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

Mar 22, 2016 Rand rated it really liked it

Shelves: borrowed, halfred, sir-real-is-um, novel, dystopia, ecosophy, science, china, trifecta, aha

(People can see destruction, but most of them cannot see redemption.)

In my initial review I stated that this book reminded me of Marakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World, due to dual world building. But that is a superficial observation, and the total content of that review was before I paid the local library the fines for overdue materials. 2016 was a good year for me to accrue library fines.

Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer is one of the most important medicinal plants in Northeast Ch

(People can see destruction, but most of them cannot see redemption.)

In my initial review I stated that this book reminded me of Marakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World, due to dual world building. But that is a superficial observation, and the total content of that review was before I paid the local library the fines for overdue materials. 2016 was a good year for me to accrue library fines.

Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer is one of the most important medicinal plants in Northeast China, and ginsenosides are the main active ingredients found in medicinal ginseng. The biosynthesis of ginsenosides is regulated by environmental factors and the expression of key enzyme genes. Therefore, in this experiment, ginseng in the leaf opened stage, the green fruit stage, the red fruit stage, and the root growth stage was used as the test material, and nine individual ginsenosides and total saponins (the sum of the individual saponins) were detected by HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography). There was a trend of synergistic increase and decrease, and saponin accumulation and transfer in different tissues. The expression of key enzyme genes in nine synthetic pathways was detected by real-time PCR, and the correlation between saponin content, gene expression, and ecological factors was analyzed. Correlation analysis showed that in root tissue, PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) and soil water potential had a greater impact on ginsenoside accumulation, while in leaf tissue, temperature and relative humidity had a greater impact on ginsenoside accumulation. The results provide a theoretical basis for elucidating the relationship between ecological factors and genetic factors and their impact on the quality of medicinal materials. The results also have guiding significance for realizing the quality of medicinal materials.

—via The Effects of Environmental Factors on Ginsenoside Biosynthetic Enzyme Gene Expression and Saponin Abundance by Tao Zhang, Mei Han,* Limin Yang,* Zhongming Han, Lin Cheng, Zhuo Sun, and Linlin Yang

(view spoiler) ...more

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Nov 21, 2014 Veeral rated it liked it

Shelves: alien-invasion, hard-science-fiction, first-contact, read-in-2015

Good concept but weak cardboard cut-out characters. Ultimately a good novel but not as good as most people are claiming it to be.

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Nov 01, 2018 John rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook

Hard science fiction, in my opinion, should be like the fun teacher that everybody in school loves -- the one that teaches class by coming in with costumes and props. Liu Cixin gets this. The Three-Body Problem does a great job of presenting scientific concepts in fun ways -- especially towards the end when things start getting really wacky. I suppose the virtual reality game might have gotten a little tedious, but luckily that aspect was phased out in the last 100 pages once all the cards were ...more

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

Shelves: asia, 1-kindle, space

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

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Nov 01, 2024 Tracy rated it it was ok

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

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Jan 26, 2020 Magdelanye rated it liked it

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

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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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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Jun 12, 2022 Alex Buckley rated it really liked it

great book for those that love 'hard science fiction' full of dense ideas with the background of the cultural revolution. funnily enough reading it now has lot of crossover to the 'undermining of science" we are currently seeing 🤓

Yes i know it took me long enough to get here ...more

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