From the Bookshelf of On Paths Unknown…

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

Liu Cixin,

Ken Liu (Translator)

Start date: June 29, 2022

Discussion leader: Derek

Why we're reading this: It's a far-from-classic alien invasion story—after all, the aliens in question won't be here for 450 year…more
[close] It's a far-from-classic alien invasion story—after all, the aliens in question won't be here for 450 years—with a lot of hard mathematics & physics thrown in (the math is all virtual: be not afraid!).

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What Members Thought

Nov 12, 2017 Jonfaith added it

Shelves: speculativelyspeaking, sino-sized

2024 Update: I have watched most of various treatments of this work and my opinion stands. I still have no inclination to continue the trilogy.

I'm a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass.

So says one of the undeveloped characters. He's hard-boiled like that. He's all Lemmy Constantine, though this dump isn't Alphaville--it's a protracted space invasion story, one with environmentalists as Fifth Columnists and an Ender's Game at it ...more

25 likes · Like · see review

Sep 19, 2014 Kamakana rated it really liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction, pomo, hugo-novels, translation, aa-asialit, multivolume-lit, zz2007, xlong-over-400, aa-chinalit, conceptual-fiction

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

180115: do you like astrophysics? quantum physics? physics?- science at all? or maybe just ‘scientism’ as philosophy? this last being the unquestioned axiom the world is the universe and science is the way to understand all...? if you answer no, if you do not enjoy reading speculative scientific ideas in these disciplines, if ideas in these realms of thought are sleep-inducing, then this book is definitely not for you. i give it ...more

13 likes · Like · see review

Dec 02, 2018 [Name Redacted] rated it it was ok

Shelves: philosophy, disappointing, historical-fiction, sci-fi, politics, cliched, thanksgiving2018, zhongguo

Disappointing...

This book really does feel like a classic work of Clarke-ian sci-fi...but that isn't a compliment. The characters are paper-thin, barely-there, interchangeable -- mere justifications for the plot -- and the protagonist himself is more a blank witness after his introductory crisis than any sort of participant. He's a Chinese version of Raymond Burr in the American cut of "Godzilla," only less meaningful.

I thought this was going to be about aliens, then it became a story about scie ...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Jul 12, 2017 Chinook rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: space, asia, 1-kindle

I read this for book club, which was probably helpful at motivating me to get through the chunks of science where the author seems to have forgotten to keep the plot moving along. At the beginning we all shared if we had finished the book and if we had liked it. There were a lot of non-finishers and a lot of "maybe I liked it?"

And I can see that. I really liked the Cultural Revolution parts, though Ye seemed a bit flat as a character - especially regarding the bit where her husband died. The aft ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 01, 2024 Tracy rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 05, 2015 Emma rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015, fiction, war, sci-fi_speculative, communism_socialism, anarchists_revolutionaries, globalisation, asia_china, epic, give-as-gifts

I enjoyed this but it's a bit 'hard' SF for me. About halfway through it gets technical and there's no further character development. The translation doesn't have much distinction, stylistically. Still, it's a pretty wild tale, and ambitious. I'll probably read the next two parts. ...more

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Jan 26, 2020 Magdelanye rated it liked it

Shelves: creative-process, culture-conflict, social-commentary, dystopia, sci-fi, alternate-reality

It's not possible to get the truth by only listening to one side. p168

Which is why many of us read, and don't stop when the going gets uncomfortable.

The Three-Body Problem is a real puzzle that has only recently been apparently solved.

'The three-body problem is simple to describe, but very difficult to solve. It involves calculating where three bodies (such as the sun, moon and Earth) will all be at a certain point in time, given their initial starting positions along with their mass, current di
It's not possible to get the truth by only listening to one side. p168

Which is why many of us read, and don't stop when the going gets uncomfortable.

The Three-Body Problem is a real puzzle that has only recently been apparently solved.

'The three-body problem is simple to describe, but very difficult to solve. It involves calculating where three bodies (such as the sun, moon and Earth) will all be at a certain point in time, given their initial starting positions along with their mass, current direction and how fast they are moving. Early navigators were the first to try to solve three-body problems—it helped them to steer ships across large bodies of water such as the Atlantic Ocean. But such efforts were prone to errors due to the chaotic ways that gravity exerts its influence on all three bodies when they interact. Isaac Newton came up with some equations that involved describing the vector positions of the three bodies, assuming each had a certain mass. Solving the equations involved a long series of iterations, which is why the method was not used until computers were invented. But even now, with all the might and power of modern computers, the process is still long and laborious."
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-11-t...

But Cixin Lui is interested in the ramifications as well as the theory and so he calls into question the goals and aims of such research, postulating an extra-terrestrial society that views our progress as negligible and humanity as bugs. Wisely, the editors have provided a list of the cast of characters which allowed this floundering reader to keep track of what was going on. I am pretty sure I will never understand the physics but it is also difficult to understand the kind of megalomania that CL deconstructs. The elastic time line was another factor that kept me guessing.

The insanity of the human race had reached its historical zenith. p270

Is our only hope of making amends for the damage done to press destroy and start gain?
I should hope not.

There are two more volumes in this trilogy and I guess that I will have to read them to find out where the pessimistic trail laid out in this one leads.

Fuck the countdown. You're first priority right now is to make sure you can stand straight and not collapse in a heap. p134 ...more

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Jan 22, 2017 Jlawrence rated it really liked it

Shelves: sword-and-laser

Hard sci-fi that intertwines the bloody history of China's Cultural Revolution with a tale of modern- day Chinese physicists undergoing a crisis of faith when the laws of physics seem to be unraveling, a crisis involving a sinister force that I can't say much about without getting spoilery.

The narrative is sometimes uneven, and in true hard science-fiction form, characterization (with a few exceptions) takes a back seat to the scientific premises being worked through, but those ideas are fascina ...more

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Aug 24, 2015 Stephen Bruce rated it really liked it

Shelves: 21st-century, science-fiction, china

A refreshing science fiction novel, both because of the historical setting (the Chinese Cultural Revolution and its aftermath) and the hard science, which seemed to this layman to be well-grounded (view spoiler). Some of the characters were not very well developed, but I'm fine with that if the ideas are provocative, as they were in this case. ...more

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