The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

[williamjm]

That is a fair criticism of an English language work, which the translation certainly is. But I think that there is a cultural component to the way it is written that has to be accepted as something other than a flaw. There is a lot of richness there that just isn't Western.

I did wonder exactly that, whether it had lost something in translation and whether Chinese readers of the original would see things in it that I wouldn't. I thought most of the best bits of the book were those set in the Cultural Revolution era and I think it's there that the book did manage to show a new perspective that we don't really see in Western SF. Unfortunately, I didn't really get the same impression from the scenes in modern-day China where it felt comparatively bland to me (but maybe I'm missing something).

I'm definitely glad I read the book and it did some some genuinely good and memorable scenes in it, but by the end it was starting to lose my interest and I'm not really sure if I'll ever get round to reading the sequels.

 

[Carolyn Hill]

I just finished reading the trilogy. One of my favorite aspects of the last book, Death's End, is the role that Yun Tianming's made-up fairytales play in passing clues to humanity. I don't usually get to read science fiction that contains literary analysis of its own content! I had enormous fun trying to guess which aspects of the tales point to what sort of scientific solutions prior to the characters figuring things out.

In scope, this trilogy reminds me of Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men. About characterization: I wonder if part of the disconnect some readers feel from the individual characters in Liu's trilogy is caused by humanity as a whole being a character--or perhaps even The Character.

 

[RX-79G]

In scope, this trilogy reminds me of Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men. About characterization: I wonder if part of the disconnect some readers feel from the individual characters in Liu's trilogy is caused by humanity as a whole being a character--or perhaps even The Character.

Very much agree. I would hope most readers would be able to get past their own cultural bias about how a story needs to develop individual characters and accept the storytelling as it is written.