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I remember years ago when 3 body problem first made it big in the west everyone was raving about it. But I noticed no one was raving about the book its self they were only raving about how amazing and important and inspiring it was to see Chinese scifi make it outside of China. Everyone who pushed it on me had the same reasons. No one raved about how good the actual book was, it was always how different it was, how refreshing it is to see new voices and perspectives in the genre, how once the literary talents of China finally gets it chance we'll be seeing so many more chinese best sellers making it big here. Finally started reading it for free somewhere and lol its bad. The sequels are even more bad.
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Sep 26, 2020 00:52
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| # ? May 30, 2024 14:25 |
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Chinese Sci-fi: Journey to the West of Space.
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Sep 26, 2020 01:14
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Ugly In The Morning posted:From what parts of Three Body I read I am about zero percent surprised that the author would say poo poo like that. That book made me feel morally uncomfortable in the same way Ayn Rand does. How so? It's been a minute since I read the first two books so I don't remember everything.
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Sep 26, 2020 01:38
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The main guy just abandoning his friends and family for no apparent reason and never thinking about them again was pretty weird. Not sure what Lord Ugly means but that's the part I remember being most dumbfounded by.
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Sep 26, 2020 01:41
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Grand Fromage posted:The main guy just abandoning his friends and family for no apparent reason and never thinking about them again was pretty weird. Not sure what Lord Ugly means but that's the part I remember being most dumbfounded by. That was a big part but the general concept of “all life is inherently hostile to all other life and cooperation is impossible” (which may have been a later book in the series, I can’t remember, it’s been years since I read it) hit my brain in a weird way.
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Sep 26, 2020 01:43
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Ugly In The Morning posted:That was a big part but the general concept of “all life is inherently hostile to all other life and cooperation is impossible” (which may have been a later book in the series, I can’t remember, it’s been years since I read it) hit my brain in a weird way. To be fair that does seem to be the message someone would probably get if they spent their life in the PRC
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Sep 26, 2020 02:26
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Fojar38 posted:Lookin forward to his next series of books, the Need Money Problem More like the Three Million Body Problem
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Sep 26, 2020 02:28
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Fojar38 posted:To be fair that does seem to be the message someone would probably get if they spent their life in the PRC That’s actually why I was disappointed that I really didn’t like the books, it was interesting reading something with a perspective so incredibly different from my own but between my discomfort with it and the book also just being not good I was incredibly let down.
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Sep 26, 2020 02:33
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Ugly In The Morning posted:That was a big part but the general concept of “all life is inherently hostile to all other life and cooperation is impossible” (which may have been a later book in the series, I can’t remember, it’s been years since I read it) hit my brain in a weird way. That part isn't special to Three Body though, there's a lot of sci-fi with the game theory "wipe out any aliens you detect immediately before they do it to you" idea. The Killing Star's a prominent western example.
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Sep 26, 2020 02:36
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Grand Fromage posted:The main guy just abandoning his friends and family for no apparent reason and never thinking about them again was pretty weird. Not sure what Lord Ugly means but that's the part I remember being most dumbfounded by. I still preferred him to the second book's protagonist, who seemed to spend the whole book imagining his dream wifu and then managed to get a real life equivalent through government magic and also become the world's ultimate badass who was the only person the aliens would respect. The stories sometimes had interesting concepts; I just couldn't like any of the characters.
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Sep 26, 2020 03:28
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Nice Van My Man posted:I still preferred him to the second book's protagonist, who seemed to spend the whole book imagining his dream wifu and then managed to get a real life equivalent through government magic and also become the world's ultimate badass who was the only person the aliens would respect. Yes! The dream girl thing was so lame and annoying, especially when the other (2?) female characters are not good people at all, if I remember right.
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Sep 26, 2020 03:33
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bones 4 beginners posted:Yes! The dream girl thing was so lame and annoying, especially when the other (2?) female characters are not good people at all, if I remember right. Then the 3rd book is entirely from a woman's perspective, but she just spends the whole book failing constantly because she isn't as much of a badass as the guy from the last book. Near the end she reflects on this fact, but the guy she's with says that her naive disposition is ultimately what was going to save the universe, so she should keep trusting her instincts (I'm badly paraphrasing here because it's been awhile). I honestly wasn't sure what the book was trying to say at that point because it never demonstrates this in any way. Also there was an anime samurai robot lady.
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Sep 26, 2020 03:57
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Fojar38 posted:To be fair that does seem to be the message someone would probably get if they spent their life in the PRC I don't know, man. I sounds more like someone who's thoroughly internalised the lessons of capitalism
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Sep 26, 2020 04:00
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McGavin posted:Chinese Sci-fi: Journey to the West of Space. Quest for the 9000 dash line. Sounds like 3 Body Problem is something to be solved with fire.
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Sep 26, 2020 04:04
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GotLag posted:I don't know, man. I sounds more like someone who's thoroughly internalised the lessons of capitalism wow what a novel and unexpected take
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Sep 26, 2020 04:04
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Truth is often pretty boring, yes
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Sep 26, 2020 04:05
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Rabelais D posted:Chinese sci fi has been feted in both genre circles and in academia as one of the next big things in China studies for the last decade or so, but most of the Chinese sci fi I read is just dreck, especially the Three Body Problem. The Fish of Lijiang is really good and thank you for mentioning it.
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Sep 26, 2020 05:27
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GotLag posted:I don't know, man. I sounds more like someone who's thoroughly internalised the lessons of capitalism Fojar38 posted:To be fair that does seem to be the message someone would probably get if they spent their life in the PRC Guys these two ideas are hardly contradictory.
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Sep 26, 2020 05:29
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chinathread has been suffering from glassheart lately
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Sep 26, 2020 05:32
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GotLag posted:I don't know, man. I sounds more like someone who's thoroughly internalised the lessons of capitalism So... someone who spent their life in the PRC?
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Sep 26, 2020 05:43
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I read exclusively Sci fi because I'm a uncultured nerd, and 3 body problem is one of the worst books I ever read in that genre, one of the few I refunded through Amazon after reading close to 30 percent. My main issue is that none of the characters make any sense to me, and I actually thought of this thread and how it describes the differences between Chinese and western philosophy while reading it. It was always something like "person did a, and then b, and naturally 3 follows from this" and I remember thinking "what? Why?" a lot. My best guess why people rave about it so much is because Chinese authors are so rare, and because they never read any speculative Sci fi before. I'm actually glad people are commenting about this itt because I thought I had taken crazy pills when reading the reviews.
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Sep 26, 2020 06:26
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I feel the same way about Avatar. Sure it's pretty, but there's nothing new in it if you're read like, any sci-fi.
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Sep 26, 2020 06:52
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Xerxes17 posted:The Fish of Lijiang is really good and thank you for mentioning it. drat this is good poo poo!
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Sep 26, 2020 07:38
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please notice me xi dada uwu
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Sep 26, 2020 07:53
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Devils Affricate posted:So... someone who spent their life in the PRC? Or long enough in any communist state, given how they inevitably end up.
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Sep 26, 2020 08:22
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WarpedNaba posted:Or long enough in any communist state, given how they inevitably end up. It's amusing to me that communism seems to function as an effective way to change a non industrialized agrarian economy into a developed capitalist one. This is paywalled for me.
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Sep 26, 2020 09:45
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marx rejected the idea of rural peeps being able to enact communism on that basis, that there need to be understanding of the means of production seems pretty true
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Sep 26, 2020 09:51
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the most memorable character from cixin liu is deckard but with chinese characteristics the three pack a day problem also ma jian is where it at, dude is so baller, his life was pretty much 1984 but in the end he marries his translator in the uk
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Sep 26, 2020 10:14
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Some of the later Three Body Problem books were morally uncomfortable in a way that I thought was deliberate. All the 'hard men making hard decisions' parts, particularly the psycho CIA officer and the cannibal spaceship, seemed to be saying that these are the horrible things that are necessary to survive in space, lending support to the alternative in the third book of putting an event horizon around the solar system, forgetting about the always-a-bigger-fish horror of the universe, and living in peace. But hell, hard men and hard decisions is one of the most potent memetic devices for manufacturing fascists, second only to whatever active measures bullshit is surely behind Qanon.
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Sep 26, 2020 10:23
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Didn't Frostpunk try to do that hard men etc thing? Like, incredibly poorly, seeing as the alternative was the frozen extinction of all life on Earth?
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Sep 26, 2020 10:35
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WarpedNaba posted:Didn't Frostpunk try to do that hard men etc thing?
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Sep 26, 2020 10:45
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Or good ol Mass Effect where renegade choices were at least supposed to be brutal but effective ways to git er done. I don't think there's anything wrong with it as a theme or an honest observation of the real world, but hoo boy some people take way too much pleasure in 'we had no choice - I had to burn down the puppy orphanage to Complete The Mission'.
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Sep 26, 2020 10:56
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bob dobbs is dead posted:marx rejected the idea of rural peeps being able to enact communism on that basis, that there need to be understanding of the means of production I guess we haven't seen ideal communism but I think we have seen an at least partially genuine attempt to apply it to agrarian societies, and I think it's generally helped those societies to transition to something like western capitalism.
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Sep 26, 2020 11:15
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Rabelais D posted:Chinese sci fi has been feted in both genre circles and in academia as one of the next big things in China studies for the last decade or so, but most of the Chinese sci fi I read is just dreck, especially the Three Body Problem. most scifi is dreck :shh:
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Sep 26, 2020 11:33
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I like scifi but somehow also like the wuxia/kungfu stuff by Jin Yong/金庸 and a lot of plot devices are also somewhat similar to scifi mumble jumbo. The smiling, proud wanderer is great and is still referenced a lot in modern political scene. Also lol from the wiki regarding his last novel quote:In The Deer and the Cauldron, Cha departed from his usual writing style, creating in its main protagonist Wei Xiaobao an antihero who is greedy, lazy, and utterly disdainful of traditional rules of propriety. Cha intentionally created an anticlimax and an antihero possessing none of the desirable traditional values and no knowledge of any form of martial arts, and dependent upon a protective vest made of alloy to absorb full-frontal attack when in trouble and a dagger that can cut through anything. Wei is a street urchin and womanising weasel, with no admirable qualities whatsoever.[citation needed]
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Sep 26, 2020 11:35
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loving owns
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Sep 26, 2020 11:53
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I thought the Three Body Problem was poo poo but was unsure whether it was inherently poo poo or poo poo because a lot of stuff got lost in translation.
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Sep 26, 2020 13:02
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The [citation needed] is just 
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Sep 26, 2020 13:03
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My father has purchased a box of Costco moon cakes and is currently trying to force my mom to eat them. He has emailed me the following message: "Taiwan #1".
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Sep 26, 2020 14:18
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Holy fresh hell 3 Body Problem Netflix production is going to be a dumpster fire if it goes through. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and Rian Johnson. For once, these hack frauds will do unintentional good.
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Sep 26, 2020 23:32
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