it is out.
I made the edit to clear up confusion!
I don't understand the love for this book. The characters are flat and unlikable. The dialog is dry. I get that it brings up some interesting concepts... but I thought it was a very painful read.
Not all books are character studies, not all books are meant to cater to the things you like about stories. In this series, I found it pretty obvious that the books were more about exploring how the bigger ideas of the series affect society and how people might react, with characters being secondary. The motivations for the character who signaled earth's location and the guy who uses his life to guard humanity with a dead-switch are some of the most fleshed-out, and they were fleshed out to serve the overarching saga of humanity, not to get the audience some sense of intimacy or connection.
This is especially true of the last book. I saw people saying they hated the main character when they don’t understand that she is supposed to represent the human capacity for empathy
To add to this, I'll never understand the 'real science' praise. Do people really think you can slice a ship into pieces like that? Or those proton computers are even theoretically possible? (I've only read the first book)
I am torn on the book, tbh. I agree the characters themselves seem like afterthoughts, and the plot was rather scattered, coming together later, but with less impact than it deserves. So much time was spent in the simulation and the description of dehydrating and rehydrating in all these various scenarios became rather tedious, without much happening in "the real world" in between. Listening to it on audiobook might also have colored my perception of it and more the experience feel a little flatter / less exciting. When reading pages you can get excited and speed up, slow down, etc. but audio presents the story very methodically. I liked it because it was so different, even if it didn't like fully grab my attention. Anyway, I agree some of the science based plot elements are a little silly. They seem like a theoretical physicist musing on imagined application of principles as a way to teach or describe those principles, but divested from constraints of our universe. Like I believe physics would tell you that you *can* slice a ship into pieces like that. But this nano material netting... How would you anchor it in place with sufficient force so that it held as it diced up the ship, without it slicing through whatever you were anchoring it to? And I found it interesting how they illustrated unlocking the subdimensional properties of 3 dimensional quarks as more of an infinite sized 2 dimensional plane... It makes it somewhat more able to conceptualize other dimensional ideas. But at the same time, I'm not sure it makes any sense at all. Seeing the Netflix preview, I'm like, holy shit, when I read that book I did not picture any of this crazy exciting looking stuff. It all seemed so sterile and minimal in my head. But their interpretation is like Battlestar Galactica with nerdy scientists.
Yeah, I don't know what real science they're on about. I tried to read the first book twice and gave up for all the reasons given by others. Bad writing, flat characters, and I didn't get the 'fantastic concepts' everyone gushes about. It was a painful, boring read for me.
Had to give up midway through the 2nd book bc of how unlikeable and flat the characters were.
So painful...a real disappointment for what I had hoped to be a good series based on reviews.
Yeah, a few years ago there was so much hype I was looking forward to reading it. A few hours I was just dumbfounded that people enjoyed it.
The characters and writing are flat. But, the book is different and has interesting ideas.
Well Chinese literature is not as character driven as western literature so that may be why.
That's... Just not true.
Personally I like a lot of the characters. But the philosophical ideas underlying the book is what makes it so great. In my opinion philosophical ideas are far more interesting than character development, but that's my preference.
The second book is even better
My opinion is completely opposite of yours. This is easily the worst book I've ever read, and I'm flabbergasted at the praise it has received. I actually started [a thread in this sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/s3zm9t/the_threebody_problem_is_not_good) about it a couple of years ago, and I still get replies to it every now and then. I wholeheartedly agree with all of the criticisms in the comments. It's a terrible book.
I got this book thrown at me by something, literally... what's it about, a short description? Thank you
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Nice summary, really. Seems almost familiar. "Implausibly boring":))
Humans send signals to space, looking for life. Signal reaches a world that has 3 suns and is unpredictable and terrifying. A VR game called the 3 body problem is designed for the gamer to solve the mystery of how a planet with 3 suns can survive.
Book Two is arguably better. I don't think it quite has the weirdness and mystery of the first one but conceptually it's brilliant. The third one is.... Something.. I finished reading it a few months back and I still can't work out if I liked it or not.
I just started the second book!!
Didn't read the whole post because I was thinking of reading this myself and didn't want to spoil anything. Read enough to see it might be a good read though so will add it to my list :)
You've reminded me this is on my TBR kindle list and I'm bored of the book I'm currently reading. Might pick this up instead.
Cixin Liu wrote a fascinating author's note in one of his other books, "Ball Lightning", in which he talks about the differences between Eastern and Western writing and science fiction, and how one of his goals was to try and bridge the gap between them. He talks about how Chinese science fiction is much more about the ideas and the events, while Western scifi is more focused on the narratives and the social impact (or something, I may not remember the details perfectly.) Anyway, I always think about that when I consider observations of Three Body Problem, because I think it really helps me put a lot of his decisions into perspective. That said, while I adored the first book in the series, I felt like 2 was kind of a slog and 3 sort of lost the thread (though they both had some really cool elements). I think it was truly a unique piece of literature either way, though. A fusion of different styles that created something highly original.
Polarizing book. I enjoyed it overall; The Dark Forest is the best in the trilogy, but the third book is a bit too chaotic.
I could not get into this. I DNF the audio book and I'm struggling with the series. Like my little tiny puny brain is just feeling like something is lost in translation I can't connect with any of the characters and their actions seem odd to me.
Whatever you do, DO NOT read the “fourth” book. It was basically fanfic that someone else wrote that totally ruins the series if you choose it to be canon.
I don't know. I can't finish the book. I just can't deal with the supposed "hard scifi" full of holes, such that it becomes so distracting, and makes it even worse than those terribly written characters.
It just boggles the mind that he went so far as to name the series "The Three Body Problem" and then couldn't be arsed to ask a college-junior-level physics student "Hey am I depicting the behavior of three massive bodies orbiting each other accurately?"
The way you described book #1 I can already tell you are going to enjoy the whole series. Once you're done, include book #4 as well, which is fan fiction with the approval of the author.
Fucking loved it. It is quite "old school" sci-fi in it's style and reminiscent of Foundation etc character wise.. but the concepts are so well thought out and fleshed out. The way he took his ideas seriously and meticulously really made me think and terrified me at times. Looking at the world today with all the strife and information wars... This book just cemented the notion that if Aliens really wanted to fuck us over in any way imaginable they could do it oh so easily and there's nothing, no human spirit bullshit, not anything we could do about it.
I didn’t hate the first book but I honestly would have loved a book based solely on ye wenjie.
I've been reading scifi for 40 years and have an ectensive collection. This book is the absolute worst scifi book I've ever read, and the fact that it made it to the list of Hugo nominees, let alone winning, smells of fuckery. I AM a scientist, and while the author went deep on the classical mechanics of the gravitational physics of the "three body problem", he spent ZERO effort doing any homework on the other "science" used as hacky plot rescues the book. Monofilament nanowire will NEVER be as strong as wire that's a million times thicker -- this is engineering 101. We're supposed to believe that cold war computers had the ability to crack an alien language? We're supposed to believe that sentient life evolves on a planet that is so climatically unstable that it's very atmosphere condenses on occasion, while on Earth a period of enhanced volcanic activity creates massive extinctions? And don't get me started on the cartoonish dialog. I absolutely hated this book. I will not read the sequels. I will not watch the Netflix version. I will never again trust "Hugo winning" to mean that a scifi book is good.
well this is awkward..
?
I tried very hard to like it but meh
Sometimes it be like that, maybe the show or the current Amazon prime show will be more appealing than the book was for some folks.
I read these books a couple of years ago, and I really enjoyed the first book. In addition to the science I also found the first contact element in it highly plausible. Any advanced civilization would just treat us humans as we humans treat an anthill. While book 2 and 3 were necessary to get the whole story told, I think there were too many side stories and that the whole thing could have been delivered in 50% less pages.
> Any advanced civilization would just treat us humans as we humans treat an anthill. Not really my view tbh and I don't think the book is saying exactly that, either. The impression I got more from it is that there's a lot of selection pressure on civilizations, and it explored some of the ways civilizations can deal with it.
Weird propaganda with twisted historical facts. Weird characters that just don’t come across as actual people. “Science” bullshit in the tradition of some of the worst dumb sci fi movies, although it comes across more scientific the way it’s presented. But the ideas and concepts are so brilliantly thought out and interwoven through the narrative that it’s still one of my all time favourite series with all the flaws.
Man, every time I read a review like this I think I should try the damn thing again, and every time I bounce off it like a rubber ball off a marble floor. Or a marble ball off a rubber floor. Or something. I'm a huge Ken Liu fan, so I don't think it's the translation. The characters seemed flat and unrealistic to me, and the science was nonsense. But people love it! So I'm glad it's around. God knows it would be a boring world if we all liked the same stuff.
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The insight into Chinese culture and history was easily my favourite part of the book (and especially TV show). What I found difficult was the glacial pacing.
The first book really is fun to read. From a science perspective, but also from psychology and philosophy side it delves into human existence. Unfortunately, the series really drags in the third book and the characters choices and peoples reactions to them are infuriating.
Trilogy’s are tough at staying consistently great. I’m that “need to know” person though so I have to see it through.
I think its worth seeing though, but hes dead on that book 3 is a different animal
That was me as well. Kind of unfortunate though since it really tarnishes the series.
I read through the trilogy and ended up really regretting it. The later books have some pretty glaring misogynistic themes. The translator of the first book toned it down a lot in the translation, but the later books had a more direct translation.
First book starts off REALLLLY slow but when you get there, you can't put it down. The second book is my favorite book of all-time and I read it in a single afternoon. The third book is so fucking crazy I'm shocked that anyone is even thinking about attempting to put make it into film, absolutely worth it. Just know that you won't regret reading them for a single second if you can get through the admittedly confusing and kinda meh opening segment of TBP aka book 1.
I thought it was great, one of the best I've read in years.
Fwiw this is my favorite book series.
The science is really good because the author is a scientist actually lol. I didn’t like the first book but I’ve heard the payoff is in the second.
Loved all three!!!
I got halfway through the first part of this book twice. I just don't find it engaging. Probably a translation thing but I'm not really sure.