From the Bookshelf of Niners (io9)…

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

Liu Cixin,

Ken Liu (Translator)

Start date: November 25, 2014

Finish date: January 6, 2015

Discussion: Books

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What Members Thought

Jan 13, 2017 Tobias Langhoff rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, sffbc-challenge-2016

A really refreshing take on science fiction and first contact scenarios, with a cultural backdrop that was very unfamiliar and almost as alien as the actual alien society in the story. The cultural revolution sets the stage for the inception of an interesting antagonist that changes the fate of the human race. Like how communists dampened science during the cultural revolution, in the present day a global conspiracy is hampering science and causing scientists to die mysteriously or commit suicid A really refreshing take on science fiction and first contact scenarios, with a cultural backdrop that was very unfamiliar and almost as alien as the actual alien society in the story. The cultural revolution sets the stage for the inception of an interesting antagonist that changes the fate of the human race. Like how communists dampened science during the cultural revolution, in the present day a global conspiracy is hampering science and causing scientists to die mysteriously or commit suicide. We follow a family through the revolution, the cold war and to the present day, with a gallery of characters that made me grateful for Kindle’s X-Ray feature.

Apart from the Chinese history and criticism of the cultural revolution (which makes me wonder how the book was published without incident), there are a lot of interesting sci-fi concepts in this book: SETI and first contact, virtual reality, quantum mechanics, astrophysics (like the eponymous three-body problem of orbital mechanics), alien culture and physiology (although we only learn bits and pieces in this first novel in the trilogy), nanotechnology, and much more.

The first half of the book I couldn’t really decide whether or not I liked it. Stuff happened that I didn’t see how the author would resolve. A lot of fantastical stuff occurred that seemed like magic out of a fantasy novel. The protagonist experiences unexplainable and supernatural “miracles”, for lack of a better word, that challenge his world view.

These parts reminded me of the Arthur C. Clarke quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, because everything that occurs is ultimately “explained” with quantum mechanics (and perhaps a few info-dumps too many) around the half-way point. The book is actually reasonably hard sci-fi although some things are too crazy to actually be possible.

By the end of the book, the only criticism I really had left was that the translations of dialogue seemed a little stiff, or else literal, verbatim translations of the Chinese dialogue that didn’t really sound natural in English – but in the translator’s end notes, he defended that as a conscious way to retain the way culture impacts how people speak to each other – a bit like a weak Whorfian concept.

Here is a fan-made soundtrack for the book: https://site.douban.com/TBOST/room/13... ...more

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Oct 13, 2015 Craig Tyler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Average between the 4 star concepts (overall plot device, Chinese 20th Century history and science all done fairly well) and 2 star execution. The narrative construction was *rough*. I realize much of this is due to translation and Chinese fiction writing standards (as noted in the Afterword by the translator) but at the end of the day it did not meet my expectations about how natural the characters should come off in their actions, internal monologues and dialogue with other characters. Charact ...more

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Apr 17, 2015 Sue added it

This started slow but man, what a nice build of tension and a chilling conclusion. Can't wait to read the rest of the series! ...more

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Sep 29, 2015 Nemo rated it really liked it

This is a good SF book, however having read The Goblin Emperor, which was inched for the Hugo this year by The Three-Body Problem, I can't agree. While it has some excellent SF elements, and is set in an amazing backdrop of China, it breaks the suspension of disbelief for me a few more times than I can digest in a book.

I liked reading it, and I probably would do a re-read before the sequels and understand it better, but this isn't as good as The Goblin Emperor, which I adored. ...more

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Jan 22, 2017 Jonathan Cassie rated it it was amazing

Epic sort of doesn't even capture what this book's ambitions are. Not only does the book tell stories of Cultural Revolution topics from it's science fictional perspective, it offers a vision of a world so radically different from Earth as to be singular. I don't know of any author who's imagination is so prodigious and so alien. Perhaps it's because the author is Chinese or perhaps it's a function of the scope of his authorial ambition. Totally worth reading. Mind blowing at times. Perplexing a ...more

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