Writer Liu Cixin on How His Visions of the Future Collide with Reality(wsj.com)
wsj.com
Writer Liu Cixin on How His Visions of the Future Collide with Reality
https://www.wsj.com/articles/writer-liu-cixin-on-how-his-visions-of-the-future-collide-with-reality-11633446000
230 comments
https://archive.md/KrPuN
The Three Body Problem should be retitled. Here are some ideas:
- Nothin' But Plot Holes
- Attack of the Flat, Interchangable Characters
- the Four Body Problem (since the trilsolarans don't actually live in a 3-body system
I'm convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before. It's so hackneyed and tropey. People call it hard sf, but it's the opposite.
- Nothin' But Plot Holes
- Attack of the Flat, Interchangable Characters
- the Four Body Problem (since the trilsolarans don't actually live in a 3-body system
I'm convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before. It's so hackneyed and tropey. People call it hard sf, but it's the opposite.
For me, the interesting thing about TBP (I only read the first in the trilogy) was that it was attempting high-concept SF from a very different background: the Cultural Revolution.
High-concept is not the same as hard SF, it means that the novel is driven by the ideas it's trying to articulate rather than anything else. Hence the fragile plot and characters.
But the central question - is it possible the universe is lying to you on a fundamental level? Are your views of reality being systematically manipulated to prevent you reaching certain conclusions and elevating yourself? Those are more interesting, especially coming from a writer under the CCP.
High-concept is not the same as hard SF, it means that the novel is driven by the ideas it's trying to articulate rather than anything else. Hence the fragile plot and characters.
But the central question - is it possible the universe is lying to you on a fundamental level? Are your views of reality being systematically manipulated to prevent you reaching certain conclusions and elevating yourself? Those are more interesting, especially coming from a writer under the CCP.
I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. Make their experimental results so curious and interesting that the observers don't want to live anymore. To me that doesn't jibe with human nature one bit.
I also never really understood what the motivation was for projecting a countdown timer into that guy's optic nerve, other than a hackneyed Dan-Brown-level suspense device.
I wish I'd read this on paperback instead of e-book so I could flip back to some more of the "wait. what?"s and "?!"s I would have scribbled in the margins.
I also never really understood what the motivation was for projecting a countdown timer into that guy's optic nerve, other than a hackneyed Dan-Brown-level suspense device.
I wish I'd read this on paperback instead of e-book so I could flip back to some more of the "wait. what?"s and "?!"s I would have scribbled in the margins.
(SPOILERS) Was the point of the sophon meddling to make the scientists commit suicide? I thought the point was to simply prevent the gathering of experimental evidence, which would stymie progress. The scientist suicides were just an unintended (if hokey and unbelievable) side effect, and it didn't seem like the plot depended on them.
That was my reading of it too. The suicides were only a side-effect of the real objective, and perhaps more credible in Asian culture where historically, suicides were a means of redeeming oneself for a great failure, shame, or loss of face.
But they were not the main objective of the Trisolarians’ intervention. The main objective was to sabotage particle accelerators and thus prevent humanity from understanding the full subatomic structure of matter, which is the key to scientific and technological advancement. Thus humanity would not be able to defend itself when the Trisolarian fleet arrived to colonize Earth 400yrs later.
But they were not the main objective of the Trisolarians’ intervention. The main objective was to sabotage particle accelerators and thus prevent humanity from understanding the full subatomic structure of matter, which is the key to scientific and technological advancement. Thus humanity would not be able to defend itself when the Trisolarian fleet arrived to colonize Earth 400yrs later.
> The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation.
you are combining to different things here. One aspect is that they use the sophons to stimy research into particle physics so that humans can't advance into understanding higher dimensionality, etc.
The second, unrelated aspect is using the sophons to effectively terrorize scientists in non particle physics fields into either submission or suicide by gaslighting them about the nature of the universe. The purpose of the countdown timer and blinking the universal background radiation from the main character's perspective was to make his life a living nightmare until he agreed to stop his nanoparticle research.
you are combining to different things here. One aspect is that they use the sophons to stimy research into particle physics so that humans can't advance into understanding higher dimensionality, etc.
The second, unrelated aspect is using the sophons to effectively terrorize scientists in non particle physics fields into either submission or suicide by gaslighting them about the nature of the universe. The purpose of the countdown timer and blinking the universal background radiation from the main character's perspective was to make his life a living nightmare until he agreed to stop his nanoparticle research.
The sophons were so annoying. So they build these god-in-a-box fundamental particles that would be perfect for scouting out all nearby solar systems for habitable planets, and they instead use them only to give the human race a wedgie.
Also, humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying. And that forever is forever, humanity as a whole never changes their mind, even when they're being murdered by the dumbest smart weapon of all time.
Also, humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying. And that forever is forever, humanity as a whole never changes their mind, even when they're being murdered by the dumbest smart weapon of all time.
> Also, humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying.
This is one aspect I liked of the books because it is an exploration into the difficulty of big decision-making, and how various human biases can result in poor decisions.
Numerous critical decisions were wrong throughout the series, - the battle plan of the first engagement vs the Trisolaris probe, choice of Luo Ji’s successor, banning light speed research, strategy for defending against a Dark Forest attack, etc.
This may partly derive from the world view of a Chinese author who is old enough to know about all of the CCP’s big decisions and failures over the years - Great Leap Forward (famine), Cultural Revolution (destroyed knowledge, science, and truth), Tiananmen Square, etc.
Another compelling aspect was that it faced humanity with an adversary that was not only technologically superior, but also superior at decision-making and strategy. Every decision the Trisolarans made was clearly calculated, and all possible outcomes clearly understood by them. They were only thwarted in the end by random dumb luck (the human broadcast ships and Trisolaris escort probes flying through a region of space that disabled the probes).
I found it all culturally and psychologically insightful.
This is one aspect I liked of the books because it is an exploration into the difficulty of big decision-making, and how various human biases can result in poor decisions.
Numerous critical decisions were wrong throughout the series, - the battle plan of the first engagement vs the Trisolaris probe, choice of Luo Ji’s successor, banning light speed research, strategy for defending against a Dark Forest attack, etc.
This may partly derive from the world view of a Chinese author who is old enough to know about all of the CCP’s big decisions and failures over the years - Great Leap Forward (famine), Cultural Revolution (destroyed knowledge, science, and truth), Tiananmen Square, etc.
Another compelling aspect was that it faced humanity with an adversary that was not only technologically superior, but also superior at decision-making and strategy. Every decision the Trisolarans made was clearly calculated, and all possible outcomes clearly understood by them. They were only thwarted in the end by random dumb luck (the human broadcast ships and Trisolaris escort probes flying through a region of space that disabled the probes).
I found it all culturally and psychologically insightful.
For me it was using game theory as a justification for all of the stupid decisions (so they can never be challenged, since they are proven with math) was one of the worst offenses.
If you make up arbitrary input conditions you can make justify anything. The Dark Forest theory is a prime example of it. Step 1 is "assume growth without bound", like you're on one of those finance shows trying to hock the hottest new startup stock by only talking about the YoY growth percentage. Everything after that is garbage, yet it is treated like gospel.
If you make up arbitrary input conditions you can make justify anything. The Dark Forest theory is a prime example of it. Step 1 is "assume growth without bound", like you're on one of those finance shows trying to hock the hottest new startup stock by only talking about the YoY growth percentage. Everything after that is garbage, yet it is treated like gospel.
I remember when I first read it I found the periodic "mass panics" unrealistic. As in about 10 times in the book the entire world population goes nuts.
Then I remembered Chinese history.
Then I remembered Chinese history.
> humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying
Kind of like how sea trade and settlement was banned in China after Zhenghe's travels? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin)
A big reason for liking the book for me was just a different perspective on politics and human psychology. Not saying it was always believable, but it was certainly something fresh and new to a westerner.
Kind of like how sea trade and settlement was banned in China after Zhenghe's travels? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin)
A big reason for liking the book for me was just a different perspective on politics and human psychology. Not saying it was always believable, but it was certainly something fresh and new to a westerner.
> The sophons were so annoying. So they build these god-in-a-box fundamental particles that would be perfect for scouting out all nearby solar systems for habitable planets, and they instead use them only to give the human race a wedgie.
Just a note on this - "Trisolaris" is that species' name for themselves and their star system in the books, but the actual location is Alpha Centuari, which is the closest star system to Earth, just 4 light years (400yrs at .01c).
The Trisolarans actually did exactly what you say, used the Sophons to find nearby habitable planets. It's just that the nearest one was already inhabited, so they chose to invade and colonize it instead of finding another further away.
Not terribly implausible, especially since the 400yr journey to Earth was already high-risk to the survival of their species, and a longer journey to a further planet would be even moreso.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/alpha-cent...
Just a note on this - "Trisolaris" is that species' name for themselves and their star system in the books, but the actual location is Alpha Centuari, which is the closest star system to Earth, just 4 light years (400yrs at .01c).
The Trisolarans actually did exactly what you say, used the Sophons to find nearby habitable planets. It's just that the nearest one was already inhabited, so they chose to invade and colonize it instead of finding another further away.
Not terribly implausible, especially since the 400yr journey to Earth was already high-risk to the survival of their species, and a longer journey to a further planet would be even moreso.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/alpha-cent...
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> I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. Make their experimental results so curious and interesting that the observers don't want to live anymore. To me that doesn't jibe with human nature one bit.
Agreed, scientists would never react that way in real life. Some of the replies are saying that the behavior is explained by Chinese attitudes towards failure, but this plot device (person commits suicide in response to philosophically disturbing event) is something that I've seen a few times in different contexts, so it must be more general than that.
When I was in high school, I wrote a story that was basically just this. Character sees something impossible, spirals into depression over it, and finally kills himself. I wouldn't enjoy reading a story like that today, but I remember that it matched the aesthetics taught in K-12 English classes, which weren't very concerned with characters behaving realistically.
The story "What's Expected of Us" by Ted Chiang uses this trope too. It annoyed me enough when I read it that I wrote a note about it:
> There is zero chance people would go insane due to the emergence of a philosophical paradox like this. The laws of physics are full of mind-bending paradoxes in the real world, but they have no effect on the average person's state of mind. They are not relevant to our day-to-day pursuit of money, popularity, food, entertainment, friendship, sex, etc. ... I don't know why people have a tendency to write stories about a philosophical idea leading to insanity, when such a thing clearly doesn't match reality. I fell prey to the same temptation with my [story I wrote in high school], but that was more believable since in my story only the protagonist was driven insane by the phenomenon, not the whole society.
Agreed, scientists would never react that way in real life. Some of the replies are saying that the behavior is explained by Chinese attitudes towards failure, but this plot device (person commits suicide in response to philosophically disturbing event) is something that I've seen a few times in different contexts, so it must be more general than that.
When I was in high school, I wrote a story that was basically just this. Character sees something impossible, spirals into depression over it, and finally kills himself. I wouldn't enjoy reading a story like that today, but I remember that it matched the aesthetics taught in K-12 English classes, which weren't very concerned with characters behaving realistically.
The story "What's Expected of Us" by Ted Chiang uses this trope too. It annoyed me enough when I read it that I wrote a note about it:
> There is zero chance people would go insane due to the emergence of a philosophical paradox like this. The laws of physics are full of mind-bending paradoxes in the real world, but they have no effect on the average person's state of mind. They are not relevant to our day-to-day pursuit of money, popularity, food, entertainment, friendship, sex, etc. ... I don't know why people have a tendency to write stories about a philosophical idea leading to insanity, when such a thing clearly doesn't match reality. I fell prey to the same temptation with my [story I wrote in high school], but that was more believable since in my story only the protagonist was driven insane by the phenomenon, not the whole society.
> The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation
I actually liked that concept, and I think if participle experiments unexpectedly stopped working a lot of scientists would lose heart.
But (SPOILERS), I couldn't get over the mechanism they used. They program two protons to effectively do their bidding flying around the world causing havoc. They communicate with the protons instantly and the protons can move around on their own, hear and see everything, effect people's vision, effect equipment. Honestly it wasn't really clear where the capabilities ended. It seemed so plot-convenience-y that it ruined the first half of the book for me. Which, despite people's criticisms here, I did like.
I actually liked that concept, and I think if participle experiments unexpectedly stopped working a lot of scientists would lose heart.
But (SPOILERS), I couldn't get over the mechanism they used. They program two protons to effectively do their bidding flying around the world causing havoc. They communicate with the protons instantly and the protons can move around on their own, hear and see everything, effect people's vision, effect equipment. Honestly it wasn't really clear where the capabilities ended. It seemed so plot-convenience-y that it ruined the first half of the book for me. Which, despite people's criticisms here, I did like.
> I actually liked that concept, and I think if participle experiments unexpectedly stopped working a lot of scientists would lose heart.
Actual physicist here. We LIVE for that moment when the experiment does something unexpected. That’s when new discoveries are made, and our understanding of the world turned upside down. We got into the field hoping for a moment like that to happen within our lifetime. Suicide? Hell no, we’d be giddy for excitement wanting to see what happens next.
Liu Cixin doesn’t have the faintest clue about scientists and what motivates them. I put down the book as soon as that part happened.
Actual physicist here. We LIVE for that moment when the experiment does something unexpected. That’s when new discoveries are made, and our understanding of the world turned upside down. We got into the field hoping for a moment like that to happen within our lifetime. Suicide? Hell no, we’d be giddy for excitement wanting to see what happens next.
Liu Cixin doesn’t have the faintest clue about scientists and what motivates them. I put down the book as soon as that part happened.
Keep in mind that (SPOILERS) the scientists were aware that their results were being manipulated. That's what the suicide note said, and that's also seen in the countdown that was clearly the result of an intelligent being.
Which, again, would be a fantastically amazing discovery, perhaps the greatest ever in the history of science. A physicist would be salivating at the possibilities.
But iirc it started off with a whole history of physics grad students offing themselves when their experiments didn’t work out or confirmed negative results, not just the one you are referring to.
But iirc it started off with a whole history of physics grad students offing themselves when their experiments didn’t work out or confirmed negative results, not just the one you are referring to.
Maybe you have to rethink this in terms of a computer programmer that knows all his programs will have critical bugs from now on, and there's nothing he can do to avoid it.
No rethinking required. Just imagine if you're any kind of scientist and suddenly 2 + 2 = 5.3 and then two days later 2 + 2 = 4 again.
It's that simple. If there's no reproduction, there's no progress in any activity.
It's that simple. If there's no reproduction, there's no progress in any activity.
I noticed that issue too, and attributed it to Liu blending some historical Asian and possibly Chinese culture into the mix, where large failures result in great shame, loss of face, and sometimes suicide as a means of redeeming oneself.
Though that still happens occasionally in some contexts like business, it’s not realistic for scientists, as you explain. But maybe Liu was taking some artistic and cultural license here, using something that at least has some precedent.
Though that still happens occasionally in some contexts like business, it’s not realistic for scientists, as you explain. But maybe Liu was taking some artistic and cultural license here, using something that at least has some precedent.
IIRC, the wave of suicides was confined to the members of the club, so they actually knew what was up. On the other hand, there was at least a strong hint that it was going to spread globally, so you have a point there.
On the other hand, this would still destroy a lot of experimentation in the field of particle physics... although I guess it would be interesting to poke at the edges of the effect?
On the other hand, this would still destroy a lot of experimentation in the field of particle physics... although I guess it would be interesting to poke at the edges of the effect?
Some extraordinary generalisations being applied there. Given that a large number of people experienced mental health problems during pandemic lockdowns it seems highly plausible that a population would become sufficiently depressed when they know that all of a sudden, despite whatever efforts they now apply towards understanding the universe, it will be futile because another species at a not long before, similar level of advancement had applied a weapon to prevent any possible progress. Sounds pretty demotivating to me!
Perhaps you meant to conclude, ‘that’s not how I’d personally behave, or at least believe I would without having experienced such a trauma’?
Pity you tossed the book away just for that though.
Perhaps you meant to conclude, ‘that’s not how I’d personally behave, or at least believe I would without having experienced such a trauma’?
Pity you tossed the book away just for that though.
Oh there was so much wrong with that book. That was just the final straw.
> I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. Make their experimental results so curious and interesting that the observers don't want to live anymore. To me that doesn't jibe with human nature one bit.
You either need to re-read the book or stop commenting on it, because you are severely misremembering it.
You either need to re-read the book or stop commenting on it, because you are severely misremembering it.
Reading it in paperback definitely made me feel less bad when I threw the book across the room
> is it possible the universe is lying to you on a fundamental level?
This was what was most interesting to me while reading the trilogy. The thought experiment of the 2-D society living on a paper target that is trying to predict where bullets will appear in their universe still sticks with me. I'd love to read anything else that explores the idea of the limits of science
This was what was most interesting to me while reading the trilogy. The thought experiment of the 2-D society living on a paper target that is trying to predict where bullets will appear in their universe still sticks with me. I'd love to read anything else that explores the idea of the limits of science
For anyone interested, Stanislaw Lem touched on this same theme in his short story ‘The New Cosmogony’ that is included in his ‘A Perfect Vacuum’ collection.
The idea being that perhaps a sufficiently advanced alien entity could change the laws of physics in our corner of the universe, thus putting a sort physical speed limit on us and preventing us from probing outside of our own region of space.
The idea being that perhaps a sufficiently advanced alien entity could change the laws of physics in our corner of the universe, thus putting a sort physical speed limit on us and preventing us from probing outside of our own region of space.
Thanks, this is the first description of TBP to say something specific and interesting that makes me want to read it.
(The excerpts, general praise, and "dark forest theory" did not do it for me.)
(The excerpts, general praise, and "dark forest theory" did not do it for me.)
"attempting high-concept SF from a very different background: the Cultural Revolution"
I liked Terra Ignota in that regard.
I didn't get through the first two chapters of the TBP, but I loved all TI books.
I liked Terra Ignota in that regard.
I didn't get through the first two chapters of the TBP, but I loved all TI books.
The introduction was the only good thing about the book.
I also liked the idea of the Wallbreaker project.
What scifi are you reading that doesn't have plot holes?
Also, I don't think anything could be less flat than Liu's Chinese characters—especially the women like Ye Wenjie and Cheng Xin. I suppose you might not have spent a lot of time with Chinese people, but you should know that due to their culture they live somewhat different emotional lives than Westerners, with much less emphasis placed on direct individual expression and much more focus on private or hidden (from family, society, etc.) actions.
Personally, I come to science fiction because I'm interested in seeing how human beings respond to the extreme situations in which imagined futures place them. In that regard, Remembrance of Earth's Past is one of the most engaging and successful scifi series I have ever read.
Also, I don't think anything could be less flat than Liu's Chinese characters—especially the women like Ye Wenjie and Cheng Xin. I suppose you might not have spent a lot of time with Chinese people, but you should know that due to their culture they live somewhat different emotional lives than Westerners, with much less emphasis placed on direct individual expression and much more focus on private or hidden (from family, society, etc.) actions.
Personally, I come to science fiction because I'm interested in seeing how human beings respond to the extreme situations in which imagined futures place them. In that regard, Remembrance of Earth's Past is one of the most engaging and successful scifi series I have ever read.
As I mentioned before; I didn't really like TBP and it's siblings.
I can however recommend Diaspora by Greg Egan. Or Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts. "Human" beings in "extreme situations", indeed.
I can however recommend Diaspora by Greg Egan. Or Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts. "Human" beings in "extreme situations", indeed.
to be fair: "having plot holes" is not the same thing as "nothing but plot holes"
People have different opinions. I think the label "hard sc-fi" is too fuzzy with everyone having their own expectations. Personally I found the books to be immensely entertaining. There's a number of very intriguing thought experiments.
What happens when a ship is sliced in half by an almost infinitely strong piece of string? What if people were able to enter and move around in 4-dimensional space, or if 3D space suddenly collapsed to 2D? What could happen if the speed of light dropped to 16km/s?
What happens when a ship is sliced in half by an almost infinitely strong piece of string? What if people were able to enter and move around in 4-dimensional space, or if 3D space suddenly collapsed to 2D? What could happen if the speed of light dropped to 16km/s?
Sure.
Just like harry potter explores what happens if you have a cloak of deception or time turner. What would happen if Dementors invaded Hogwarts? Forgive me, I haven't actually read the whole series.
I've never heard a definition of hard SF that didn't require some effort to make the science part sound plausible. It's one thing to not hold up to the scrutiny of experts, but there were a number of times I looked up from TBP and thought "that sounds wrong".
If TBP is hard scifi than so is How To Train Your Dragon.
Just like harry potter explores what happens if you have a cloak of deception or time turner. What would happen if Dementors invaded Hogwarts? Forgive me, I haven't actually read the whole series.
I've never heard a definition of hard SF that didn't require some effort to make the science part sound plausible. It's one thing to not hold up to the scrutiny of experts, but there were a number of times I looked up from TBP and thought "that sounds wrong".
If TBP is hard scifi than so is How To Train Your Dragon.
Perhaps we need a Mohs scale for sci-fi hardness then.
TBP and the rest of the trilogy aren't hard in terms of fully valid science, or even in terms of Atomic Rocket's[0] rule of "one scientifically implausible item per story". But they aren't soft either, not like (say) Star Trek. It's something in between.
--
[0] - http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sealofapproval....
TBP and the rest of the trilogy aren't hard in terms of fully valid science, or even in terms of Atomic Rocket's[0] rule of "one scientifically implausible item per story". But they aren't soft either, not like (say) Star Trek. It's something in between.
--
[0] - http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sealofapproval....
TV Tropes has an article titled exactly "Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness" which is probably a good approximation of what you're thinking of.
most 'hard science fiction' is essentially high concept fiction or science fiction that adopts a sociological frame. It is, and never really as been, about 'plausible science'.
just take the posterboy of American hard SF, Arthur C. Clarke. (whose writing resembles Liu Cixin a lot). A lot of his stuff is straight up fantastical or cosmic. Childhood's end for example (sort of TBP like) or The City and the Stars. The science in either one isn't really plausible. Hard science fiction was always distinguished by ditching characters and traditional adventure or hero narratives for ideas. It was never about writing a physics PhD thesis.
just take the posterboy of American hard SF, Arthur C. Clarke. (whose writing resembles Liu Cixin a lot). A lot of his stuff is straight up fantastical or cosmic. Childhood's end for example (sort of TBP like) or The City and the Stars. The science in either one isn't really plausible. Hard science fiction was always distinguished by ditching characters and traditional adventure or hero narratives for ideas. It was never about writing a physics PhD thesis.
It's not hard scifi, but so what? Most scifi isn't hard scifi. Ben Bova's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy would count, I think. Nothing too fantastical there, just an extrapolation of existing science and technology to terraforming Mars.
But then you don't get any aliens or speculative technology that way. Which most future science fiction is interested in. That or robots and galactic colonization. Dune and Foundation are just as fantastical in their own way as a Remembrance of Earth's Past. And yet, they're classics and cornerstones of modern science fiction.
But then you don't get any aliens or speculative technology that way. Which most future science fiction is interested in. That or robots and galactic colonization. Dune and Foundation are just as fantastical in their own way as a Remembrance of Earth's Past. And yet, they're classics and cornerstones of modern science fiction.
Red/Green/Blue Mars is authored by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Oh right. It's been a while since I read them. I have Robinson's 2312, which I guess is a sequel to the Mars trilogy. Has a train city running along the dark side on Mercury propelled by the sun on the light side expanding the tracks. I got distracted and never finished the story.
You definitely wouldn't like ball lightning. It makes some... stretches.
Perhaps forget the idea that it should be hard scifi then? Seems all your criticism is that some label doesn't apply to it.
> What could happen if the speed of light dropped to 16km/s?
I've not read the books, but I have read the synopsis, and when I read this bit I was somewhat surprised as there are so many things that break that new limit - would our electrical minds work at that speed? What would happen to electron orbitals? What happens to the stars orbiting the galaxy at ~200km/s ?
I've not read the books, but I have read the synopsis, and when I read this bit I was somewhat surprised as there are so many things that break that new limit - would our electrical minds work at that speed? What would happen to electron orbitals? What happens to the stars orbiting the galaxy at ~200km/s ?
Hard sci-fi is No Real Scotsman: The Genre. The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction, because there is no room in hard sci-fi for speculation about science. At best you could call it fiction where technology figures heavily, like The Martian, which while great is hardly sci-fi at all in my opinion.
Any testable scientific theory is generally either so esoteric as to be impossible to work into a story in a significant way or so likely to be false that it gets labeled soft sci-fi. Theories that can’t be tested are just metaphysics or magic. So the more Fi, the less Sci.
Criticizing something for not being hard sci-fi is easy, but I would say largely meaningless unless the piece plays so loose with the science that it could have achieved the same effect with harder science, but I certainly don’t think you could say that of TBP.
Any testable scientific theory is generally either so esoteric as to be impossible to work into a story in a significant way or so likely to be false that it gets labeled soft sci-fi. Theories that can’t be tested are just metaphysics or magic. So the more Fi, the less Sci.
Criticizing something for not being hard sci-fi is easy, but I would say largely meaningless unless the piece plays so loose with the science that it could have achieved the same effect with harder science, but I certainly don’t think you could say that of TBP.
> "The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction, because there is no room in hard sci-fi for speculation about science."
That's a really good insight, and I largely agree. I think of successful hard sci-fi as "reasonably extrapolates what we currently know about science and technology into the future", but, as you pointed out, that leads to an unlikely, or worse, boring future.
> "...but I would say largely meaningless unless the piece plays so loose with the science that it could have achieved the same effect with harder science, but I certainly don’t think you could say that of TBP."
I strongly disagree. The alien powers were so unlikely and all-powerful that they may well have been called instead "Witch Demons from The Horror Dimension!"
That's a really good insight, and I largely agree. I think of successful hard sci-fi as "reasonably extrapolates what we currently know about science and technology into the future", but, as you pointed out, that leads to an unlikely, or worse, boring future.
> "...but I would say largely meaningless unless the piece plays so loose with the science that it could have achieved the same effect with harder science, but I certainly don’t think you could say that of TBP."
I strongly disagree. The alien powers were so unlikely and all-powerful that they may well have been called instead "Witch Demons from The Horror Dimension!"
> I think of successful hard sci-fi as "reasonably extrapolates what we currently know about science and technology into the future", but, as you pointed out, that leads to an unlikely, or worse, boring future.
Check out Blindsight and Echopraxia for where the author extrapolated a bunch of physics and neuroscience research into a vision of an interesting, and quite disturbing future. Well, there were also (in-universe explained, and quite ingeniously at that) vampires, so this part would make it soft sci-fi, but the story/universe would work without them too.
Check out Blindsight and Echopraxia for where the author extrapolated a bunch of physics and neuroscience research into a vision of an interesting, and quite disturbing future. Well, there were also (in-universe explained, and quite ingeniously at that) vampires, so this part would make it soft sci-fi, but the story/universe would work without them too.
Thanks for the tip! Blindsight: bought.
I consider Greg Egan and Ian M. Banks as hard sci-fi authors, even though their work is wildly creative. If you haven't read their work, I highly recommend it.
I consider Greg Egan and Ian M. Banks as hard sci-fi authors, even though their work is wildly creative. If you haven't read their work, I highly recommend it.
I don’t see how anyone could call Banks hard sci-fi.
(Possible spoilers?)
The culture is so extremely powerful that they’re scarcely less magical than the dimension-bending aliens in TBP, which I agree are pretty fantastical, though I’m happy to accept them in exchange for a vastly ambitious plot.
Banks is alright, certainly creative, but I wouldn’t call his work hard sci-fi. Player of Games maybe more so than the others I read, if you ignore the Mind Ships. My issue with his books is that I feel the plots tend to meander and he seems a bit over enthusiastic with the gore.
Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar.
(Possible spoilers?)
The culture is so extremely powerful that they’re scarcely less magical than the dimension-bending aliens in TBP, which I agree are pretty fantastical, though I’m happy to accept them in exchange for a vastly ambitious plot.
Banks is alright, certainly creative, but I wouldn’t call his work hard sci-fi. Player of Games maybe more so than the others I read, if you ignore the Mind Ships. My issue with his books is that I feel the plots tend to meander and he seems a bit over enthusiastic with the gore.
Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar.
> "I don’t see how anyone could call Banks hard sci-fi."
You know what? You're right. I'm not even going to defend it. In writing a response, I came across this section on The Culture Wikipedia page, and: Yes, not hard sci-fi. More like Star Trek.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Science_and_techno...
> Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar.
Read this description of Diaspora: https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html
If that sounds intriguing, you might like his work. He starts with a what-if physics theory informed by his mathematics background. It's heady, positing the universe is a 4-dimensional sphere embedded in a 12-dimensional torus, which allows wormholes to exist and for the protagonists to move through them. From that he extrapolates about what that would mean.
So, maybe not hard sci-fi. Is there such a thing as "math" sci-fi?
There's a scene at the end of the novel. It's short, and not narratively important, so I'm ok with telling you, but it might be a spoiler. If you read the description above and you plan to read it, skip the next paragraph, but it's what really hooked me.
The protagonists discover an artifact that changes slightly as they move from universe to universe. They decide to 'follow' it across the universes, hoping to find the civilization that built it. Tens, hundreds, thousands, billions of universes pass by, and in so doing, they lose connection to their home: "more than seven million broken links, and over ninety billion years of identified [time] slippage". And so they decide to continue, because even if they find their way home again, their home (our, Earth) Universe would be unrecognizable, perhaps dying. At last, when analyzed, the artifact turns out to be (among other things) a massive sculpture "spanning more than a quadrillion dimensions". Collapsing it down to 5 dimensions, so they can get an approximation of what it looks like, "it was a four-legged, four-armed creature, with one arm stretched high above its head... reaching up. To the infinite number of levels above. To all the worlds it would never see, never touch, never understand." That precis does not do it justice, but. Just, astonishing.
You know what? You're right. I'm not even going to defend it. In writing a response, I came across this section on The Culture Wikipedia page, and: Yes, not hard sci-fi. More like Star Trek.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Science_and_techno...
> Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar.
Read this description of Diaspora: https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html
If that sounds intriguing, you might like his work. He starts with a what-if physics theory informed by his mathematics background. It's heady, positing the universe is a 4-dimensional sphere embedded in a 12-dimensional torus, which allows wormholes to exist and for the protagonists to move through them. From that he extrapolates about what that would mean.
So, maybe not hard sci-fi. Is there such a thing as "math" sci-fi?
There's a scene at the end of the novel. It's short, and not narratively important, so I'm ok with telling you, but it might be a spoiler. If you read the description above and you plan to read it, skip the next paragraph, but it's what really hooked me.
The protagonists discover an artifact that changes slightly as they move from universe to universe. They decide to 'follow' it across the universes, hoping to find the civilization that built it. Tens, hundreds, thousands, billions of universes pass by, and in so doing, they lose connection to their home: "more than seven million broken links, and over ninety billion years of identified [time] slippage". And so they decide to continue, because even if they find their way home again, their home (our, Earth) Universe would be unrecognizable, perhaps dying. At last, when analyzed, the artifact turns out to be (among other things) a massive sculpture "spanning more than a quadrillion dimensions". Collapsing it down to 5 dimensions, so they can get an approximation of what it looks like, "it was a four-legged, four-armed creature, with one arm stretched high above its head... reaching up. To the infinite number of levels above. To all the worlds it would never see, never touch, never understand." That precis does not do it justice, but. Just, astonishing.
Thanks to you too; both Egan and Banks are at the top of my to-read list (sci-fi section); I'll get to them once I'm done with Asimov (currently going through full Foundation series).
IMHO Sci-Fi is just Fantasy that did the math.
You can add magic, but it should be grounded in some form of reality and be internally consistent. Hard SF is stuff that is theoretically possible but we just lack the tech for it, and especially how that might affect society. Cheap access to space is an easy example, thinking about a society with a working space elevator that enables people to live outside of traditional political systems. The similar story might be written about people stranded on an otherwise deserted island.
You can add magic, but it should be grounded in some form of reality and be internally consistent. Hard SF is stuff that is theoretically possible but we just lack the tech for it, and especially how that might affect society. Cheap access to space is an easy example, thinking about a society with a working space elevator that enables people to live outside of traditional political systems. The similar story might be written about people stranded on an otherwise deserted island.
> The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction
I believe the hardest sci-fi is called "non-fiction". There is a "scale" for this, anyway:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien...
I'd say something like "For all mankind" also lands in the Sci-Fi genre, and there REALLY has been nothing physically impossible (yet), though the nuclear engine is borderline
It's hard to imagine "The Martian" or "For all mankind" to NOT be in the category of "science fiction"; they're certainly not fantasies. Maybe "For all mankind" belongs in "historical fiction" but it's edging towards being too recent for that. I don't think they're "just fiction" because grouping them in with, say "100 years of solitude" or "ulysses", or even "the client" doesn't seem quite right either.
I believe the hardest sci-fi is called "non-fiction". There is a "scale" for this, anyway:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien...
I'd say something like "For all mankind" also lands in the Sci-Fi genre, and there REALLY has been nothing physically impossible (yet), though the nuclear engine is borderline
It's hard to imagine "The Martian" or "For all mankind" to NOT be in the category of "science fiction"; they're certainly not fantasies. Maybe "For all mankind" belongs in "historical fiction" but it's edging towards being too recent for that. I don't think they're "just fiction" because grouping them in with, say "100 years of solitude" or "ulysses", or even "the client" doesn't seem quite right either.
Admittedly calling the Martian not sci-fi is a bit of a hot take, but I’ll defend it. To me sci-fi is speculative fiction. That is, take a counter factual or hypothetical and run with it, explore the consequences of the idea.
The Martian supposes we send some human missions to Mars like we probably will in a decade or two, and lays out the steps a crewman takes to survive being left behind. There’s not really an idea there to explore other than what might be done in an engineering planning meeting.
I might call it eng-fi instead of sci-fi.
The Martian supposes we send some human missions to Mars like we probably will in a decade or two, and lays out the steps a crewman takes to survive being left behind. There’s not really an idea there to explore other than what might be done in an engineering planning meeting.
I might call it eng-fi instead of sci-fi.
You're running on a very narrow difference between science and engineering:
> That is, take a ... hypothetical and run with it, explore the consequences of the idea.
How is The Martian not:
- hypothetical: Astronaut gets stranded on Mars
- consequences: Steps to survive, survivor and rescue crew decisions and emotions.
> That is, take a ... hypothetical and run with it, explore the consequences of the idea.
How is The Martian not:
- hypothetical: Astronaut gets stranded on Mars
- consequences: Steps to survive, survivor and rescue crew decisions and emotions.
You're right, it's a fine line. I think it falls on the engineering side of the line because the hypothetical and the consequences in the Martian are pretty mundane when you remove the setting and price tags. Imagine the same story but about a character abandoned at McMurdo Station in the present day. It would be a largely similar story with largely similar consequences. I think you might agree that it wouldn't be sci-fi.
The world isn't really any different for the hypothetical of Watney getting stranded on mars. It's just an event that happens. A hypothetical like -what if Mars were already inhabited by aliens or -what if we could launch items to space for less than $.10/kg using X technology would be more on the sci-fi side of hypotheticals to me. The latter because it would open up the question of how the world would develop differently, even though it's just a simple question of technology.
Edit: I should make it clear I loved The Martian, I'm just making the argument it could be called not sci-fi.
The world isn't really any different for the hypothetical of Watney getting stranded on mars. It's just an event that happens. A hypothetical like -what if Mars were already inhabited by aliens or -what if we could launch items to space for less than $.10/kg using X technology would be more on the sci-fi side of hypotheticals to me. The latter because it would open up the question of how the world would develop differently, even though it's just a simple question of technology.
Edit: I should make it clear I loved The Martian, I'm just making the argument it could be called not sci-fi.
> I'm convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before.
I liked the books so I guess my vast collection of classical and modern SF is not real scotsman.
I liked the books so I guess my vast collection of classical and modern SF is not real scotsman.
Criticism is easy, art is difficult.
> I'm convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before.
It's your opinion against thousands who read and like SF and loved Liu Cixin's books. It's true that there you must accept a set of axioms that create a suspension of disbelief in most of those books.
> I'm convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before.
It's your opinion against thousands who read and like SF and loved Liu Cixin's books. It's true that there you must accept a set of axioms that create a suspension of disbelief in most of those books.
Opinions aren't "against" anything, they're just different.
I thought what portion of the book I could stomach, sucked. Other people liked it. Both are fine.
I thought what portion of the book I could stomach, sucked. Other people liked it. Both are fine.
"I'm convinced that the only way to like that book is to..."
I must strongly disagree on your position that only people with specific histories may enjoy a specific book.
I think I recognize science (MSc in physics), my fiction (enjoy everything from Chekhov and Tolstoy to Banks, Clarke) and found the books as damn entertaining read.
It's fiction! If I want "real science" I will do a refresher on my quantum mechanics, CS algos or peruse the latest Economist.
Silly stories have their place, and some of us enjoy an entertaining yarn (if a yarn is 'entertaining' is then again a matter of taste).
I must strongly disagree on your position that only people with specific histories may enjoy a specific book.
I think I recognize science (MSc in physics), my fiction (enjoy everything from Chekhov and Tolstoy to Banks, Clarke) and found the books as damn entertaining read.
It's fiction! If I want "real science" I will do a refresher on my quantum mechanics, CS algos or peruse the latest Economist.
Silly stories have their place, and some of us enjoy an entertaining yarn (if a yarn is 'entertaining' is then again a matter of taste).
I don't really disagree with your evidence but your conclusion is flawed.
The Three Body Problem seems like a very weird book by the standards of the 21st century but it would feel right at home amongst the "golden age" 50s and 60s sci-fi novels. It is a real throwback to the Big Idea! stories of that era.
I wrote longer reviews of all three novels [0] (to save you the click, I thought the first one was great, the second was OK, and the third actively bad!)
[0] https://sheep.horse/2017/3/book_review_-_the_three-body_prob...
The Three Body Problem seems like a very weird book by the standards of the 21st century but it would feel right at home amongst the "golden age" 50s and 60s sci-fi novels. It is a real throwback to the Big Idea! stories of that era.
I wrote longer reviews of all three novels [0] (to save you the click, I thought the first one was great, the second was OK, and the third actively bad!)
[0] https://sheep.horse/2017/3/book_review_-_the_three-body_prob...
How curious. I thought the first one was good, the second was great, and the last was genius.
It is almost like consuming art is subjective experience.
Reading your review, you call Xin an idiot, but I saw her as an alternative type of hero who rejects Luo Ji's effective but ultimately unsustainable and mutually-destructive masculinity. This felt very fresh to me.
I will allow that it was a bold choice from Liu Cixin to make someone like Xin the main character. I just really disliked everything about her.
I could not agree more. I don't mind hand wavy "technological breakthroughs" as long as the main point of the story is "when confronted with new crazy thing X, here's how humanity deals with it" and there's some clever thought put in. Maybe some interesting insights from the author. But the Three Body Problem.... ugh. So bad.
- As you say, the plot is terrible. Kerouac had a more coherent narrative. What story there was strained believability even for pulp sci fi.
- The characters are utterly devoid of humanity. I don't even know who's who half the time, and there is no continuity throughout the series.
- There are no clever "ah ha" moments where the author has thought of something "profound" in relation to the scenario they've crafted. It's tropes and painful lurches from one thing to another.
I don't get it. I finished it and I couldn't believe all the people telling me how great it was.
- As you say, the plot is terrible. Kerouac had a more coherent narrative. What story there was strained believability even for pulp sci fi.
- The characters are utterly devoid of humanity. I don't even know who's who half the time, and there is no continuity throughout the series.
- There are no clever "ah ha" moments where the author has thought of something "profound" in relation to the scenario they've crafted. It's tropes and painful lurches from one thing to another.
I don't get it. I finished it and I couldn't believe all the people telling me how great it was.
> Attack of the Flat, Interchangable Characters
I mean, in fairness, this is basically traditional in sci-fi; characterisation that wasn't terrible was a bit of a novelty until quite recently.
I mean, in fairness, this is basically traditional in sci-fi; characterisation that wasn't terrible was a bit of a novelty until quite recently.
Have you read the sequels? I've read a lot of scifi both hard (Tau Zero, Blindsight, Diaspora, ...) and soft (Dune, Cat's Cradle, A fire upon the deep, ...) and whilst three body itself is middling, the second two books are masterpieces that make the overall series an absolute favourite of mine.
I read the TBP trilogy a few years back, and I can't stop thinking about The Dark Forest. That's one of the marks of a great book, IMO. I can't get it out of my head.
> Have you read the sequels?
No, I hated the first one.
No, I hated the first one.
There's no way to tackle such an array of crazy concepts without being highly speculative and incurring in inconsistencies.
I guess you like better smaller plots, the author can make more consistent and believable.
To me, the way Liu links one after another crazy physics stuff into the book story is masterful. I've read most SF classics and there's nothing like that. That in itself is an accolade.
Heck, several times I had to browse Wikipedia to see whether the next mad stuff had any scientific background, to find most had.
I guess you like better smaller plots, the author can make more consistent and believable.
To me, the way Liu links one after another crazy physics stuff into the book story is masterful. I've read most SF classics and there's nothing like that. That in itself is an accolade.
Heck, several times I had to browse Wikipedia to see whether the next mad stuff had any scientific background, to find most had.
I wouldn't call TBP "hard sf", its more like hard fantasy sf. It delivers on that pretty well - better than anything other series I have read. As for hackneyed and tropey, I can't think of another sf series that has this many original ideas presented in a way that's this compelling.
I liked the books. The sense of claustrophobia they conveyed was very well done, though I don't know if it was intentional. I also liked the exploration of China.
I don't really agree about the characters except for the ones of the third book. The third book feels a bit like a "history lesson through the eyes of this specific person".
I don't really value the "hardness" of SF though.
I don't really agree about the characters except for the ones of the third book. The third book feels a bit like a "history lesson through the eyes of this specific person".
I don't really value the "hardness" of SF though.
I'm going to vehemently agree here, the books were incredibly over rated and presented as some sort of ascendant Chinese modern POV about a potential future.
The entire book feels like a cobbling of Cixin's fanciful "what if?", vaguely scifi moments (like the oft-cited wire cutting ship) hastily glued together with the most unrelatable and frankly forgettable characters I've ever read.
Go grab some Neal Stephenson, Dan Simmons, or Philip Dick.
The entire book feels like a cobbling of Cixin's fanciful "what if?", vaguely scifi moments (like the oft-cited wire cutting ship) hastily glued together with the most unrelatable and frankly forgettable characters I've ever read.
Go grab some Neal Stephenson, Dan Simmons, or Philip Dick.
This wasn't a terribly character-focused book, personally I find that to be a plus (since it's not usually the case in fiction). It remained interesting throughout. Having read plenty of sci-fi, you won't find anything that isn't tropey in some fashion. It's genre-fiction for a reason.
Rationalizations for liking/disliking a book are for the birds, you either like it or you don't.
Rationalizations for liking/disliking a book are for the birds, you either like it or you don't.
> I'm convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before.
What do you consider real SF?
What do you consider real SF?
I enjoyed the first book, it was quite compelling. But the second and third really wandered off into a swamp. I wouldn't call it hard SF, but I don't really care about the designation, either.
I thought the characters in the first were well written. I lost track of who was who in the later ones.
I thought the characters in the first were well written. I lost track of who was who in the later ones.
The only character in the first book who exhibited any kind of personality was the gruff cop who swears, doesn't care if he's not allowed to smoke inside, and takes no shit from anyone. It's almost laughable how bad the author is at characterization.
> It's almost laughable how bad the author is at characterization.
Isn't that part of the charm of the book, though?
The characters are not as strong individually as they could be, but that fits the society they find themselves in.
Isn't that part of the charm of the book, though?
The characters are not as strong individually as they could be, but that fits the society they find themselves in.
No, I don't think there's an excuse for anyone writing this badly.
Fair enough. There is still the possibility that something got lost in translation.
It breaks British and US expectations of the genre. It's largely commenting on social aspects in China, I believe.
I can’t even remember the characters’ names yet I still liked the books (the first two anyway). Not sure flat characters mattered for the story, it was still cool.
I wanted to like it, but I couldn't get through it. 50% of the way in, and almost no Sci, and no Fi, and god if I heard "dehydratory" one more time I was going to lose it. The "game" as described in the book was utterly absurd.
It could be because of a cultural mismatch between me (American) and the author, but there was a certain something that I just couldn't get past.
It could be because of a cultural mismatch between me (American) and the author, but there was a certain something that I just couldn't get past.
Don't get too hung up on the "hard sf" label.
It effectively just means, "The science presented seemed plausible enough to me that it didn't distract or annoy me."
It's entirely personal since we all have different levels of fluency in science, and different levels of tolerance for the dissonance we feel when we read something we know is wrong.
It effectively just means, "The science presented seemed plausible enough to me that it didn't distract or annoy me."
It's entirely personal since we all have different levels of fluency in science, and different levels of tolerance for the dissonance we feel when we read something we know is wrong.
LOL, agreed. I stopped reading when the novel finally got to "entanglement" as the entire explanation of how these light-years-distant aliens can see everything that happens on Earth.
Can you recommend real sci-fi books?
Hold on, I didn't say it wasn't real sci-fi. I said it wasn't really "hard sf". As somebody else said, the definition of the genre is a little fuzzy. But in my experience the best hard SF doesn't handwave away inconsistencies, and uses our current understanding of science as a basis for the science in the story. Sophons are about as believable as dragons.
Stephen Baxter does a great job with hard sf, and much of Kim Stanley Robinson's work fits the bill.
Edit:
Oops I guess I did say that people who liked it hadn't read real SF. What I meant by that was that they were an exposed to a lot of the genre, because the "original" ideas in TBP I keep hearing people praise felt very familiar and tropey to me.
Stephen Baxter does a great job with hard sf, and much of Kim Stanley Robinson's work fits the bill.
Edit:
Oops I guess I did say that people who liked it hadn't read real SF. What I meant by that was that they were an exposed to a lot of the genre, because the "original" ideas in TBP I keep hearing people praise felt very familiar and tropey to me.
From the Baxter wiki segment on Xeelee Sequence:
"The central narrative is that of humanity rising and evolving to become the second most powerful race in the universe, next to the god-like Xeelee. Character development tends to be secondary to the depiction of advanced theories and ideas, such as the true nature of the Great Attractor, naked singularities and the great battle between baryonic and dark matter lifeforms."
Is this what you think is harder sci-fi than TBP, with better character development?
"The central narrative is that of humanity rising and evolving to become the second most powerful race in the universe, next to the god-like Xeelee. Character development tends to be secondary to the depiction of advanced theories and ideas, such as the true nature of the Great Attractor, naked singularities and the great battle between baryonic and dark matter lifeforms."
Is this what you think is harder sci-fi than TBP, with better character development?
I would guess that they were thinking more about things like Voyage (which is an alternate history, but very hard sci-fi).
Not hard sci fi but I loved John Brunners work, especially Jagged Orbit... seeing what he was talking about 40-50 years ago is incredible. As soon as I finished it I grabbed 3 more of his books, they weren't as good but all interesting, on par with the Culture series which is another one of my favorites
I really wanted to like Ministry for the Future but I felt like it was 200 pages longer than it needed to be. But interesting premises.
Not OP, but Greg Egan is mentioned somewhat often around here. Having read some of is books (Schild's Ladder, Permutation City, Diaspora) I can firmly recommend them, and would assign them the "hard sci-fi" tag.
You can also never go wrong with Arthur C. Clarke. Another favourite of mine, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" by Charles Sheffield.
You can also never go wrong with Arthur C. Clarke. Another favourite of mine, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" by Charles Sheffield.
Greg Egan is so good. The last few books didn't quite click with me, but Diaspora is a book I return every few years.
If you are reading this, Greg: I want to have your book!
If you are reading this, Greg: I want to have your book!
Permutation City is hard sci-fi? That has mind uploading and the dust theory of consciousness. Both of which are very speculative.
Greg Egan's diaspora is fantastic. I can't stop thinking about that book.
Besides those authors others have mentioned in sibling comments, give Alastair Reynolds a try. All of his work is hard sci-fi and very good.
Peter f Hamilton. The commonwealth series is incredible. I’ve read every single book of his and can’t find anything to complain about. IMHO, he’s up there with Alastair Reynolds, Greg Egan, Ian m. Banks…
Peter Watts; Blindsight, Echopraxia.
Be prepared for a wild ride.
Be prepared for a wild ride.
If I want hard sci-fi I can read Lorentzian Wormholes from Matt Visser or something like that. You can't explore such crazy ideas from TBP without going off the rails with speculation.
> - Attack of the Flat, Interchangable Characters
Yeah, I agree with you, but I don't know yet if this is a cultural thing with Chinese literature that can't be translated to English or simply that Liu can't write good characters.
> - Attack of the Flat, Interchangable Characters
Yeah, I agree with you, but I don't know yet if this is a cultural thing with Chinese literature that can't be translated to English or simply that Liu can't write good characters.
Not impressed by TBP, even though I enjoyed it with interest.
The 'Chinese Gorilla in the room coming out of the closet' phenomenon, the 'rising super power, we have to read it' effect, ya know.
'Oh look, its Chinese and shiny!'
Personally, I vastly prefer SF that collides with "reality", like Philip K. Dick's.
Personally, I vastly prefer SF that collides with "reality", like Philip K. Dick's.
I didn't really enjoy the three body problem. While the science part was nice, the characters were just plain out boring and forgettable. In those aspects it's very similar to The Foundation trilogy. Didn't enjoy that one either.
From the interview:
> But now, many of the most famous male stars here embrace their feminine qualities.
I guess that interview was done before the current cultural purge started.
From the interview:
> But now, many of the most famous male stars here embrace their feminine qualities.
I guess that interview was done before the current cultural purge started.
It was most uneven book I have ever read. It has extreme high and lows. Its like a roller-coaster ride.
Great ideas, plot-twists but characters and their arcs are sometimes boring sometimes bizarre.
Overall I would recommend it for his thought provoking ideas.
Great ideas, plot-twists but characters and their arcs are sometimes boring sometimes bizarre.
Overall I would recommend it for his thought provoking ideas.
I didn't enjoy it much either, and also thought the characters were lifeless. Beyond that, it so read "weirdly" - it really felt like a direct translation from Chinese.
Well, Three Body Problem was written for a Chinese audience, by a Chinese author, so I suspect the characters would be more relatable to a Chinese audience.
This 1000%. I am a white American, but I read the book while living in China and working with Chinese people every day. The portrayals are not flat, they are spot-on. Many Western readers just don't realize there are other ways for a person to be besides the Western way.
The Foundation series is a fascinating thought experiment stretched over an extremely barebones story with some very 1-dimensional characters.
The recent TV adaptation is pretty interesting, though. It's more of a loose adaptation and I think they've done a good job with adding more dimension to some of the characters.
The recent TV adaptation is pretty interesting, though. It's more of a loose adaptation and I think they've done a good job with adding more dimension to some of the characters.
That's a pretty current view of Chinese national policy, actually, so it doesn't come as a surprise at all. From what I recall, Liu takes a party line; I believe he defended their treatment of Uyghurs in recent interviews, for example.
Well, at the risk of sounding like a coward, I would toe the party line also if I lived in China and had any public presence.
The price of publicly opposing Xi Jinping's policies is disappearing for a year or so then making a scripted subdued apology on CCTV.
The price of publicly opposing Xi Jinping's policies is disappearing for a year or so then making a scripted subdued apology on CCTV.
You're not a coward, just a human being.
If you're a Chinese national, speaking out publicly against the CCP affects your family too. Even if you were out of reach of the CCP, there's nothing preventing them from disappearing your relatives.
If you're a Chinese national, speaking out publicly against the CCP affects your family too. Even if you were out of reach of the CCP, there's nothing preventing them from disappearing your relatives.
Coward here, too.
The perfidious thing is that even emigrating doesn't put you out of Xi Jinping's grasp. It's well documented how pressure is applied to vocal opponents of the new Leaders policies by going after their families in China.
The perfidious thing is that even emigrating doesn't put you out of Xi Jinping's grasp. It's well documented how pressure is applied to vocal opponents of the new Leaders policies by going after their families in China.
Yep, happens in New Zealand on the regular.
It's well known that all the local Chinese language newspapers toe the party line, and Chinese community groups (especially Skykiwi) are infiltrated by the CCP to a rather large extent, and if you're overly critical, well, hopefully you managed to get residence visas for 奶奶 / nǎi nai and 姥姥 / lǎo lao beforehand.
Also, expect to be ostracised by the emigrant Chinese community.
Oh, and even if you're not Chinese, but you're critical of China, well...
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/the-curious-case-of-the-burgle...
It's well known that all the local Chinese language newspapers toe the party line, and Chinese community groups (especially Skykiwi) are infiltrated by the CCP to a rather large extent, and if you're overly critical, well, hopefully you managed to get residence visas for 奶奶 / nǎi nai and 姥姥 / lǎo lao beforehand.
Also, expect to be ostracised by the emigrant Chinese community.
Oh, and even if you're not Chinese, but you're critical of China, well...
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/the-curious-case-of-the-burgle...
Didn't heard of any widespread anti-chinese progroms in Germany in early pandemic times, but I know a lot about German servility towards potential new masters.
And their markets, of course.
It's always a good idea to pull the racism card in Germany, especially against the truth.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3124849/ch...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-kids-book-pulped-a...
This example looks cute, but people can't even imagine what the propagandistic future of this cold war will look like.
It's always a good idea to pull the racism card in Germany, especially against the truth.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3124849/ch...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-kids-book-pulped-a...
This example looks cute, but people can't even imagine what the propagandistic future of this cold war will look like.
[deleted]
China’s reach extends into the Chinese emigrant communities in foreign lands. Some believe it’s because they are afraid of dissent organising abroad.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/08/the-chinese-communist-p...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/08/the-chinese-communist-p...
You have a good point, but based on his pre anti-corruption (political purge) writing, Liu Cixin agrees with the party line.
Yeah, the politics and concepts in Liu's writing is pretty typical of realist CCP/Chinese thinking. People will make excuses that everyone toes the party line if they're smart, which while true, also overlooks that common Chinese views (IMO) does substantively diverge from western views, especially in IR theory which influences overton window of policies etc. Liberalism is a luxury for Liu's generation.
Cyberpunk from the 1980s is notoriously ridiculous. And the geniuses at CDPro made it even worse by shifting the timeline 50 years to 2077...
Predicting the future is surprisingly hard.
Predicting the future is surprisingly hard.
I can't read the article because paywall, but Cixin Liu's three body problem trilogy had had a big impact on me. A big theme of the books is how we collectively process information and make decisions.
The world is threatened by an alien species and different people have different strategies for deference. They need to pick something that can't be predicted and defeated. Essentially earth needs a collective poker face while rapidly innovating a unique solution.
There is an implied parallel between human behavior and quantum particles. Our decisions are influenced by the information we have and signals from people and our surroundings. Quantum particle movement is influenced by the dynamic combination of forces on it. Both have probable outcomes from an observable state, but that observation influences the behavior of both.
I'm left thinking about the nature of reality. Some things are probable, and some seem random. When we see an option we like, we can nudge the situation towards it. When we don't like the options, we can take a walk or try something new and shake up the probability field we exist in to generate new options.
We can't predict the future because it depends on a series of interactions that have unpredictable outcomes. The three body problem explains how this is difficult to compute linearly. The best we can do is identify probabilities based on the information we have and our understanding of the model.
Quantum particles exist in a wave until they are observed in a specific point. When the wave function collapses, it goes from being probably here, to definitely there. I experience this in situations with dynamic outcomes. IE, I think this client is likely to sign today, but they may not. Sports plays are another good example. When we no longer have the ball in our frame of reference, it is probably somewhere in the direction we last saw it go. When it's in the goal, everyone sees it there.
It leads me to think about free will. We can go with the flow and give in to our influences. Or we can be decisive and do something else. The effects of our actions influence others in expected and unpredictable ways. I can have a great time being passive, just watching a movie or having a drink. I also enjoy being creative and taking risks. I get to experience the things other people contribute and share what I've found. I don't know what's out there beyond our understanding, but I've come to really appreciate the system we exist in.
The world is threatened by an alien species and different people have different strategies for deference. They need to pick something that can't be predicted and defeated. Essentially earth needs a collective poker face while rapidly innovating a unique solution.
There is an implied parallel between human behavior and quantum particles. Our decisions are influenced by the information we have and signals from people and our surroundings. Quantum particle movement is influenced by the dynamic combination of forces on it. Both have probable outcomes from an observable state, but that observation influences the behavior of both.
I'm left thinking about the nature of reality. Some things are probable, and some seem random. When we see an option we like, we can nudge the situation towards it. When we don't like the options, we can take a walk or try something new and shake up the probability field we exist in to generate new options.
We can't predict the future because it depends on a series of interactions that have unpredictable outcomes. The three body problem explains how this is difficult to compute linearly. The best we can do is identify probabilities based on the information we have and our understanding of the model.
Quantum particles exist in a wave until they are observed in a specific point. When the wave function collapses, it goes from being probably here, to definitely there. I experience this in situations with dynamic outcomes. IE, I think this client is likely to sign today, but they may not. Sports plays are another good example. When we no longer have the ball in our frame of reference, it is probably somewhere in the direction we last saw it go. When it's in the goal, everyone sees it there.
It leads me to think about free will. We can go with the flow and give in to our influences. Or we can be decisive and do something else. The effects of our actions influence others in expected and unpredictable ways. I can have a great time being passive, just watching a movie or having a drink. I also enjoy being creative and taking risks. I get to experience the things other people contribute and share what I've found. I don't know what's out there beyond our understanding, but I've come to really appreciate the system we exist in.
Have you done any research or reading into this system? I would like to read more. Thanks.
> I can't read the article because paywall
archive.is is your friend in these cases.
archive.is is your friend in these cases.
Mr. Liu is like any accomplished writer, they are more often misread than correctly appreciated.
Even himself cannot see how vastly different between his own ideal and the reality in his writing.
For example, LIU proclaimed Arthur Clark as his role model. But his writing just has little resemblance of Clark's detailed subtle and mind grabbing magic. Liu's works always are presenting a grand idea, but presenting details from normal guys perspective. That makes it more of a Asimov writter. But his ideas are often more abstract than Asimov's, and make them closer to what Frank Herbert did in dune, but again, Herbert's work had much better dialogue and subtlety than LIU's.
And of course, because of the vastly different cultural background, most of the details are lost to western readers, making them, although still fluent thanks to the nice translation, througly bland in all aspects other than the high ideas.
Even himself cannot see how vastly different between his own ideal and the reality in his writing.
For example, LIU proclaimed Arthur Clark as his role model. But his writing just has little resemblance of Clark's detailed subtle and mind grabbing magic. Liu's works always are presenting a grand idea, but presenting details from normal guys perspective. That makes it more of a Asimov writter. But his ideas are often more abstract than Asimov's, and make them closer to what Frank Herbert did in dune, but again, Herbert's work had much better dialogue and subtlety than LIU's.
And of course, because of the vastly different cultural background, most of the details are lost to western readers, making them, although still fluent thanks to the nice translation, througly bland in all aspects other than the high ideas.
I was expecting the "where it collides with reality" to be at least somewhat touch the nuclear war topic with 3 players.
Even the name of the trilogy is an allegory on the "three countries" — a historical novell any Chinese speaker will instantly recognise.
Now, we have similarly 3 nuclear superpower countries: Russia, USA, and China. The question he wanted to ask was "How will the three will act when it will come to press the big red button?"
Even the name of the trilogy is an allegory on the "three countries" — a historical novell any Chinese speaker will instantly recognise.
Now, we have similarly 3 nuclear superpower countries: Russia, USA, and China. The question he wanted to ask was "How will the three will act when it will come to press the big red button?"
Remember. Liu Cixin said the following about Chinese internment camps for Uighur:
“Would you rather that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist attacks? If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty,” Liu said, adding: “If you were to loosen up the country a bit, the consequences would be terrifying.”
I wonder if that’s also something where his vision collides with reality.
“Would you rather that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist attacks? If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty,” Liu said, adding: “If you were to loosen up the country a bit, the consequences would be terrifying.”
I wonder if that’s also something where his vision collides with reality.
The source of that quote, which adds a little explanation of his reasoning and thought process: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war...
This source makes that quote even more damning.
The same logic Liu uses here is the same argument slave societies used to justify themselves; that: "If China were to transform into a democracy, it would be hell on earth," is exactly the same logic that Slave Owners used to justify the permanent enslavement of millions of people.
These are some profoundly shameful words. I'm genuinely shocked that anyone on Hacker News would consider Liu a decent human being.
The same logic Liu uses here is the same argument slave societies used to justify themselves; that: "If China were to transform into a democracy, it would be hell on earth," is exactly the same logic that Slave Owners used to justify the permanent enslavement of millions of people.
These are some profoundly shameful words. I'm genuinely shocked that anyone on Hacker News would consider Liu a decent human being.
I agree with you that his perspective is flawed. I don't agree that this takes away gotta decency as a human being. We are all brainwashed to some extent, typically Chinese in a different way than Americans. Liu is simply demonstrating that by speaking his mind here. If anything, speaking it provides an opportunity to enlighten. It shouldn't be used to shame. Let him react poorly to your sharing of a different perspective before you denigrate his character.
This is just a fish not recognizing the water.
This is just a fish not recognizing the water.
I would suggest examining this question of 'what level of state intervention to create public safety and public order is just' without framing one's own perspective or the cultural norm of one's own place and time as the obvious 'correct' answer.
One from the future or some utopian free-love society could argue that 21st century western neoliberal capitalist states with police and criminal justice systems as they are and economic systems as they are are themselves permanent enslavement of millions of people.
And if you'd argue 'well, I believe in abolishing the police, ending the drug war, and UBI for all' I'm sure they could still find parts of your worldview that would be pretty much just enslavement. Maybe the idea of pet ownership, of forced education of what we currently call 'children', maybe some taboo around sex or love.
In which case, that future person could say that they're genuinely shocked that anyone on Hacker News could consider _you_ a decent human being.
My point is simply, there's no simple 'obvious' answer when it comes an ethical / moral / economic question as large as this. It's a question of trade-offs and optimizing for different goals / values / metrics.
One from the future or some utopian free-love society could argue that 21st century western neoliberal capitalist states with police and criminal justice systems as they are and economic systems as they are are themselves permanent enslavement of millions of people.
And if you'd argue 'well, I believe in abolishing the police, ending the drug war, and UBI for all' I'm sure they could still find parts of your worldview that would be pretty much just enslavement. Maybe the idea of pet ownership, of forced education of what we currently call 'children', maybe some taboo around sex or love.
In which case, that future person could say that they're genuinely shocked that anyone on Hacker News could consider _you_ a decent human being.
My point is simply, there's no simple 'obvious' answer when it comes an ethical / moral / economic question as large as this. It's a question of trade-offs and optimizing for different goals / values / metrics.
You're making an even more extreme argument than Liu is making: that there's no obvious answer to virtually any ethically questionable act.
This is such a perfect example of how delusional one's ideology can make them.
This is such a perfect example of how delusional one's ideology can make them.
I wouldn't rush to condemn someone entirely over a statement. Liu is far more than those few words, whether we agree with him or not. Without knowing him properly I don't see the benefit of condemnation.
He's certainly saying the right things to have the state-lobby put him in the awards lists. I cannot imagine how this tripe warrants any award at all, and a bagging a Hugo in this case is absurd.
China are definitely doing a lot better than most of the West when it comes to quelling terrorism by force.
I'm not sure why so few people are aware of this, but The Three Body Problem is just thinly veiled nationalist propaganda. All you have to do to see it is switch the alien antagonists with Western colonial powers.
I think that part is obvious, at least to anyone who can read between the lines, so maybe not to young children. Also in a world still trying to make nice with the CCP, nobody was going to talk much about that aspect anyway.
But the interesting thing that Liu accomplished with these books, is communicating how it feels to be faced with a technologically superior adversary intent on colonizing you. That’s not something most modern Americans and many others have ever experienced, but Liu made it universally relatable.
Worse, you have a means of leveling the playing field, rapidly catching up, but your leaders and society keep making poor decisions, preventing you from doing so - trusting the Trisolarians after Luo Ji became Swordholder, Luo Ji’s successor, banning light speed research, strategy for defending against a Dark Forest strike, etc.
That is probably what it felt like living under the CCP for a long time - Great Leap Forward (famine), Cultural Revolution (destruction of knowledge and science), etc. all unnecessary setbacks to China's advancement.
I suspect that’s partly why the books have captured so many people’s imaginations, it's an exploration of cultural systems and psychology as much of scifi.
But the interesting thing that Liu accomplished with these books, is communicating how it feels to be faced with a technologically superior adversary intent on colonizing you. That’s not something most modern Americans and many others have ever experienced, but Liu made it universally relatable.
Worse, you have a means of leveling the playing field, rapidly catching up, but your leaders and society keep making poor decisions, preventing you from doing so - trusting the Trisolarians after Luo Ji became Swordholder, Luo Ji’s successor, banning light speed research, strategy for defending against a Dark Forest strike, etc.
That is probably what it felt like living under the CCP for a long time - Great Leap Forward (famine), Cultural Revolution (destruction of knowledge and science), etc. all unnecessary setbacks to China's advancement.
I suspect that’s partly why the books have captured so many people’s imaginations, it's an exploration of cultural systems and psychology as much of scifi.
The next two books explore the Dark Forest Theory and the Fermi Paradox, and how humanity, including the Western powers, try to deal with this realization and the pending Trisolarian invasion. The third book goes way into the future beyond the Earth, and even has a chapter from a different alien POV. Read like legitimate science fiction to me with a different cultural context.
> The Three Body Problem is just thinly veiled nationalist propaganda. All you have to do to see it is switch the alien antagonists with Western colonial powers.
I'm usually quite alert to such things, and didn't see it. In part, it seemed like a way to talk about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution - which would seem to work against nationalism.
It's been a long time since I read it - can you give some broad examples?
I'm usually quite alert to such things, and didn't see it. In part, it seemed like a way to talk about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution - which would seem to work against nationalism.
It's been a long time since I read it - can you give some broad examples?
The story doesn't mirror history exactly, but it is an allegory to China's period of humiliation to the present day.
- The Doomsday Battle best matches the British Chinese Opium War
- The aliens are a seemingly advanced adversary that's in decline. Guess who's in decline right now?
- The Doomsday Battle best matches the British Chinese Opium War
- The aliens are a seemingly advanced adversary that's in decline. Guess who's in decline right now?
Thanks.
> Guess who's in decline right now?
That's current CCP propaganda. Because it's current, it wasn't being said when The Three Body Problem was written (first published 2006, afaik). Because it's propaganda, let's not cite it as fact.
> Guess who's in decline right now?
That's current CCP propaganda. Because it's current, it wasn't being said when The Three Body Problem was written (first published 2006, afaik). Because it's propaganda, let's not cite it as fact.
> That’s current CCP propaganda.
Most of what I wrote is my personal opinion since the author hasn’t openly admitted the metaphors. Many historians agree that the US has been in decline for decades now. It is not a new idea that the CCP just recently invented
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_decline
Most of what I wrote is my personal opinion since the author hasn’t openly admitted the metaphors. Many historians agree that the US has been in decline for decades now. It is not a new idea that the CCP just recently invented
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_decline
Huh? Did we read the same book? You know, the one where one of the main characters remembers her father being beat to death for refusing to recant his belief in Einstein's theory of relativity during a CCP struggle session? And that outcome is unambiguously framed as being unfair? That's supposed to be nationalist propaganda?
Like with Asimov's Foundation, the details don't matter as much as the larger story arc. The larger story arc is a mirror of the start of China's era of humiliation to its present day ascendancy as a superpower.
Perhaps. Although can't you superimpose almost any narrative onto any story? Listen, I definitely understand that Mr. Cixin is likely hinting at certain things symbolically in his stories. Clearly, the CCP requires no less of highly visible people in Chinese society. But I don't personally believe that there's some grand, singular purpose behind TBP that is hiding in plain view. Mr. Cixin, like the rest of us, is a multi-faceted human being that happens to be from a certain country.
No. Writers often use allegories and metaphors. It’s not exclusive to Western writers.
We’ll just agree to disagree
We’ll just agree to disagree
I really don't see what makes it inherently nationalist propaganda as opposed to just being anti-colonialist in general. What about the book makes you feel that it is trying to specifically proselytize a pro-CCP view of China's relationship to the world as opposed to an indictment of colonization as a whole?
> All you have to do to see it is switch the alien antagonists with Western colonial powers.
Isn't this basically saying "If you read the bad guys as the West, then the novel portrays the West as the bad guys"?
Isn't this basically saying "If you read the bad guys as the West, then the novel portrays the West as the bad guys"?
mdoms(1)
I enjoyed the Three body Problem. It reminded me of post war US science fiction novel. Simplistic aliens who are clearly our foes, heroic male leads, paper thin female characters and a bit of the confident can do swagger that comes with a booming economy.
It clearly isn't a character-based story.
But the aliens aren't clearly our foes, males and females do good and bad, and it explores some themes in relation to the "Great Leap Forward" and societal hierarchy that weren't so badly written...
I guess my own critique would be that the style maybe didn't survive the translation. To each his own :p
I guess my own critique would be that the style maybe didn't survive the translation. To each his own :p
The premise itself was good (especially in the second book) and I think the female characters were fine. I enjoyed the trilogy.
I think literally all truly catastrophic events in the book were caused by females acting like immature children. They don't really suffer any consequences of their actions - nothing comparable to the magnitude of their sins - others do.
It's an extremely antifeminist trilogy and clearly intended to be so. The alternative apt title would be 'How feminism destroys civilizations'.
I don't think there's a spoiler tag on HN, so I wrote it as vaguely as it can be without spoiling the story.
(please note I'm just describing how the book is, not making a statement about feminism)
It's an extremely antifeminist trilogy and clearly intended to be so. The alternative apt title would be 'How feminism destroys civilizations'.
I don't think there's a spoiler tag on HN, so I wrote it as vaguely as it can be without spoiling the story.
(please note I'm just describing how the book is, not making a statement about feminism)
I totally agree, it gets more weird as the trilogy advances as well. I really liked the basic premise, but at some point it becomes painful to read how in the far future all the men look like women and that's why humanity is weak.
I didn't get that impression. More of a "people are idiots", which felt weirdly realistic (in the same way as the portrayal of Julia Bliss Flaherty in Seveneves was essentially the sad but realistic image of a politician I come to expect). I guess you could see antifeminism in either, if you really go in looking for it - but that says more about reader's preconceptions than about the book itself.
Given the cultural context of the book and the author, "humans are fuckups" is a fully justified worldview, IMO (even though I'd prefer more "humans are awesome" literature; Liu Cixin's trilogy was really depressing).
Given the cultural context of the book and the author, "humans are fuckups" is a fully justified worldview, IMO (even though I'd prefer more "humans are awesome" literature; Liu Cixin's trilogy was really depressing).
In Seveneves, any negative portrayal of any particular woman was massively counterbalanced by the narrative of, ummm, the seven Eves. What female character in 3BP trilogy balances the disastrous actions of Ye Wenjie and Cheng Xin, the two most consequential female characters?
Granted, the disastrous action of Ye was somewhat offset by the inspiration she gave Luo Ji. (In the long run, she was still responsible for the deaths of billions.) But Cheng is something else entirely. The plot of a book is entirely up to its author. The time scale portrayed is many hundreds of years. It would have been possible to have conjured up a male character to take at least one of the several treacherous and/or civilization-destroying actions Cheng took. Maybe the character of Wade could have been that, but in retrospect even this clumsy caricature of an amoral reptilian white American CIA asshole always made the right choices with respect to the survival of humanity.
I really enjoyed the trilogy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have this specific flaw (and several others besides). Reading antifeminism is not the reader's fault; it's right there in the text.
Granted, the disastrous action of Ye was somewhat offset by the inspiration she gave Luo Ji. (In the long run, she was still responsible for the deaths of billions.) But Cheng is something else entirely. The plot of a book is entirely up to its author. The time scale portrayed is many hundreds of years. It would have been possible to have conjured up a male character to take at least one of the several treacherous and/or civilization-destroying actions Cheng took. Maybe the character of Wade could have been that, but in retrospect even this clumsy caricature of an amoral reptilian white American CIA asshole always made the right choices with respect to the survival of humanity.
I really enjoyed the trilogy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have this specific flaw (and several others besides). Reading antifeminism is not the reader's fault; it's right there in the text.
That hardly sounds like a recommendation.
Interesting and I agree, China is actually a lot like the US. Arrogant, self-righteous and dismissive. Not one iota of critical introspection.
I found it similar in style to the Foundation trilogy; trying to be very scientific but with very weak characters.
But the science was pure nonsense too. And not interesting nonsense. The videogame works by magic. The alien "protons" work by magic. The alien biology works by magic. It's not "what would the logical consequences be if the universe worked like this", it's just a bunch of stuff, tedious nonsense that means nothing.
I hate the book (and while the people who told me it got better fooled me once, I'm certainly not going to read the other two and let them fool me twice) and can't understand where all the praise comes from.
I hate the book (and while the people who told me it got better fooled me once, I'm certainly not going to read the other two and let them fool me twice) and can't understand where all the praise comes from.
In my opinion the first book is a mere introduction to what happens in the second one were really many opened questions and strategies take place.
Aye, Liu Cixin's biggest impact on speculative fiction thought was the Dark Forest's answer to Fermi's Paradox.
I'm not sure that it was that original. Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space had a pretty similar answer (everyone's staying quiet because Bad Things happen if you don't) and he acknowledges influence from Gregory Benford's stuff, say. The explicit game theory approach in the Three Body Problem was kind of new, I suppose.
The ideas are far from complex enough to require people to suffer through the first book, just to get the necessary context.
I think there's probably a decent short story to be extracted from the key idea in the second book.
I think there's probably a decent short story to be extracted from the key idea in the second book.
Is not a science book, what is the level of complexity needed for a book to be interesting?, In my opinion, just with the first book that is quite simple since the title gives you the main topic, made my mind wonder about many of the topics, like how another civilization adapts to the hardships of their environment, the naivety of humanity on contacting aliens, the cult behaviour that comes from it.
At no point it felt for me like a waste of time, I agree most of the characters are bland, but the questions opened in the book are all societal, not about the individuals themselves.
At no point it felt for me like a waste of time, I agree most of the characters are bland, but the questions opened in the book are all societal, not about the individuals themselves.
The FTL communication the aliens used in the first book left a really sour taste in my mouth, especially because the plot could easily have worked without it
> can't understand where all the praise comes from.
Probably from the other two. I've read them all one after the other, so when I talk about 3BP, I have trouble separating the book from the larger trilogy.
> The videogame works by magic.
What was magical about it? I don't remember anything especially weird here.
> The alien "protons" work by magic.
This was explained in detail (modulo sci-fi magic in the explanation), but I'm not sure if in 3BP or in Dark Forest. Other major tech advantages of the aliens were also explained in the latter books.
Probably from the other two. I've read them all one after the other, so when I talk about 3BP, I have trouble separating the book from the larger trilogy.
> The videogame works by magic.
What was magical about it? I don't remember anything especially weird here.
> The alien "protons" work by magic.
This was explained in detail (modulo sci-fi magic in the explanation), but I'm not sure if in 3BP or in Dark Forest. Other major tech advantages of the aliens were also explained in the latter books.
> What was magical about it? I don't remember anything especially weird here.
IIRC the general tech level was essentially the recent past, but the technology to support this full-body VR game existed with no other consequences. And I think there was also an implication that it was multiplayer with another star system? (again, through unexplained technology with no other consequences).
IIRC the general tech level was essentially the recent past, but the technology to support this full-body VR game existed with no other consequences. And I think there was also an implication that it was multiplayer with another star system? (again, through unexplained technology with no other consequences).
As far as I remember (might be wrong, I don't have the book handy), the game was written by humans from the cult that formed around the first, lightspeed-bound, communication with aliens, and it was essentially "artist's impression" of the Trisolarians. The game was, IIRC, a recruiting tool for the cult.
The videogame parts were tedious (I can't see the point of describing in detail the appearance and behavior of virtual worlds, since they can be programmed to behave in arbitrary ways that are most likely meaningless) - but the second book is amazing, IMHO.
Interesting to see you mentioning Foundation trilogy as an analogue, and in context of characters, with what I understand as an implication that in both cases, "weak characters" were their negative sides. I agree with comparison to Foundation, in that both books were not about characters at all, and that was a feature, not a bug.
With Foundation in particular, I'm perplexed when I see it being criticized for lack of character depth, given that the books literally beat the reader over their head with multiple levels of reminders that the books are about large forces shaping societies, forces infinitely greater than individuals, and the only special thing about particular characters is that they happened to be at the right place and time when large changes happened[0].
--
[0] - The Mule aside, but (rot13 - spoilers from "Second Foundation") juvyr gur Zhyr qvq chfu uvfgbel va na hacerqvpgnoyr qverpgvba ol iveghr bs uvf vaqvivqhny fcrpvnyarff, nsgre uvf qrngu, tnynpgvp pvivyvmngvbaf erghearq gb gurve abezny ribyhgvba. Rira gur Frpbaq Sbhaqngvba qvqa'g vasyhrapr guvatf zhpu gb guvf cbvag, naq qvqa'g vasyhrapr gurz zhpu cnfg gung cbvag.
With Foundation in particular, I'm perplexed when I see it being criticized for lack of character depth, given that the books literally beat the reader over their head with multiple levels of reminders that the books are about large forces shaping societies, forces infinitely greater than individuals, and the only special thing about particular characters is that they happened to be at the right place and time when large changes happened[0].
--
[0] - The Mule aside, but (rot13 - spoilers from "Second Foundation") juvyr gur Zhyr qvq chfu uvfgbel va na hacerqvpgnoyr qverpgvba ol iveghr bs uvf vaqvivqhny fcrpvnyarff, nsgre uvf qrngu, tnynpgvp pvivyvmngvbaf erghearq gb gurve abezny ribyhgvba. Rira gur Frpbaq Sbhaqngvba qvqa'g vasyhrapr guvatf zhpu gb guvf cbvag, naq qvqa'g vasyhrapr gurz zhpu cnfg gung cbvag.
Upon review, Asimov had criticism for his plotting: as quoted on geek.com:
In the author’s note for Foundation’s Edge, he says that, upon re-reading his earlier work, “I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No action. No physical suspense… each book in the trilogy had at least two stories and lacked unity.”
In the author’s note for Foundation’s Edge, he says that, upon re-reading his earlier work, “I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No action. No physical suspense… each book in the trilogy had at least two stories and lacked unity.”
That's true. I've seen this quote before. But it's fair - authors are people too, their views and styles evolve. It's worth remembering that Foundation's Edge was published 30 years after the trilogy.
But it's also true that author's opinions after the fact have limited bearing on the work. People like me, who like the Trilogy as they read it, like it for what it is.
I didn't mention Foundation's Edge because, beyond being a bit more action and suspense-packed, it departs a bit from the "no special individuals" rule. Incidentally, it's not the protagonist that's special in my opinion. Spoilers (rot13) follow:
Juvyr gur punenpgref va gur obbx ercrngrqyl zragvba Tbyna Gerivmr'f fcrpvny tvsgf, vg'f erirnyrq gung ur'f bayl fcrpvny va gur Naguebcvp Cevapvcyr'f frafr: ur jnf gur crefba gung unccrarq gb or gur orfg nybat zrgevpf Tnvn jnf vagrerfgrq va, fb ur tbg envyebnqrq vagb orvat n cvibgny punenpgre. Vg'f Tnvn gung'f gur fcrpvny bar, orpnhfr vg'f orra qbvat gur fryrpgvat.
But it's also true that author's opinions after the fact have limited bearing on the work. People like me, who like the Trilogy as they read it, like it for what it is.
I didn't mention Foundation's Edge because, beyond being a bit more action and suspense-packed, it departs a bit from the "no special individuals" rule. Incidentally, it's not the protagonist that's special in my opinion. Spoilers (rot13) follow:
Juvyr gur punenpgref va gur obbx ercrngrqyl zragvba Tbyna Gerivmr'f fcrpvny tvsgf, vg'f erirnyrq gung ur'f bayl fcrpvny va gur Naguebcvp Cevapvcyr'f frafr: ur jnf gur crefba gung unccrarq gb or gur orfg nybat zrgevpf Tnvn jnf vagrerfgrq va, fb ur tbg envyebnqrq vagb orvat n cvibgny punenpgre. Vg'f Tnvn gung'f gur fcrpvny bar, orpnhfr vg'f orra qbvat gur fryrpgvat.
I think what it all really comes down to is the simple fact that Asimov is not a very good writer. I think he would have been among the first to admit it. He had big ideas and wrote well enough to keep the reader engaged so that he could show them off, but that's about it.
Except for The God's Themselves, which feels like he was channeling a better writer.
Except for The God's Themselves, which feels like he was channeling a better writer.
IIRC he was fairly explicit in the author's note for that one that he was writing something out of his comfort zone.
I never thought I would ever stumble upon something encoded with rot13.
It shows up on HN every now and then (though I wouldn't say it's very common). I use it when discussing potential spoilers for books/shows, because HN doesn't have a "spoiler tag".
Before spoiler tags were a thing that BBs and forums implemented ROT13 was actually a fairly common way to avoid spoiling things.
I appreciate this practice. Here's a useful extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rot13/bahejodllcom...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rot13/bahejodllcom...
[deleted]
What in the...? Those are the sorts of things that make you enjoy a novel? Jesus...
[SPOILERS]
Also, all good guys were chinese, and later all characters were chinese. The only people who survived it all were... and so on. 1 westerner there was the bad guy, and executed.
Hollywood has similar issue with US-centric approach btw, not sure how visible from within, but from outside its a long running joke.
Also, all good guys were chinese, and later all characters were chinese. The only people who survived it all were... and so on. 1 westerner there was the bad guy, and executed.
Hollywood has similar issue with US-centric approach btw, not sure how visible from within, but from outside its a long running joke.
It’s a Chinese book, written for a Chinese audience. I don’t know what you expected?
Wade in the third book is a very important US character.
And in Clive Cussler's books, all the good guys were Americans! And all the shifty Europeans/Arabs/Russsians died!
smhost(4)
We have seen over the last decades a great reduction in "exponential" dangerous technologie, that gets handed out to the people. We will not have flying cars with little fusion bombs at there hearts. We will not have road cars with plutonium rods. We will not have software centralization, after Amazon hosting gets its first machine jumping virus.
It turns out that humanity can be limited by policy and moderated by social engineering technology. So im now careful optimistic about these things. We will not perish because we handed weapons of doom to one of the uncamped billions.
It turns out that humanity can be limited by policy and moderated by social engineering technology. So im now careful optimistic about these things. We will not perish because we handed weapons of doom to one of the uncamped billions.