Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The Three Body Problem”

Re:Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The ... by boulos on Sunday February 07, 2021 @08:32PM (#26059868)

Thanks!

I don't think the political correctness or other changes would have really bothered me, it was much more about structure. IIRC, there were some "chapters" in Dark Forest that were... over an hour?

In Chinese, does the third book also go back to a more ... narrative style? That is, did you consider the first and third books to be "similar in style" but Dark Forest to stand out?

Thanks again!

P.S. I struggled to decide between saying "Chinese" or Mandarin. I had thought there were also "word/regional differences" between Mandarin and Cantonese, not just pronunciation. Good to know that Chinese would have been correct!

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Re:Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The ... by Elaine-H on Sunday February 07, 2021 @10:40PM (#26060521)

Yes, I also think Dark Forest's structure is quite "different", but it didn't bother me: I read the entire book in one day so lengthy chapters didn't matter.

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Re:Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The ... by boulos on Monday February 08, 2021 @01:33AM (#26061441)

Thanks again! I’ll consider this settled: people prefer Ken Liu, but that’s not why the second book was different :).

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Re:Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The ... by Normal_gaussian on Monday February 08, 2021 @03:51AM (#26062164)

Do you structure your reading time in terms of chapters? Or perhaps did you feel that single plot points were dragged out?

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Re:Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The ... by boulos on Monday February 08, 2021 @11:28AM (#26066590)

A bit of both.

I’ll often read a bit before going to bed, so super long chapters (e.g., greater than an hour?) mean I’m just choosing somewhere “less intentional” to stop.

I would also say that I recall (it’s been a while!) a lot of extraneous detail in some passages, that made me think “ugh, I kind of wish I could skip this, but if there’s a hidden plot element in here I shouldn’t”.

The extraneous detail was probably more frustrating than “long chapters”, but I find that the two go together and usually suggest a missed opportunity for editing.

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