I was not a huge fan of the first book either but saw the potential. Second book, The Dark Forest, is the greatest of the three (IMO anyway). Third book is also amazing. Definitely 'endure' reading through the first one and then you'll be rewarded with 2nd and 3rd.

spoilers

The result of granting a nerd all the resources of the Earth at his disposal. He promptly uses it to find the perfect waifu and seduces her in his idyllic European villa.

That's not Sci-Fi; That's a power fantasy as old as time.

The game-theoretic aspects of the book, on the other hand, and the final comeback of aforementioned nerd, are something I like to point out when summarizing this book.

I'm not sure if Liu Cixin is emblematic of Chinese science fiction, but the services of a more aggressive editor seem to be missing. Imho, it would have vastly improved the series, and possibly cut it down to a single volume.

And then of course everybody does operate under those principles and feel compelled to act irrationally as a result.

Because resources are limited the only solution is to blow up almost all of the resources to make sure nobody else gets them. The idea that there might be natural limits (even basic thermodynamic ones) to growth apparently never occurs to the author. It's kind of shocking how casual some unnamed alien species is about literally destroying the universe.

I still read some of them from time to time, but theyre all basically the same.

Interesting to see how that translates to actual hard-copy books as well.

Yes, if by "old" you mean "dumb".

I couldn't finish this insufferably cringe-worthy book. Sorry.

I didn't entirely have this problem (though it was more difficult), but I had a problem with some of the plot points. Namely, (minor spoiler) scientists killing themselves when science did something they couldn't explain. I just couldn't buy that people who dedicate their lives to discovery would do that. I mean, the double slit experiment didn't cause such problems. It was just too unbelievable to me.

This was more of "science turned into magic", experiments started to produce arbitrary nonsense, though I don't remember if they realized the cause at the time. That said, I found it weak and weird too; I'd expect those scientists to try much harder before giving up.

That would normally stimulate scientists into trying to find the pattern of "arbitrary". If it's completely random, that's a discovery in itself. If it has a pattern, then the pattern becomes a subject of experiments and speculative models, even if "weird". It's roughly comparable to the observer seemingly affecting the results of quantum experiments.

Scientists rarely quit or get bored just because they have no clear-cut explanation. Most of them like puzzles, even tricky ones more.

Maybe the culture in China is different and perhaps filters out the genuinely curious for those who produce definitive results? I'm only asking, not claiming.

I couldn't understand the appeal or relate to them at all. That said, I'm glad they exist, it's refreshing after so much copy-cat blandness in today's publishing.

Meanwhile, I'm really bummed that the last book of the Expanse got delayed 4 months. I don't know how they're going to wrap up the story line in only one more book.

Mind, I'm getting rather jaded with many series and trilogies, though I also want to see how the Expanse finishes up. A trilogy seems to have become the current expectation (from publishers perhaps?) where too often just a book or two would fit the story much better.

Slow intros are dangerous for reader retention.

That said, I thought the story was fantastic, huge, and believable through details. I loved the Cultural Revolution backdrop in the first book, the second book was more action packed than the first.

the book isn't a dramatic book - it doesn't follow a hero's journey or the typical greek style storytelling trope. It's more like a description of what happened. But i like that - the sci-fi elements described a pretty fantastical, concepts are fresh and original (however you can argue that it has been done before?!).

I feel that the book is bifurcated amongst readers who read for literary quality vs conceptual quality.

Yup. I'm strongly in the latter camp (as I'm fond of saying, if I wanted to read character development, I'd pick up literally any other genre - everything nowadays is about people and their emotional dramas; I like my sci-fi when it's about ideas). The whole Trilogy is pretty dense in concepts, including some insanely beautiful ideas, while also not venturing too far outside established science. I liked in particular how thinking of various... factions (to not spoiler too much) is built around lack of FTL in the books' universe.

I don’t need my sci-fi to be literature, but I need the story to move every ten or twenty pages, or characters I care about. Character development is an alternative to plot development, basically, but to go along side your interesting science bits, you have to give me at least one of:

A) short

B) characters who I care at least slightly about

C) a plot that moves faster than your average snail

The Three Body Problem had none of the above. Although the last 40 or so pages was at least a perfectly good short story in its own right.

EDIT:

> I can look down my nose at David Weber’s wooden and cringeworthy characters and dialog

"Truer words have never been spoken." ;).

I mostly skip the soldier narratives after the first few books taught me they were all going to become either red-shirts or over the top permanent sycophants within 10 pages.

But man, Safehold has far and away the best set up for “what if I knew everything about the history of militaries and military technology and wanted to conquer the world circa 1200 A.D. with it” I’ve ever seen. So satisfying ;)

I’ve actually recommended people who can’t abide military sci-fi or David Weber in general just read the first 50 pages of the first book.

Surprisingly many of these people go on to read the whole series.

I've never been able to explain as succinctly how I can enjoy both Asimov and Bacigalupi.

The Asimovian characters-as-plot-revealers isn't for everyone, but he does an entrancing job.

https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/the-dark-forest-theory...

For example?

I also took issue with the implicit assumption that two civilizations cooperating would develop no faster than a single civilization. Or, another way, that all civilizations would climb the same technology ladder the same way.

On Earth, historical competition between nation-states has suggested a very different reality.

I don't remember that assumption; I felt the implicit assumption was that development of any civilization can experience unpredictable rapid acceleration, so even if two civilizations cooperated, it doesn't help them much against others out there.

> Or, another way, that all civilizations would climb the same technology ladder the same way.

That I think was explicitly denied in the basic axioms of Dark Forest theory - again, civilization's technological level can jump unpredictably.

> historical competition between nation-states has suggested a very different reality

The core axiom of Dark Forest theory is that lack of FTL makes communication delays be of the same length as periods of possible technological leap-aheads, which makes cooperation unlikely and contact too dangerous. On the scale of our planet, that never applied. Communications between civilizations that knew about each other were on the order of months, and technological developments tended to make that delay shorter.

Dark Forest translated to Earth would be as if I noticed your sail ships, sent you a hello from my steam civilization, only to get preemptively hit by an ICBM you've managed to build in 200 years it took for my message to reach you.

--

Maybe there was more historical politics in this book than I noticed; I'm not well versed on history of China, and thus lack necessary context. I'd love to learn more, if that is so.

From memory, the basic tenant of dark forest theory was 'In the time it takes to communicate, you could become more powerful than me.'

My point is that if two+ interacting (I don't believe cooperation is strictly necessary) civilizations make technological progress at an exponentially faster rate than a single civilization, then they are highly unlikely to be outclassed.

Furthermore, this provides a disincentive (where 3BP notes none) to wipe out other civilizations, as you're giving up their potential benefits.

> history of China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China#Qing_dynasty_...

tl;dr - late-Qing+ China (like the Muslim world) goes from a thriving, scientifically leading, expansionist trading society to an isolationist stagnant one, then suffers 200 years of being taken advantage of by foreign powers.

Culminating in both the British and Japanese invading with radically advanced military hardware and imposing their will.

It's hard not to see parallels, but a bit terrifying that the 3BP take-away is 'you should launch a first strike on your enemies the second you can obliterate them without retribution.'

I think the cultural differences wouldn't have been as apparent if they had anglicized names though, I had a hard time tracking the characters, was assigning some of the thoughts to the wrong people and things like that. I struggle with games set in Asia like Shogun Total War for the same reason.

From reading only a few Chinese/Asian books I think the problem is that each culture has its own style of writing fiction and Chinese books tend to have a slower pace and more introspection. You also get that in some English language fiction, but not so much in sci-fi, so the average English culture sci-fi reader is going to going to get frustrated with Chinese language sci.fi.

I felt the translator of the first book was better by a lot.

I have a guess that's why the Warcraft movie did so well in China. The characters are so thin, and life is cheap in that film.